Fast Company: "Last week, Ticketmaster announced it was going to introduce dynamic pricing, to raise and lower prices in response to demand. But ScoreBig thinks it has a better idea: a Priceline for live events. And given that they've secured a total of $22.5 million in funding, including a second round worth $14 million from USVP and Bain Capital Ventures last week, they might be on to something. In this age of soaring ticket prices, many people can't afford to pay face value to go see the latest pop tart or cheer for the hometown team in person--much less contemplate the jacked-up prices on secondary markets like StubHub. ScoreBig now provides a place that caters to the needs of the price-conscious event-goer. And event promoters have a place to discretely fill seats that would otherwise remain empty.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Introducing A Priceline For Live Events
Fast Company: "Last week, Ticketmaster announced it was going to introduce dynamic pricing, to raise and lower prices in response to demand. But ScoreBig thinks it has a better idea: a Priceline for live events. And given that they've secured a total of $22.5 million in funding, including a second round worth $14 million from USVP and Bain Capital Ventures last week, they might be on to something. In this age of soaring ticket prices, many people can't afford to pay face value to go see the latest pop tart or cheer for the hometown team in person--much less contemplate the jacked-up prices on secondary markets like StubHub. ScoreBig now provides a place that caters to the needs of the price-conscious event-goer. And event promoters have a place to discretely fill seats that would otherwise remain empty.
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4 comments:
This seems less like an innovation in event marketing and more like an eventuality in internet marketing in general. TKTS, priceline, other industries have figured out how to effectively fill seats and the music industry has considered itself too cool to settle for such measures. Just goes to show how the economy effects everyone.
I think this is a great idea. It is economically brilliant because you can discount tickets but there is risk in it because you could get locked out of bidding which discourages bidding really low. It essentially finds where you sit on the damand curve and you pay that much. I mean, we know that everyone places different values on experiences so this is a way to literally sell tickets at the value the person is willing to pay and gain maximum profit since, in theory, people will not put in less money that their personal value because they could lose the tickets. I wish I had a graph to illustrate this but basically I think this could be very successful. The only concern is with scalpers buying tickets at far less the value then selling them for more. It could turn a profit of a pretty penny.
I want to see how this plays out. Will tickets actually be cheap enough? I think that this is a step forward in trying to sell unsold tickets, as well as "give the people what they want". But only time will tell if this actually works out. I'm excited for it. The concept has worked for other services, so why not this?
Meg brings up a very good point. This system enables companies to charge each audience member with their own 'personalized' ticket price. It makes it possible for people with little means to still be able to see the show, but at the same time if everyone catches onto the 'flaw' in the system, it could be cheated by the population as a whole.
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