Posts filed under ‘scalping’
Dynamic Pricing Is The Key To Sporting Industry’s Woes
Yes this article is about sport in America, but get over it 
We can still learn from it.
The language is interesting for a start:
“Without fans in the stands, sponsorships become worthless …“
“… why these teams, and many others, suffer the indignity of playing in front of half empty stadiums …“
What about the fans themselves? Maybe I am being a little customer focussed here. But, isn’t a half empty stadium rude to them and a handicap to their enjoyment of the event? A live event (whether sport, theatre or a concert) is just that live – with a live audience. Half an audience is only half as exciting.
I find the demand equation mooted by blogger Marty Teller of interest:
(Team Affinity X Performance) / Opportunity Cost (other options) = Price Willing to Pay
“Besides winning, isn’t growing revenue the primary goal of any sports team (and any business, for that matter)?“
Yes, access and equity may be concepts important to not for profit and funded organisations, but a team without fans or supporters is a hobby, dare I say an amateur pursuit. I prefer the perspective of Theodore Levitt “The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer”. With that sort of focus, revenue follows.
However, the article then turns focusses on dynamic pricing as the answer to the secondary market and hence an advertisement for QCue.
1 June, 2010 at 11:50 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
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
Mobile Ticketing Starting to Gain Traction
Festival goers go mobile – Trinity Mobile provides mobile ticketing for UK festivals
After a surge in airline mobile tickets Trinity mobile is moving on to music festivals building on its penetration of the night club market.
Everyone is rarely without a mobile phone these days and fraud and security seem to be key selling points for this new ’ticket medium’. However, I am sure Ticketmaster will try and persuade us with the assertion that mobile tickets cut out touts and the ‘illegal’ secondary market.
Trinity Mobile supports all the major 2d and 1d barcode standards (QR Code, Datamatrix, Aztec, EAN, UPC and more), so a wide range of scanners are supported.
7 April, 2010 at 10:39 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
White Collar Watch – Wiseguys did not rip off Ticketmaster?
The Fans Are Disappointed, but Is That a Crime? Peter J. Henning discusses the “43-count indictment charging four men with using sophisticated computer programs to bypass security measures to buy up blocks of tickets through online vendors like Ticketmaster.”
“The indictment explains that the online ticket companies like Ticketmaster were exclusive distributors for the events, which it describes as “valuable property” because of the good will generated from having access to the event, and that their “reputations in the marketplace depended in part on the public’s perception that they could fairly distribute tickets on a first-come, first-serve basis.”” hmmmm exclusive distribution = good will and reputation BUT exclusive distribution = monopoly!
“If the complaint is that the performers and teams (and Ticketmaster) are not getting a slice of the resale market, that is not an issue of criminal law so much as controlling the secondary market.” – Peter J. Henning
Read Full Article @ NY Times Online The Fans Are Disappointed, but Is That a Crime?
9 March, 2010 at 12:47 pm 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
Project Showtime: How Azoff in partnership intended to crush Live Nation
Back in the US summer of 2007, before Ticketmaster and Live Nation started to try and push through a merger, Irving Azoff when he headed up Front Line Management launched another monopolistic venture called “Project Showtime” which included Ticketmaster, AEG Live, MSG and ticket brokers.
The aim was to acquire six regional ticket brokers and “crush Live Nation” which was motivated by Live Nation’s break from Ticketmaster to lauch its own ticketing system.
“There was even a test run in the fall of 2007, according to numerous people with knowledge of the matter. Up to 500 of the best seats to each of about 20 concerts by Van Halen, the veteran hard-rock band managed by Mr. Azoff, were pulled from the Ticketmaster system and passed directly to the brokers being considered for acquisition.“
“The brokers kept 30% of the marked-up sale price for themselves, and the remaining 70% was divided among Ticketmaster, the band and its handlers. The band netted an extra $1 million, at least, from the arrangement, according to people familiar with the matter.“
30 August, 2009 at 1:14 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Ticketmaster, Live Nation: Obama’s Antitrust Test
“… angry independent concert promoters to frustrated music fans, has been drumming the Department of Justice to block the deal, claiming the merger will create a conglomerate that will shut out competition and lead to higher ticket prices. This is deemed by many to be the first test case in the Obama Administration,“
The antitrust concerns are twofold.
First, there’s the so-called horizontal impact, which refers to when a company buys out a rival to eliminate competition. In this case, the merger will stop Live Nation’s recently launched ticketing company from cutting in on Ticketmaster’s turf. (TM saw its profits dive 78% in the first quarter)
Second, there’s the vertical impact, which refers to the company’s expansion into all parts of the live-music industry, from managing artists to selling beer and hot dogs at venues. “They’ll be the concert promoter, the ticketing company, the merchandise company, the agent, the manager — they’ll be everything,“
“The abuse of our fans and our trust by Ticketmaster has made us as furious as it has made many of you,” Bruce Springsteen said after a ticket fiasco in New Jersey in February steered buyers to a secondary market the company owns where tickets were being hawked at up to five times face value.
BUT as posted here last week Even The Boss Can’t Cross TM Without Being Hung Out to Dry Publicly!
Ooops how embarassing Bruuuuuuuuce!!
24 June, 2009 at 2:39 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Concert Tickets Get Set Aside, Marked Up by Artists, Managers
“Less than a minute after tickets for last August’s Neil Diamond concerts at New York’s Madison Square Garden went on sale, more than 100 seats were available for hundreds of dollars more than their normal face value on premium-ticket site TicketExchange.com. The seller? Neil Diamond.“
Ticketmaster Chief Executive Irving Azoff said last week that when ticket brokers resell tickets without permission from artists or promoters, it “drives up prices to fans, without putting any money in the pockets of artists or rights holders.“
“The vast majority of tickets are sold by the artists and their promoters with the cooperation of Ticketmaster.” In a strangely contradictory statement by Joseph Freeman, Ticketmaster’s senior vice president for legal affairs. So in this case it is fine to fleece the fans!
Tickets for a March 27 Britney Spears concert at Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh were priced earlier this week at $39.50 to $125 apiece on Ticketmaster.com. But some of those same classes of seats were being offered at the same time through the “TicketExchange Marketplace” for as much as $1,188.60. The link to the Marketplace page was marked, “Browse premium seats plus tickets posted by fans.“
Ms. Spears’ spokeswoman declined to comment.
The ticket listings are offered in small batches, each at a price, such as $1,164.01, that mimics prices set via online auctions. After inquiries from The Wall Street Journal, the “tickets posted by fans” message was removed from the TicketExchange Web site. Prices also fell, narrowing the gap between Ticketmaster and TicketExchange Marketplace.
23 June, 2009 at 4:49 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Even The Boss Can’t Cross TM Without Being Hung Out to Dry Publicly!
It seems that there may be a degree of retaliation in the recent Open Public Records Act request that has exposed Bruce Springsteen management as the reason fans could not get any good seats and it had nothing to do with Ticketmaster, TicketsNow, or scalpers.
Of the 20,000 seats at the Izod Centre in New Jersey 12% of the seats were “held aside friends and family of Springsteen and his band, plus radio-station executives and the like; 812 were held by the New Jersey Sports and Exhibition Authority.” Under New Jersey law only 5% are allowed to be set aside. Less than 10% of the best seats were actually available to the public when sales opened!
Springsteen Concerts: Who Gets the Best Seats? (Hint: Not You)
16 June, 2009 at 2:16 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia 1 comment
