Posts filed under ‘Dynamic Pricing’
Pricing Baseball Tickets Like Airline Seats
A background piece in Bloomberg Businessweek about Barry Kahn of Qcue (pronounced “Q-Q”).
The San Francisco Giants are using Qcue software to “price baseball games in much the same way airlines manage seat prices to keep planes full“. Hmm a full plane (i.e. all seats sold) is reducing loss on the fixed price of ‘empty seat’ and is a different thing to maximising profit on prices alone. There are issues here regarding access, let alone equity.
Will this preclude such cutting edge technology from being applied to the ‘not-for-profit’ or subsidised arts? Alternatively, will it just be a more complex algorithm that addresses larger issues of better synchronising demand with supply (not just audience development) within the parameters of a cross subsidy of yield maximisation?
“The Giants say the technology could add $5 million-plus in revenue this year. Revenues are up 12% this season and attendance has jumped 7% (true, the team is playing well), …” That is one thing entertainment does not have going for it – a winning streak!
“”There’s big money out there in lost revenue from mispricing,” Kahn says—more than $20 billion a year for live sports and entertainment, much of it cash that today goes to scalpers. Flexible pricing, he says, lets teams “hedge their bets in bad times and capture the benefits of the good times.“”
I am not so sure that scalping is purely due to ‘mis-pricing’. What do you reckon?
22 May, 2010 at 12:31 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia 1 comment
The marriage of Ticketmaster and Live Nation: Say hello to the $400 ticket?
Is Broooce showing his discomfort at the merger?
Live Nation Entertainment CEO Michael Rapino in Is This Merger Just The Ticket? “In my business, the cheaper the ticket price the better. I’d love for more consumers to walk into an amphitheater, park, have a beer and eat a hot dog. There’s no advantage to me to have anything but sold-out shows.” – LA Times 12 Feb 2009
However, just over a year later Rapino’s tune has changed in the 1st 1/4 2010 Conference Call: “Our fundamental belief at Ticketmaster/Live Nation is the answer to grow our business is less about trying to make $5 or $6 million in service fees off secondaries and much more important to figure out how to capture that $1 billion in up-sell on the face value of tickets,“
The merged entity, Live Nation Entertainment, now seems less concerned with fees and wants control of the price of tickets.
15 May, 2010 at 1:06 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Pricing for The Eagles an Experiment
10 tiers added with dynamic pricing to shift 40% unsold inventory http://ow.ly/1ggdM
10 March, 2010 at 7:06 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Live Nation Exec Tries to Spin Ticketmaster Merger
“How’s it a monopoly?” Gerry Barad, chief operating officer of Live Nation’s global touring, said during a discussion of the live music industry at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. “One’s a promoter, and one’s a ticket company.”
It IS a monopoly Mr Barad, Live Nation own venues as well!
Barad is deliberately avoiding the issue (or is economically very challenged), it is a monopoly through vertical integration. Owning the venues as well means that touring artists DO NOT have a choice due to the dominance of ‘venue exclusive ticketing contracts’. There is no stronger venue exclusive ticketing contract than the venue owning the ticketing service as well. allowing the creation of one vertical monopoly limits choice and opportunity for artists, other promoters, other ticketing services AND consumers!
1 March, 2010 at 11:33 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Price Transparency is a Consumer Right … Surely
I am afraid that do not share Ticketmaster’s enthusiasm for its newest innovation the “total view pricing tool“.
Providing a summary of all the additional charges and fees charged by an agent on top of the event price is a good thing. But, it should not be seen as a new or unique enhancement to the “fan’s ticket buying experience”. It is a basic consumer right in all other industries, why not ticketing?
Increased transparency of pricing is a good thing, but it should be seen for what it is – increased accountability being imposed upon agents like Ticketmaster as a result of competition and the resultant threat of regulation.
It is not purely semantics, Ticketmaster and other ticketing agencies are agents. Agents act with the permission of the Principal selling tickets for the event owner, the Principal.
The ticket agent does not own the ticket for the event they are selling and undertakes no risk, like a normal retailer. As a result, the event owner should set total prices for its events, not an agent acting on its behalf.
28 December, 2009 at 12:06 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Ticket Availability for Vancouver Games Questioned
A detailed collection of articles in the Seattle Times debating ticket availability and accessibility for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
22 December, 2009 at 3:14 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Baseball Dynamic Pricing Update for 2009
Baseball Tickets Too Much? Check Back Tomorrow
How are the experiments with dynamic pricing going at the ballpark?
“The Giants’ dynamic pricing experiment affects 2,000 of the 41,000 seats at the stadium. The team chose four sections in the upper deck in left field with 1,200 seats and three sections in the left-field bleachers that typically are among the last to sell. No season tickets were sold there.“
“Because the seats often went empty, the team felt that cutting prices to as low as $5 could entice more fans to sit there. … Fans at AT&T Park spend on average $22 a game on food and merchandise.“
“Through the first 17 home games, sales of dynamically priced tickets rose 20 percent, compared with sales in those sections during the same period last year. That works out to about 500 extra tickets a game.“
“But it is unclear whether cheaper tickets alone helped boost sales, or whether the team’s improved performance and the mix of competitors, including the rival Dodgers, were responsible.”
19 May, 2009 at 5:03 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Dynamic Pricing goes out to the Ballpark
Giants plan to play with pricing
In February 2008, the Giants mooted introducing “dynamic pricing” for the 2009i season at the 500 bleacher seats and 1,500 view-reserve seats at AT&T Park. Prices will fluctuate between $8 and $40, depending on a game’s expected popularity.
The software by qcue “will regularly recalculate ticket prices by analyzing variables that affect demand, such as the day the game is played, the weather, the starting pitchers, whether bobbleheads will be handed out, the team the Giants are opposing and whether the Giants or their opponent are on winning or losing streaks or in playoff contention,“
19 May, 2009 at 4:46 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
