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I talked to the old CEO of TicketMaster years ago about the fees and when I found out that most of the service fees are kicked back to the venues, I found them

I talked to the old CEO of TicketMaster years ago about the fees and when I found out that most of the service fees are kicked back to the venues, I found them far less evil. They take all the blame that should be directed at venue owners.

njl 15y ago
That seems disingenuous. It is my understanding that the fees are kicked back to the venue owners only if they make TicketMaster their sole agent. If you sell tickets anywhere other than your box office or TicketMaster, you're not going to see a dime of those TicketMaster fees.
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orangecat 15y ago
That supports my theory that TicketMaster's primary reason for existence is to be a scapegoat. Venues want to charge market-clearing prices, but don't want to be accused of "gouging" customers. So they bring in TicketMaster to take the reputation hit, in exchange for splitting the profits.
- wdr1 15y ago
  In my time there, I would agree with that. My theory was Ticketmaster did well for theory reasons: 1) Venue relationships 2) Taking the fall on fees 3) Ability to scale People are often surprised by #3. Having seen many startups try & fail (as well as large entities like LiveNation), ticketing is a hard problem. In my time at Yahoo & Google, I believe they have the technology to build a ticketing company, but beyond on that, most -- startups to large entities such as LiveNation & CTS -- had big problems handling onsales for large U2-sized events. In fact, it always made me think "Good luck with that" when people would talk about the design of ticketing systems using relational DBs. :)
wdr1 15y ago
I worked at Ticketmaster for 2-3 years. A chunk does go back to the venue, but also the promoter, and in some rare instances, also the artist. (How else do you pay the artist 105% of ticket price?) They could combine their fees into the ticket price, but they're afraid the artist will also demand 90% of the combined ticket price, putting significant risk on the table for them. Their motivation is minimal: People still buy tickets & nobody ever blames the venue or promoter. So from their viewpoint, why change?

njl 15y ago

That seems disingenuous. It is my understanding that the fees are kicked back to the venue owners only if they make TicketMaster their sole agent. If you sell tickets anywhere other than your box office or TicketMaster, you're not going to see a dime of those TicketMaster fees.

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orangecat 15y ago

That supports my theory that TicketMaster's primary reason for existence is to be a scapegoat. Venues want to charge market-clearing prices, but don't want to be accused of "gouging" customers. So they bring in TicketMaster to take the reputation hit, in exchange for splitting the profits.

wdr1 15y ago
In my time there, I would agree with that. My theory was Ticketmaster did well for theory reasons: 1) Venue relationships 2) Taking the fall on fees 3) Ability to scale People are often surprised by #3. Having seen many startups try & fail (as well as large entities like LiveNation), ticketing is a hard problem. In my time at Yahoo & Google, I believe they have the technology to build a ticketing company, but beyond on that, most -- startups to large entities such as LiveNation & CTS -- had big problems handling onsales for large U2-sized events. In fact, it always made me think "Good luck with that" when people would talk about the design of ticketing systems using relational DBs. :)

wdr1 15y ago

I worked at Ticketmaster for 2-3 years. A chunk does go back to the venue, but also the promoter, and in some rare instances, also the artist. (How else do you pay the artist 105% of ticket price?) They could combine their fees into the ticket price, but they're afraid the artist will also demand 90% of the combined ticket price, putting significant risk on the table for them. Their motivation is minimal: People still buy tickets & nobody ever blames the venue or promoter. So from their viewpoint, why change?