It's not necessarily the venue, but also the promoter & sometimes the artist. If you promise a top A-list performer a 105% of the cover ticket price, you've go

It's not necessarily the venue, but also the promoter & sometimes the artist. If you promise a top A-list performer a 105% of the cover ticket price, you've got to find that 5% somewhere. (Not to mention other costs.) One of the major reasons for Ticketmaster early success was its flexibility. Other systems expected you to conform to predefined contracts. Ticketmaster didn't. Want to slice your inventory into 10 price groups on Friday & Saturday, 5 on Sunday, and 2 during week? No problem. Want a $20 ticket price & $5 fee, no problem. Want a $15 ticket & $10 fee? That works too. Need to sell the Staples Center with one configuration for Madonna on Monday & a different setup for U2 on Tuesday, easy peasy. Need to put 3 more nights on sale? Done. In a nutshell whatever the ticket owner wants (usually the promoter) Ticketmaster can do. It was really hard to find that type of flexibility in the 70s. Let alone a system that can scale to the demand associated with live events. (LiveNation spent north of $100M trying to do so before throwing in the towel & buying Ticketmaster outright.) Source: I'm a former TM engineering director.