The Hollywood Reporter: Live Nation president and CFO Joe Berchtold provided an update on the Department of Justice’s investigation into the company and its affiliated ticketing service, Ticketmaster, saying that he believes the DOJ is investigating certain business practices at the company, rather than the merged company itself.
3 comments:
Having worked in front-of-house with ticketing software, I think it can make things easier for staff when all theaters use the same ticketing system. It makes training and onboarding simpler, communication among venues seamless, and gives consumers a single platform to view all of their current/past tickets. That being said, having a single program among all theaters will absolutely create a monopoly, especially if that company will also handle venue management. I have never considered the amount of fees and “junk fees” as mentioned in the article that brought about regulations, which are very important in an industry so large. I appreciate that many ticket sellers have pledged to show total prices up-front to consumers, including the fees. It’s similar to flights, where you see the ticket price and think “wow what a bargain” until you add luggage and seat reservations and fees and taxes and then your price has doubled. Honesty and transparency between a company and its consumers will help move the industry in the right direction, but they need to continue to be monitored to ensure a monopoly does not occur.
Having worked in the box office at a concert venue that did not operate under Ticketmaster this past summer, I do see both the pros and cons of having a standardized ticketing system, which would most likely be Ticketmaster. While Ticketmaster’s rush pricing and additional fees can be frustrating as a consumer, its ability to easily communicate with third party ticket selling makes it a clear choice as the standard platform. I too often had to face individuals this summer who bought tickets from a third party website (StubHub, SeatGeek, VividSeats, etc.) and never had their tickets transferred to them as automatic transfer was only compatible with Ticketmaster and not the platform my employer used. There was very little I could do in this situation as I had no way of accessing their tickets. On the thought of a standard ticketing platform, what would this mean for theatrical venues who typically do not operate under the “presale-rush” model that Ticketmaster does. Would engaging in using Ticketmaster boost sales or get rid of many theatrical box office jobs? I am curious to ponder this more after reading this article.
I don’t there is a problem with there being a main company that most people go to get tickets, however there is a problem when that company also acts as the venue owner/operator, ticket seller and promoter while saying that it is in fact pro-competitive and pro-consumer, which is just not true. When a single company controls everything, the consumer almost always gets shafted in the end. I think Live nation and Ticketmaster operating separately is fine, however something irks me about 1 company having overwhelming control over the concert market. I don’t want to see the industry trend in a direction of more consolidation, to me it is important for there to be options in how an artist tours, rather than every single concert to be in a live nation venue sold through ticketmaster. It’s kind of like how Disney owns so many different IPs and studios that used to make interesting content, but after getting acquired they rely on the same formula or just rehash the same content. I just don’t want the concert industry to become standardized or sanitized.
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