Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc. is a ticket sales and distribution company based in
West Hollywood, CaliforniaWest Hollywood, a city in Los Angeles County, California, was incorporated on November 29, 1984. The latest residential population estimate was 34,675. The city is well-known for its nightlife, celebrity culture, and diverse atmosphere. The city has large gay, Jewish and eastern European populations...
,
USAThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, with operations in many countries around the world. All US ticket sales for US venues are fulfilled at the Ticketmaster sole fulfillment center located in Charleston, West Virginia. Typically, Ticketmaster's clients (
arenaAn arena is an enclosed area, often circular or oval-shaped, designed to showcase theater, musical performances, or sporting events. It is composed of a large open space surrounded on most or all sides by tiered seating for spectators. The key feature of an arena is that the event space is the...
s,
stadiumA modern stadium is a place, or venue, for outdoor sports, concerts or other events, consisting of a field or stage partly or completely surrounded by a structure designed to allow spectators to stand or sit and view the event.-History of the stadium:The word originates from the Greek word...
s, and theaters) control their events, and Ticketmaster simply acts as an
agentAn Agent in Commercial Law is a person who is authorised to act on behalf of another to create a legal relationship with a Third Party...
, selling the tickets that the clients make available to them.
Ticketmaster sells many of its tickets online, some via phone, and some through its many ticket outlets.
In January 2009, Ticketmaster acquired a UK
ticket exchangeTicket Exchange A ticket exchange is a market where tickets are bought and sold. These are heavily internet based, powered by websites like stubhub.com, seatwave.com, TicketExperts.com, getmein.com, viagogo.com and ticketmaster.com-Secondary Market:...
site, Getmein.com. Getmein is a ticket exchange site that allows sellers to list the tickets at whatever price they choose. It claims to have over 500,000 tickets listed at any one time.
On 10 January 2008, Ticketmaster completed the acquisition of Paciolan Inc. after the deal was subject to months of litigation over the potential breach of antitrust laws. Paciolan is a developer of ticketing system applications and hosted ticketing systems. On 10 February 2009, Ticketmaster and
Live NationLive Nation, Inc. is a live events company based in Beverly Hills, California. Live Nation formed in 2005 by a spin-off from Clear Channel Communications. The present CEO of the company is Michael Rapino....
, the largest concert promoter, officially announced their merger deal.. The new company will take the Live Nation name and will be Live Nation Entertainment. In October 2009, the United Kingdom's
Competition CommissionThe Competition Commission is a non-departmental public body responsible for investigating mergers, markets and other inquiries related to regulated industries under competition law in the United Kingdom...
provisionally ruled against the merger.
Customer Service
Ticketmaster is one of a number of organizations which have migrated to web based booking systems with no equivalent web/e-mail based system for queries/complaints. This allows them to achieve the benefits of the change to on-line purchasing without the concomitant costs of providing matching customer service. They do have an E-Mail service for Canada at
TicketMaster.ca/email
Service fees
Ticketmaster collects no part of advertised ticket prices, in lieu it adds services fees to boost its earnings. Consumers often find these markups unreasonably excessive, especially because there are many instances where no alternative purchase method is offered (allowing the purchase of tickets without incurring fees). This business practice, along with a dearth of competitors, has led many to view Ticketmaster as monopolistic. Alternative ticketing companies have emerged but due to Ticketmaster's exclusive agreements with a large percentage of venues the company does not need to lower service fees. In some instances customers may be able to buy tickets directly from the venue, which may make its own service charge
The typical fees levied by Ticketmaster, in addition to a ticket's face value include:
This is Ticketmaster's charge for the general service they provide and maintain. You will pay this charge no matter which way you buy the tickets through Ticketmaster (Phone, online or in person at a ticket center), although the amount of the charge may be different for different channels and different payment methods.
This is determined by the venue, and not Ticketmaster.
This is Ticketmaster's charge for processing your order and making the tickets available to you. This is usually not a per ticket charge, but rather a per order charge.
- Shipping Charge, E-Ticket Convenience Charge, or Will Call Charge
Ticketmaster charges a fee for ticket delivery, whether the tickets are mailed to the customer, printed out at home, or collected from the venue. Seemingly paradoxically, the charge for printing out the ticket at home is often higher than the fee to have the ticket physically mailed to you, even though the cost to Ticketmaster is lower. In other sectors, such as airline ticketing, companies usually do not charge (or even offer a discount), for
electronic ticketingAn electronic ticket or e-ticket is used to represent the purchase of a seat on a passenger airline, usually through a website or by telephone. This form of airline ticket has rapidly replaced the old multi-layered paper tickets and became mandatory for IATA members as of June 1 2008...
. Economist
Emily OsterEmily Fair Oster is an American economist. After receiving an B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard in 2002 and 2006 respectively, Oster moved to the University of Chicago where she is now a Becker Fellow, which is a two year position at the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory...
of the Chicago Business School suggests that this reflects the lack of competition in the industry, with customers willing to pay more for the convenience of obtaining the tickets immediately due to a lack of alternate options.
As an example of a typical markup, a ticket to see
Britney SpearsBritney Jean Spears is an American singer and entertainer. Born in Mississippi and raised in Louisiana, Spears first appeared on national television in 1992 as a contestant on the Star Search program, and went on to star in Disney Channel's television series The New Mickey Mouse Club from 1993 to...
at the
Nissan PavilionNissan Pavilion at Stone Ridge or Nissan Pavilion in Bristow, Virginia, is an outdoor live performance amphitheatre in suburban Prince William County, about 35 miles west of Washington, DC...
in 2004 cost $56. In addition to this, Ticketmaster levied fees of $4.10 (processing charge), $3.50 (facility charge) and $9 (convenience charge), a total of $16.60, almost 30% of the ticket's original price. In some instances service charges can amount to up to 50% of a ticket's face value.
Ticketmaster has come under attack from those who claim its fees are excessive, with 40 British MPs signing an
early day motionAn early day motion , in the Westminster system, is a motion tabled by Members of Parliament for debate "on an early day" . They are only very rarely debated on the floor of the Chamber of the House...
criticizing the company for overcharging and for the lack of transparency in its pricing structure.
Ticket sales market
Ticketmaster frequently obtains agreements to become the sole provider of tickets for large venues, in keeping with a business strategy it has used since the 1980s when it consolidated regional ticketing services into a single entity. In many cases, acquiring this exclusivity requires Ticketmaster to pay substantial "signing bonuses" to venues, sometimes millions of dollars. Although this practice can significantly reduce the profitability to Ticketmaster of these exclusive relationships, to date using these bonuses has enabled them to maintain venue exclusivity as a competitive strategy, though the future viability of this strategy is unclear as the Internet as the primary sales channel for tickets makes exclusivity a less attractive option for venues.
Ticketmaster is the subject of frequent complaints in the media due to high ticket service charges. Notably, in the 1990s,
Pearl JamPearl Jam is an American rock band that formed in Seattle, Washington in 1990. Since its inception, the band's line-up has included Eddie Vedder , Jeff Ament , Stone Gossard , and Mike McCready...
brought a lawsuit alleging that Ticketmaster is a
monopolyIn economics, a monopoly exists when a specific individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it...
, whose anticompetitive practices allow
markup pricesMarkup is the difference between the cost of a good or service and its selling price. A markup is added on to the total cost incurred by the producer of a good or service in order to create a profit. The total cost reflects the total amount of both fixed and variable expenses to produce and...
of more than 30%. The case was acquitted because ticket purchasers were not deemed to be the actual customers of Ticketmaster.
Recently, there appears to have been questionable dealings between Ticketmaster and TicketsNow.com (which was acquired by Ticketmaster in January 2008). An anonymous source alleges that a TicketsNow executive assisted with the sale of more than $1 million worth of Radiohead tickets on the TicketsNow website There appears to be a conflict of interest when a company operates in both the primary and secondary sales markets, and furthers claims about the negative implications of Ticketmaster's Monopoly on ordinary consumers.
Competitors include Vendini, Inc., VenueDriver, LLC,
Tickets.comTickets.com is a global ticketing company, headquartered in Costa Mesa, CA. The company is owned by Major League Baseball Advanced Media, the interactive media and Internet division of Major League Baseball, and currently handles sales of tickets for 14 major league teams...
,
ShowClixShowClix is a Pittsburgh-based, full-service ticketing company that provides web-based solutions to event organizers, promoters and venue managers across the United States...
,
StubHubStubHub is a service which acts as an online marketplace for buyers and sellers of tickets for sports, concerts, theater and other live entertainment events at fair market value, even for events that happen to be sold out. The company was founded in 2000 by Eric Baker and Jeff Fluhr, former...
,
ClassicticClassictic is a service that provides information and ticket sales for classical music events on a multi-lingual internet portal. Classictic acts as an agent for concert organizers, opera houses, orchestras and musicians, facilitating the primary sale of tickets to their events as an auxiliary...
,
TicketBiscuitTicketBiscuit is a Birmingham, Alabama-based online ticketing company. The company provides a proprietary, Web-based event management system to help small and midsize entertainment venues, including promoters, colleges, churches, theaters, nightspots, comedy clubs and individual artists - sell...
, TicketExperts.com, TicketLiquidator.com, OnlineSeats.com, TicketVendor.com and others. TicketWeb, a Ticketmaster subsidiary also offers lower fees. These companies are typically excluded from primary ticket sales for major-league sports events in the U.S. (with the exception of Major League Baseball, which, as noted below, is now the owner of Tickemaster's number two competitor Tickets.com).
A new brand of competition has emerged in the form of companies selling ticket
futures contractFutures contract, in finance, refers to a standardized contract to buy or sell a specified commodity of standardized quality at a certain date in the future, at a market determined price . The contracts are traded on a futures exchange. Futures contracts are not "direct" securities like stocks,...
s. Web-based companies such as
Yoonewyoonew, Inc. was a start-up based in New York City, USA, that ran an online exchange specializing in championship sports tickets and ticket derivatives...
and TicketReserve offer ticket futures which guarantee customers tickets to big games such as the
Super BowlThe Super Bowl is the championship game of the National Football League, the premier association of professional American football. In most years, the Super Bowl is the most-watched American television broadcast. Many popular singers and musicians have performed during the event’s pre-game and...
and
World SeriesThe World Series has been the annual championship series of the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada since 1903, concluding the postseason of Major League Baseball...
if the team for which they have
futures contractFutures contract, in finance, refers to a standardized contract to buy or sell a specified commodity of standardized quality at a certain date in the future, at a market determined price . The contracts are traded on a futures exchange. Futures contracts are not "direct" securities like stocks,...
s makes it. Though the price of ticket futures are often substantially lower than the price of actual tickets to the big event, customers risk losing their investment if their team does not make it.
Yoonewyoonew, Inc. was a start-up based in New York City, USA, that ran an online exchange specializing in championship sports tickets and ticket derivatives...
, in addition, provides an
exchangeA futures exchange or derivatives exchange is a central financial exchange where people can trade standardized futures contracts; that is, a contract to buy specific quantities of a commodity or financial instrument at a specified price with delivery set at a specified time in the future.-History...
where ticket futures can be traded between users.
Ticketmaster is the primary ticket seller for 27 of the 30
NHLThe National Hockey League is an unincorporated not-for-profit association which operates a major professional ice hockey league as a joint venture for its self perpetuating membership of 30 franchised member clubs located in the United States and Canada...
teams and 28 of 30
NBAThe National Basketball Association is a professional basketball league, composed of thirty teams in North America . It is an active member of USA Basketball , which is recognized by the International Basketball Federation as the National Governing Body for basketball in the United States...
teams, but in 2005, Major League Baseball acquired Ticketmaster rival Tickets.com. Some analysts expect MLB to stop using Ticketmaster for the sale of its approximately 100,000,000 baseball tickets per year once current contracts with Ticketmaster have expired. Thus, when the Ticketmaster contracts end, finding sources for primary or "box office" tickets online may become a difficult task and vertical ticket search engines may become indispensable for finding primary ticket outlets.
Also of concern to the company is declining sales in the highly profitable concert business. Off by double-digit percentages in 2005 from 2004, the summer concert season is a major profit center for the company with its high per-ticket prices and accompanying high service fees.
Ticketmaster has had only limited success in the secondary ticketing market. In September 2003, Ticketmaster announced plans to sell tickets in internet auctions, which would bring the price of tickets closer to market prices, but its market share compared to that of eBay or Stubhub remains small, and Internet auctions are still a relatively minor part of its business. Indeed, since around the time of the 2003 announcement, Ticketmaster has lost the lead in the secondary ticketing market to new entrants like Stubhub, who have developed a popular and effective person-to-person market for tickets. Recently, Ticketmaster President Sean Moriarty appeared on a story about the ticketing business on NPR and pleaded for legislation that would make the selling of tickets from person to person illegal except through Ticketmaster's own product for this purpose. Ticketmaster established the Ticketmaster Ticketexchange to try to compete with Stubhub, their main tagline being that tickets are 100% guaranteed to be authentic, since they are sold through the season ticket holder's account. (Some NFL teams require people to be on the waiting list in order to use the service. The New England Patriots, New York Giants and New York Jets require waiting list memberships.)
In Canada, Ticketmaster is trying to overturn anti-
scalpingTicket resale is the act of reselling tickets for admission to events. Tickets are bought from licensed sellers and are then sold for a price determined by the individual or company in possession of the tickets. Tickets sold through secondary sources may be sold for less or more than their face...
legislation that is in place in some provinces. They are lobbying the Ontario and Manitoba governments to review rules banning the resale of tickets. The Premier of
OntarioOntario is a province located in east-central Canada, the largest by population and second largest, after Quebec, in total area. Ontario is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba to the west and Quebec to the east, and 5 U.S...
,
Dalton McGuintyDalton James Patrick McGuinty, Jr., MPP is a Canadian lawyer and politician and, since October 23, 2003, premier of the Canadian province of Ontario...
, stated on March 23, 2009 that his government is planning to introduce legislation which would prevent Ticketmaster from reselling tickets through its
TicketsNowTicketsNow, established in 1999 and based in Rolling Meadows, IL, is a marketplace for event tickets.TicketsNow was named in 2004 and 2006 to the Inc. 500 Index of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the U.S...
website after they would not agree to do so when asked by the Province.
Also in Canada, front page news in early January 2008 was a story about how a show for AC/DC in Vancouver was sold out in minutes, only for tickets to be available for higher prices on TicketsNow. The resale site also charged up to $1,199 for a $44 face-value ticket to a recent Killers concert in Toronto — roughly a 2,500 per cent markup.
In an article by the CBC, Ticketmaster has been quoted as saying
- "You and I both know there is a thriving ticket-broker industry... so the law is really a fiction... We very strongly feel the law needs to be modernized to reflect the reality of internet commerce. By keeping a price cap in place, you're really just driving the [resale] business into the shadows."
Ticketmaster developed, in the late summer of 2009, a new way to resell tickets that atttempted to shut out brokers and scalpers. This new system relies on a "paperless" ticketing platform, which makes customers prove their purchase by showing a credit card and ID. Paperless tickets account for fewer than 1 percent of all ticket sales.
Privacy
The company's use of personal information is more aggressive than most: a term that users wishing to purchase from their website must agree to is to receive Ticketmaster marketing:
-
- "By completing this registration form you indicate that you consent to Ticketmaster sharing your email address and other information with those who provide the event, and that you consent to those who provide the event using your information to contact you by email or other means to send you marketing or other messages or using or disclosing your information in other ways. By completing this registration form, you also indicate that you consent to Ticketmaster contacting you by email or other means to send you marketing or other messages and using and disclosing the information you submit, as described in the Ticketmaster Privacy."
This term is actually somewhat less aggressive than previously, following criticism and accusations of spamming. However, users of the site automatically receive a regular "My Account" email, which comes with the notice "By signing up to Ticketmaster you agreed to receive this email. If you do not want to receive it, you can edit your preferences on the site". In other words, Ticketmaster deliberately does not allow users to opt-out at signup from unwanted
emailElectronic mail, often abbreviated as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages, designed primarily for human use...
in order to increase the audience for its marketing, and the unsubscribe procedure requires the user to login to a web page: there is no simple unsubscribe link or email address.
Prominent lawsuits
In 1994, the rock band
Pearl JamPearl Jam is an American rock band that formed in Seattle, Washington in 1990. Since its inception, the band's line-up has included Eddie Vedder , Jeff Ament , Stone Gossard , and Mike McCready...
appealed to the
Antitrust DivisionThe United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division is responsible for enforcing the antitrust laws of the United States. It shares jurisdiction over civil antitrust cases with the Federal Trade Commission and often works jointly with the FTC to provide regulatory guidance to businesses...
of the
United States Department of JusticeThe United States Department of Justice is a Cabinet department in the United States government designed to enforce the law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law and to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans...
, complaining that Ticketmaster adopted monopolistic practices and refused to lower service fees for the band's tickets. At the time, Pearl Jam wanted to keep ticket prices under $20 for their fans, with service charges no greater than $1.80. The company had exclusive contracts with many of the large venues in the United States and threatened to take legal action if those contracts were broken. The Justice Department ruled in favor of Ticketmaster which culminated in the cancellation of the 1994 Pearl Jam tour. Four years later, Pearl Jam resumed their relationship with Ticketmaster.
On April 28, 1997, Ticketmaster sued
MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is a multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices...
over its
SidewalkSidewalk.com was first registered in 1995 by a C.D. Bell of Los Angeles, CA, as a website where local subscribers could gain a presence on the web. Bell compiled a lengthy list of possible names for his new domain, and much to his surprise his first choice, "Sidewalk.com", was available. Most of...
service for allegedly
deep linkingDeep linking, on the World Wide Web, is making a hyperlink that points to a specific page or image on another website, instead of that website's main or home page. Such links are called deep links.-Example:This link: is an example of a deep link...
into Ticketmaster's site. The suit was settled after a two-year legal battle in which Ticketmaster claimed that linking to specific pages on an Internet site without permission was an unfair practice.
In 2003, the popular jam band
String Cheese IncidentThe String Cheese Incident , is a jam band from Crested Butte and Telluride, Colorado formed in 1993. The band is composed of Michael Kang , Michael Travis , Bill Nershi , Kyle Hollingsworth The String Cheese Incident (abbreviated SCI), is a jam band from Crested Butte and Telluride, Colorado...
and its associated booking group, SCI Ticketing sued Ticketmaster arguing that Ticketmaster's exclusive use contracts and most US venues was a breach of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. This lawsuit was settled in 2004 with no publicity of the settlement terms
In 2009, Ticketmaster faced several lawsuits across North America, claiming they conspired to divert tickets to popular events to its ticket brokering website
TicketsNowTicketsNow, established in 1999 and based in Rolling Meadows, IL, is a marketplace for event tickets.TicketsNow was named in 2004 and 2006 to the Inc. 500 Index of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the U.S...
, in which the same tickets were sold at premium prices. This also raised the ire of rock legend
Bruce SpringsteenBruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen , nicknamed "The Boss", is an American singer-songwriter. He records and tours with the E Street Band...
, who said he was 'furious' at Ticketmaster, and "...the one thing that would make the current ticket situation even worse for the fan than it is now would be Ticketmaster and Live Nation coming up with a single system, thereby returning us to a near monopoly situation in music ticketing".
Key Staff
- Irving Azoff
Irving Azoff is an American personal manager, representing recording artists in the music industry such as: Journey, Jewel, The Eagles, X Japan, Bush, REO Speedwagon, Seal, Christina Aguilera, David Archuleta, Alter Bridge, Van Halen, Neil Diamond, New Kids on the Block, Steely Dan, Morrissey and...
-- CEO
- Terry Barnes -- Chairman
- Eric Korman -- President
- Brian Pike -- CTO
- Rick Oliver -- PMO
External links