Ticketmaster

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section has multiple issues. Please help improve the article or discuss these issues on the talk page. It needs additional references or sources for verification. Tagged since June 2008. It may contain original research or unverifiable claims. Tagged since October 2007. It is written like an advertisement and needs to be rewritten from a neutral point of view. Tagged since October 2008.

Ticketmaster

Type	Public (NASDAQ: TKTM)
Founded	1976 in Arizona by Albert Leffler, Peter Gadwa, Gordon Gunn & Charles H Hamby Jr.
Headquarters	8800 Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood, California
Key people	Irving Azoff, CEO Vacant[1], President Terry Barnes, Chairman Brian Regan, EVP and CFO
Industry	Live Entertainment
Products	Ticketing technology, Ticket Sales, Ticket Resales, Marketing, Distribution of event tickets and information, support of venue renovation
Revenue	Sold 142 million+ tickets valued at $8 billion in 2007
Employees	6,678
Website	www.ticketmaster.com

Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc. is a ticket sales and distribution company based in West Hollywood, California, USA, with operations in many countries around the world. All US ticket sales for US venues are fulfilled at the Ticketmaster sole fulfillment center located in Charleston, West Virginia. Typically, Ticketmaster's clients (arenas, stadiums, and theaters) control their events, and Ticketmaster simply acts as an agent, selling the tickets that the clients make available to them.

Ticketmaster sells many of its tickets online, some via phone, and some through its many ticket outlets.^{[citation needed]}

Ticketmaster recently^[when?] acquired a UK ticket exchange site, Getmein.com. Getmein is a ticket exchange site that allows sellers to list the tickets at whatever price they choose. It claims to have over 500,000 tickets listed at any one time.

On 10 January 2008, Ticketmaster completed the acquisition of Paciolan Inc. after the deal was subject to months of litigation over the potential breach of antitrust laws. Paciolan is a developer of ticketing system applications and hosted ticketing systems. ^[2][3] On 10 February 2009, Ticketmaster and Live Nation, the largest concert promoter, officially announced their merger deal.^[4]. The new company will take the Live Nation name and will be Live Nation Entertainment.

Contents 1 Service fees 2 Ticket sales market 3 Privacy 4 Prominent lawsuits 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Service fees

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2007)

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (December 2007)

Ticketmaster collects no part of advertised ticket prices, in lieu it adds services fees to boost its earnings. Consumers often find these markups unreasonably excessive, especially because there are many instances where no alternative purchase method is offered (allowing the purchase of tickets without incurring fees). This business practice, along with a dearth of competitors, has led many to view Ticketmaster as monopolistic. Alternative ticketing companies have emerged but due to Ticketmaster's exclusive agreements with a large percentage of venues the competition has not lowered service fees. Not all events generate the same consternation. Many ticket buyers have the option of purchasing tickets directly from venue box offices, thereby avoiding service fees from any ticketing agent though many box offices will also charge a service fee, particularly if the venue is owned by a ticket agency. The typical fees in addition to a ticket's face value include:

• Ticketmaster Service Charge

This is Ticketmaster's charge for the general service they provide and maintain. You will pay this charge no matter which way you buy the tickets through Ticketmaster (Phone, online or in person at a ticket center), although the amount of the charge may be different for different channels and different payment methods.

• Building Facility Charge

This is determined by the venue, and not Ticketmaster.

• Processing Charge

This is Ticketmaster's charge for processing your order and making the tickets available to you (mail, etc.) This is usually not a per ticket charge, but rather a per order charge.

• Shipping, E-Ticket Convenience, or Will Call Charge

Ticketmaster charges a fee for ticket delivery, even if the ticket is in the form of an automatically generated virtual "e-ticket", which buyers must then print out themselves, at their own expense (at a lower cost to Ticketmaster than any other medium). Buyers may also be charged an extra fee to collect the ticket(s) from the venue. E-ticket convenience charges have been known to be issued even when purchasing a ticket directly from Ticketmaster box offices.^{[citation needed]}

As an example of a fairly typical markup, a ticket to see Motörhead at Brixton Academy, London 2006, cost £25, plus £3.75 per ticket service charge, plus £4.95 postage and packing per order. In this example, the fees are approximately an additional 35% of the cost of the ticket. Tickets to see Feist in Vancouver in 2008 are $49.50, plus a $10 "convenience fee", plus a $2.50 "Building Facility Charge", plus a $4.35 "Order Processing Charge", plus optional express postage. More expensive tickets would have higher charges, but generally proportionately less relative to the total: tickets to see Pavarotti at Chatsworth House were selling for £85 for the ticket, £8 service charge per ticket, and £2.50 per order for either postal delivery or box office collection.

While 35% is typical, it can be considerably more. Take for example, a $25.00 ticket to see Symphony X at the Pearl Room, just outside Chicago, has a $7.25 service charge, no option for will call or printable ticket, and $14.50 as the least expensive method of delivery. With the final processing charge of $2.40, this makes the total $49.15. With not even a "building facility charge" at the Pearl Room, this is a 97% increase in the cost of the ticket.

These price increases are predictable, considering that Ticketmaster is often the sole vendor of tickets (many venues do not even offer ticket sales for their own events).

Another charging practice is Parking Fees and excessive shipping. Although Ticketmaster reports this as being charged by the vendor, this is rarely the case. One example of this being a $25.00 ticket to a 2007 Dream Theater concert at the Fillmore in Detroit, MI including an $8.60 service charge, a $9.65 shipping fee (the ticket coming in an envelope with a 23.5 cent bulk stamp), and a $5 parking fee at a venue that doesn't have parking.

[edit] Ticket sales market

Ticketmaster frequently obtains agreements to become the sole provider of tickets for large venues, in keeping with a business strategy it has used since the 1980s when it consolidated regional ticketing services into a single entity. In many cases, acquiring this exclusivity requires Ticketmaster to pay substantial "signing bonuses" to venues, sometimes millions of dollars. Although this practice can significantly reduce the profitability to Ticketmaster of these exclusive relationships, to date using these bonuses has enabled them to maintain venue exclusivity as a competitive strategy, though the future viability of this strategy is unclear as the Internet as the primary sales channel for tickets makes exclusivity a less attractive option for venues.

Ticketmaster is the subject of frequent complaints in the blogosphere and print media due to high ticket service charges. ^[5] Notably, in the 1990s, Pearl Jam brought a lawsuit alleging that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, whose anticompetitive practices allow markup prices of more than 30%. The case was acquitted because ticket purchasers were not deemed to be the actual customers of Ticketmaster.^[6][7]

Recently, there appears to have been questionable dealings between Ticketmaster and TicketsNow.com (which was acquired by Ticketmaster in January 2008). An anonymous source alleges that a TicketsNow executive assisted with the sale of more than $1 million worth of Radiohead tickets on the TicketsNow website^[8] There appears to be a conflict of interest when a company operates in both the primary and secondary sales markets, and furthers claims about the negative implications of Ticketmaster's Monopoly on ordinary consumers.

Competitors include TicketBiscuit, Tickets.com, ShowClix, StubHub, Classictic, TicketLiquidator.com, OnlineSeats.com, TicketVendor.com and others. TicketWeb, a Ticketmaster subsidiary also offers lower fees. These companies are typically excluded from primary ticket sales for major-league sports events in the U.S. (with the exception of Major League Baseball, which, as noted below, is now the owner of Tickemaster's number two competitor Tickets.com).

A new brand of competition has emerged in the form of companies selling ticket futures contracts. Web-based companies such as Yoonew and TicketReserve offer ticket futures which guarantee customers tickets to big games such as the Super Bowl and World Series if the team for which they have futures contracts makes it. Though the price of ticket futures are often substantially lower than the price of actual tickets to the big event, customers risk losing their investment if their team does not make it. Yoonew, in addition, provides an exchange where ticket futures can be traded between users.

Ticketmaster is the primary ticket seller for 27 of the 30 NHL teams and 28 of 30 NBA teams, but in 2005, Major League Baseball acquired Ticketmaster rival Tickets.com. Some analysts^[who?] expect MLB to stop using Ticketmaster for the sale of its approximately 100,000,000 baseball tickets per year once current contracts with Ticketmaster have expired. Thus, when the Ticketmaster contracts end, finding sources for primary or "box office" tickets online may become a difficult task and vertical ticket search engines may become indispensable for finding primary ticket outlets.

Also of concern to the company is declining sales in the highly profitable concert business. Off by double-digit percentages in 2005 from 2004, the summer concert season is a major profit center for the company with its high per-ticket prices and accompanying high service fees.

Ticketmaster has had only limited success in the secondary ticketing market. In September 2003, Ticketmaster announced plans to sell tickets in internet auctions, which would bring the price of tickets closer to market prices, but its market share compared to that of eBay or Stubhub remains small, and Internet auctions are still a relatively minor part of its business. Indeed, since around the time of the 2003 announcement, Ticketmaster has lost the lead in the secondary ticketing market to new entrants like Stubhub, who have developed a popular and effective person-to-person market for tickets. Recently, Ticketmaster President Sean Moriarty appeared on a story about the ticketing business on NPR and pleaded for legislation that would make the selling of tickets from person to person illegal except through Ticketmaster's own product for this purpose. ^[9] Ticketmaster established the Ticketmaster Ticketexchange to try to compete with Stubhub, their main tagline being that tickets are 100% guaranteed to be authentic, since they are sold through the season ticket holder's account. (Some NFL teams require people to be on the waiting list in order to use the service. The New England Patriots, New York Giants and New York Jets require waiting list memberships.)

In Canada, Ticketmaster is trying to overturn anti-scalping legislation that is in place in some provinces. They are lobbying the Ontario and Manitoba governments to review rules banning the resale of tickets.^[10] The Premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty, stated on March 23, 2009 that his government is planning to introduce legislation which would prevent Ticketmaster from reselling tickets through its TicketsNow website after they would not agree to do so when asked by the Province.^[11]

Also in Canada, front page news in early January 2008 was a story about how a show for AC/DC in Vancouver was sold out in minutes, only for tickets to be available for higher prices on TicketsNow. Tickets for the recent Killers concert in Toronto, Ontario sold for $44 were market up to $1199 Canadian. A mark up of 2500%.^[12]

In an article by the CBC, Ticketmaster has been quoted as saying

"You and I both know there is a thriving ticket-broker industry... so the law is really a fiction... We very strongly feel the law needs to be modernized to reflect the reality of internet commerce. By keeping a price cap in place, you're really just driving the [resale] business into the shadows."^[13]

[edit] Privacy

The company's use of personal information is more aggressive than most: a term that users wishing to purchase from their website must agree to is to receive Ticketmaster marketing:

"By completing this registration form you indicate that you consent to Ticketmaster sharing your email address and other information with those who provide the event, and that you consent to those who provide the event using your information to contact you by email or other means to send you marketing or other messages or using or disclosing your information in other ways. By completing this registration form, you also indicate that you consent to Ticketmaster contacting you by email or other means to send you marketing or other messages and using and disclosing the information you submit, as described in the Ticketmaster Privacy."^[14]

This term is actually somewhat less aggressive than previously, following criticism^[15][16]and accusations of spamming. However, users of the site automatically receive a regular "My Account" email, which comes with the notice "By signing up to Ticketmaster you agreed to receive this email. If you do not want to receive it, you can edit your preferences on the site". In other words, Ticketmaster deliberately does not allow users to opt-out at signup from unwanted email in order to increase the audience for its marketing, and the unsubscribe procedure requires the user to login to a web page: there is no simple unsubscribe link or email address.

[edit] Prominent lawsuits

In 1994, the rock band Pearl Jam appealed to the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice, complaining that Ticketmaster adopted monopolistic practices and refused to lower service fees for the band's tickets. At the time, Pearl Jam wanted to keep ticket prices under $20 for their fans, with service charges no greater than $1.80. The company had exclusive contracts with many of the large venues in the United States and threatened to take legal action if those contracts were broken. The Justice Department ruled in favor of Ticketmaster ^[17] which culminated in the cancellation of the 1994 Pearl Jam tour. Four years later, Pearl Jam resumed their relationship with Ticketmaster.^[18][19][20]

On April 28, 1997, Ticketmaster sued Microsoft over its Sidewalk service for allegedly deep linking into Ticketmaster's site. The suit was settled after a two-year legal battle in which Ticketmaster claimed that linking to specific pages on an Internet site without permission was an unfair practice.

In 2003, the popular jam band String Cheese Incident and its associated booking group, SCI Ticketing sued Ticketmaster arguing that Ticketmasters exclusive use contracts and most US venues was a breach of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. This lawsuit was settled in 2004 with no publicity of the settlement terms^[21]

In 2009, Ticketmaster faced several lawsuits across North America, claiming they conspired to divert tickets to popular events to its ticket brokering website TicketsNow, in which the same tickets were sold at premium prices.^[22] This also raised the ire of rock legend Bruce Springsteen, who said he was 'furious' at Ticketmaster.^[23]

[edit] See also

• Ticket resale

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Ticketmaster International
• Recent Claims of Entertainment.com "scam"
• A breakdown of the service fees
• Tracker of current Ticketmaster fees