Posts filed under ‘LiveNation’
Do I have a dream job for you @viagogo
This job may now be a bit of a nightmare on the back of the ‘Dispatches’ exposé of The Great Ticket Scandal.
“It’s really ####ing shady!“ Viagogo employee in The Great Ticket Scandal.
“at viagogo you’ll work with fun people who are committed to helping fans gain access to tickets to the best live events in the world!“
One of the required Skills and Attributes is “A sense of humour” 
The Great Ticket Scandal in summary:
Viagogo takes the most flack (not surprisingly they attempted to block the broadcast with an injunction), but Seatwave and others named are not without blame. Promoters LiveNation and SJM are also incriminated for duping fans with a 90/10 split (in their favour) on the markup on tickets withheld from the primary marketplace and allocated to resellers like Viagogo.
1. SECONDARY MARKET COMPETITION WITH PRIMARY MARKET
“Viagogo staff compete directly with real fans to buy tickets from primary ticket sellers, like Ticketmaster, for in demand events as soon as they go on sale. To get around systems put in place to prevent bulk buying of tickets, Viagogo staff use multiple credit cards registered to different addresses.“
2. PRIMARY MARKET SHORTCHANGED
“major promoters allocate hundreds or even thousands of tickets to be sold through their (Viagogo) website at well above the face value. Tickets for recent gigs and tours by Coldplay, Rihanna, Westlife, Take That, and V Festival have been allocated by the promoters in this way.“
The Dispatches episode on the Channel 4 website:
The Great Ticket Scandal (not available online outside the UK)
Outside the UK watch the exposé on YouTube (in 4 parts):
The Great Ticket Scandal (outside the UK)
Various recent articles:
28 February, 2012 at 11:05 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
A not so well kept secret has been let ‘out the box’
We always expected Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) take the opportunity to go its own way with ticketing. Particularly as it is #2 to Live Nation, now owners of Ticketmaster.
It is not surprising that AEG chose not to Ticketmaster’s system, surely this is an endictment of the decision and logic of the antitrust regulators?
AEG has entered a joint venture called Outbox Enterprises. Fred Rosen, former Ticketmaster CEO who steered Ticketmaster to dominance in the 80′s and 90′s, is the new venture’s CEO. Outbox originates from Canada and is responsible for the sexy Cirque du Soleil online ticketing interface written about in FULLHOUSES last year.
It will be interesting to see how the rest of the industry takes to the ‘white label‘ model that Outbox offers, removing the need for a central ticket agent online brand selling directly from the venue or event owners website. Is it the end of the agent middleman?
“This isn’t about trying to go out there and build a whole new brand around the name Outbox, … This is about service.” AEG Chief Executive Tim Leiweke
4 February, 2011 at 12:52 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia 3 comments
Mobile Apps – How do you butter your bread on both sides?
Live Nation (owner of Ticketmaster) has just announced that it has launched an iPhone app for the Apple OS. Ticketmaster parent Live Nation drives ticket sales via mobile commerce platform
Live Nation has previouslyl become involved with Apple in providing concert listings for iTunes 10.
But back in 2009, Ticketmaster launched Ticketmaster for Blackberry (albeit described as “a glorified browser shortcut/plugin“) and has since stated that Blackberry is the “Official Smartphone of Ticketmaster“. Although the page on the Ticketmaster site does confuse the issue with the tag line “love seeing it live”
Is this an example of how a monopoly vertically integrated company just tries to ensure that it is all things to all people?
13 December, 2010 at 11:11 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
A Serious Competitor for TicketMaster?
Outbox Technology Inc. plans to announce, former Ticketmaster Chief Executive (1982-98), Fred Rosen as the CEO of a new U.S. subsidiary, Outbox Enterprises LLC. You may remember the seven part interview with Rosen that was featured on FULL HOUSES last year.
The new company is a partnership among the Canadian company, Mr. Rosen and Cirque du Soleil Inc., for which Outbox has provided the ticketing technology for several years.
“Instead of listing and selling tickets for thousands of events on a single, centralized website, the new company plans to offer a so-called white-label service that will enable clients such as concert venues, festivals and sports teams to sell tickets to consumers directly from their own websites.“
“The middle-man model is dead, … You have to evolve.” says Rosen
Whilst it is great to see another option that is allowing producers to deal directly with their customers and via a pretty sexy interface as well, the challenge is still to get past the barrier of venue exclusive ticketing contracts. It was easier for Cirque du Soleil to get past that handicap as they controlled the venue, in many instances their own tent.
READ FULL ARTICLE ONLINE Ticketmaster Ex-CEO to Lead a New Rival>>
12 October, 2010 at 8:15 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia 3 comments
iTunes teams up with Live Nation/Ticketmaster
Thanks to Karl Vosper in the UK for pointing out this story.
Live Nation and Ticketmaster have jointly announced that they will be powering the Concert Listings feature in iTunes 10. However, there is no confirmation from Apple that there will be any ability to buy tickets as well!
Robin Wauters questioned this on TechCrunch in Live Nation To Power Concert Listings, Ticket Sales In iTunes 10
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think CEO Steve Jobs
left that part out of his keynote, although the official press release does mention Live Nation briefly, indicating only that the company will be providing tour info for Concert pages.“
FORMAL ANNOUNCEMENT Live Nation Statement on Apple iTunes® Concert Information
7 September, 2010 at 10:10 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia 1 comment
When Will Ticketmaster Catch Up With Social Media?
A pretty damning article in the SF Appeal that details recent blunders of Ticketmaster and Live Nation in the Social Media space.
“Monday morning and throughout the day, fans of the band The Swell Season received emails from Live Nation asking them “How Was The Show?” as part of a rating system. The problem with those emails, of course, is that those same fans witnessed a suicide at the very show they were being asked to rate by Live Nation.“
“With examples like these, Live Nation and Ticketmaster aren’t doing much to avoid remaining an example of a business who doesn’t do it “right.” It takes more than a blog, Facebook page, and a newly tweeting CEO — without social media grace, strategy, or a staff who demonstrates enough passion for the concert industry to work on weekends when an emergency arises, Live Nation and Ticketmaster add to the myth of industry conspiracy which is nothing more than the old music business attempting to ape a revolution happening today – right here in San Francisco.“
READ THE FULL ARTICLE ONLINE Ticketmaster Just Can’t Get Social Media Right
27 August, 2010 at 1:47 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Ticketmaster: Transparency or Attribution?
CEO of Ticketmaster Nathan Hubbard has launched a blog called Ticketology which appears to be part of the parent company Live Nation Entertainment’s efforts at greater transparency.
“We get it — you don’t like service fees. You don’t like them mostly because you don’t understand what the heck they are for.“
The mooted transparency appears to be more a case of attribution, however. Prices are not going down, fees are not being reduced and other than specifying some fees a little earlier in the sales process – the final price paid per ticket is still inflated by a diversity of fees and charges.
“Most of the parties in the live event value chain participate in these service fees either directly or indirectly — promoters, venues, teams, artists and, yes, ticketing companies.“
The promised “all-in-pricing” heralded by Live Nation Entertainment chief Irving Azoff still seems beyond his reach and the current sales process used by Ticketmaster gets in the way of that as suggested by Azoff on Twitter.
READ FULL ARTICLE Ticketmaster’s new blog: ‘We get it — you don’t like service fees’
25 August, 2010 at 10:10 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia 2 comments
How to win friends and influence people …
Live Nation Entertainment executive chairman, Irving Azoff takes his subtle approach and unique perspective online via Twitter and gets slammed in response.
“Twitter is hardly the place to reveal a company’s strategy for dealing with the competing forces of rising artist demands and consumer demands for cheaper tickets, but blaming high ticket prices solely on piracy is disappointing.” Glenn Peoples on Billboard.biz
Azoff’s timeless rejoinder? … “glen peoples u r a jerk. …“
OMG! Ticketmaster head Irving Azoff throws down a Twitter gauntlet at Billboard journalist
17 August, 2010 at 10:02 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
No promoters, no fees … too good to be true? Try up to 20%
I am all for cutting out the middleman and producers or event owners dealing directly with their fans/patrons/supporters etc. It is encouraging to see Topspin assisting music artists to develop a relationship with fans by providing a variety of online marketing tools
However, here is a very questionable example of ‘journalism’ Matt Rosoff on CNET.com regarding Topspin. It looks like Matt bought the press release and blog entry hook line and sinker. No research, no clarification or verification and definitely no industry knowledge.
Here is part of Mark’e breathless enthusings:
“Here’s the brilliant thing: the show had no promoter and no ticket broker. No service fees, no big markups. Topspin explains the details in a blog entry and video posted Thursday morning.“
hmmm “no service fees“? See below. “No big markups“ maybe no outside charges, but there are inside charges. Read about the inside fees on the Topspin site.
“Direct-to-fan ticketing isn’t going to take over right away: artists planning massive stadium tours will probably still need to use a ticket broker like Ticketmaster to serve large numbers of customers quickly, and Live Nation does a lot of marketing to build demand. But in five years, I wouldn’t be surprised if most touring artists are using platforms like Topspin’s to sell their tickets directly to fans, no middlemen required.“
I guess he has not heard of venue exclusive ticketing contracts?
Some more background to the misunderstanding of “no fees” is provided by an interview on Hypebot with Topspin CEO Ian Rogers.
“We aren’t public about our pricing yet because to be honest we don’t know what our pricing will be long-term.“
“As far as our pricing right now, we’ve been taking a rev share of 20% of retail which decreases as volume increases.“
Ian Rogers is quite in frank in this more balanced journalism and an actual interview:
“I agree we’ve been a bit over-hyped, actually. … We’re just a young company, building software, working with artists, trying to figure out what marketing and distribution looks like in the future, just like y’all. But we’re also a good group of music-loving people who have been very approachable — if you have issues with how we’re pricing, let us know. There’s nothing secretive or shady going on here.“
Sounds like Topspin may be worth watching and we wish them luck.
31 July, 2010 at 12:17 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Ticketmaster Chief Wants More Transparency
“The elephant in the room is the service fee, … The data says you sell more tickets when you bundle it all in.” – Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard
I am sorry but I have to feel very cynical about Hubbard Suggesting or even blaming ”practices that insult buyers’ intelligence” for the softening of demand for live events.
He, as CEO of the largest ticketing company worldwide, is soley responsible for the practice of add-on fees for ‘convenience’ through to charges to print your own tickets.
Surely, even they get embarassed by the self-serving nature of such contradictory nonsense.
READ FULL ARTICLE Ticketmaster Chief Wants More Transparency>>
25 July, 2010 at 4:36 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
