> how did they come to be the main player? In the 60s, venues had to pay someone to run ticketing for them. Ticketmaster came along and said "Hey, we'll do it

> how did they come to be the main player? In the 60s, venues had to pay someone to run ticketing for them. Ticketmaster came along and said "Hey, we'll do it all for you, and you don't need to pay us a cent. All we ask is you let us add a $0.25 fee to the ticket." From the venue perspective, it was a no brainer. Later, in the 90s/00s, Ticketmaster was lightyears ahead in building a scalable infrastructure that could handle peak onsale demand for major artists. Want to sell out the Staples center for 5 nights in 4 minutes? Most LAMP stacks of the era would just melt. Most ecommerce platforms weren't built with non-fungible inventory in mind. Meanwhile Ticketmaster, through VAX assembly & sharding, was able to handle the load.