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TicketsNow President and CEO Cheryl Rosner is leaving the company
Tue, Dec 9th 2008 11:50 am EST
By Alfred Branch Jr.
Cheryl Rosner, who was appointed president and CEO of TicketsNow in the summer of 2007, is leaving the company at the end of the year, TicketNews has learned.
Details of the move were not yet available, but according to sources with knowledge of the decision, the announcement was made internally yesterday, December 8. Her duties will likely be assumed by Shawn Freeman, chief technology officer at the company, and a Rosner hire. There had been some speculation that Ticketmaster President Sean Moriarty, who now reports to Ticketmaster Entertainment CEO Irving Azoff, was going to take over, but that appears not to be true.
Ticketmaster bought TicketsNow earlier this year for an estimated $265 million, but Ticketmaster's fortunes have plummeted ever since. The company was spun off by parent IAC/InterActiveCorp late in the summer and its stock began public trading under the symbol TKTM.
From a high in late August of $27 per share, Ticketmaster stock was trading below $4 earlier today, and its market capitalization was only about $222 million, well under the $265 million it paid for TicketsNow. See ticker below.
Rosner, a former executive with Expedia and Hotels.com, was brought in to beef up TicketsNow for a potential sale, and by all accounts she successfully achieved that goal.
But following the sale, under her direction, the company was forced to layoff about 60 employees when it began missing certain projections and goals.
In addition, reports began to surface of problems with staff and clients. The company lost several ticket industry veterans, such as founder Mike Domek and popular EventInventory division heads Nick Bucci and Ralph Garreffa, and the company began to clash with many of its broker clients.
During Rosner's tenure, TicketsNow also changed its business model from a broker-to-broker exchange to a consumer ticket exchange when it began to allow fans to resell tickets, a move that was unpopular with brokers.
Brokers also began to question the company's motives when people looking for premium tickets on Ticketmaster.com were being rerouted to the TicketsNow Web site, even though those tickets had never been publicly available from Ticketmaster in the first place. Discontentment reached such a level that TicketsNow and Ticketmaster were forced to host a meeting with brokers to try to squash the speculation.
However, the meeting did little to change the minds of brokers, many of whom remain angry at TicketsNow and Ticketmaster. In addition, the meeting led rival StubHub to seek a tape from TicketNews of the meeting to use in its defense of a Ticketmaster lawsuit. TicketNews successfully defended a subpoena from StubHub in the case.
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Comments represent the opinions of users and do not necessarily reflect the views of TicketNews.Cheryl Rosner is one of the most inept people i have ever met, She is a very poor communicator, lacking in basic CEO skills. We are all better off that her tenure was only 18 months as CEO.I have no idea how Barry hired her to run a company as large as Ticketsnow.com Cherly Rosner in the last few months would not even return emails to brokers, She was instrumental in ruining the broker relationships that Mike Domek had spent the better part of 15 years building. Cheryl Rosner was able to destroy all of this in one short year, and don't get me started on that lame fireside chat. She is a true phony.
The day Cheryl annouced her resignation was a beautiful day. She gave her speech and informed everyone. When it was over everyone applauded for Cheryl. Not because she will be missed but because she is gone. Cheryl made everyone around her miserable. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out Cheryl.
Some of the employees where never even made aware that she was stepping down. i am glad she is gone but it comes to later for many of the employees including me. We got screwed, they sent our jobs to Pharr Tx. and made us train them, before they told us what is happening. These reps are total idiots they dont know anything about the industry or how to work with customers or brokers. All the brokers will jump ship and ticketsnow will disappear and i dont blame the brokers for leaving. Domek worked for 15 years to build this company and industry to what it is today and he knew how to work with the brokers and how to treat employees. Cheryl didnt give a crap and it showed even on the day we were all laid off we was very cold, she got her money and got out. also to whoever said earlier we were paid in cash that is incorrect we were given checks and still awaiting portions of them. I am sad to have to leave this company it was great when i first began back when Mike owned the company it was like no place else i had worked before, it is a shame someone like Rosner had to come in and ruin a potential industry giant.
Why is everyone being so mean?
If you ever spent more than 2 minutes with that miserable woman you would be saying everyone is being way to nice. I do pity her but she made her own bed...
Ding dong the B*itch is dead!
She almost ruined Event Inventory, I am glad to see her gone
I can say that I heard about Cheryl's resignation from TicketNews first. Still no release about it from the "proper channels". Not that I would be all that surprised...it takes alot more than that to surprise me these days.
From the article:
"Brokers also began to question the company's motives when people looking for premium tickets on Ticketmaster.com were being rerouted to the TicketsNow Web site, even though those tickets had never been available on from Ticketmaster in the first place. Discontentment reached such a level that TicketsNow and Ticketmaster were forced to host a meeting with brokers to try to squash the speculation."
This topic keeps popping up around TicketNews, some people just like trying to spread FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt). I think most every broker now understands that the links from ticketmaster.com are a HUGE benefit to them. Seriously. It is not like TNow owns inventory themselves. This is YOUR inventory being pimped. So what if it isn't an event normally handled by ticketmaster, your tickets are getting more exposure. Not on public sale yet? No problem some brokers love selling spec tickets. Ticketmaster.com gets a ton of traffic. As a (ei) broker, what is not to love about this linking arrangement? It trumps Search Engine Optimization. And that probably scares the crap out of the competition, hence the spreading of FUD....
From the article:
"From a high in late August of $27 per share, Ticketmaster stock was trading below $4 earlier today, and its market capitalization was only about $222 million, well under the $265 million it paid for TicketsNow. See ticker below."
While almost laughable for those on their way out, it also saddens me. After the merger I hoped for career opportunities at the parent company. Now its a layoff for Christmas.
Dudley DoRight said:
"The employees got screwed as the shares of oustanding stock multiplied many times over, diluting the value and shifting the wealth to the new executive hires, in reverse-Robin-Hood style."
You just don't know what you are talking about. Everyone got nice checks. TicketsNow had gone up more than TicketMaster has gone downward since then. Like I said, nice checks.
she had the balls to tell everyone she is resigning when it is common knowledge that she was fired imcompetance. perhaps that will be her final lie to all of us
So what yes man decided it was a good idea to hire 80 fresh off the street customer care reps in Pharr texas and then let go 60 experienced ones in Illinois? Watch this house of cards crumble. Ticketmaster employees had no idea what they were in for when they took on the task of managing a ticket reller call center. One almost suspects intentional sabatoge to keep the secondary market alive. The Pritzker family has got to be livid, that means pissed off.
Why do you mention the Pritzkers?
I heard she hit the ceiling today when this came out. yell at employees to try to find out who leaked the story. Every did they all hated her.
You can trash Cheryl all you want but she is the one who sold this piece of sh*t company for $265,000,000 and pocketed about 20,000,000.00 for 8 months work. TicketMaster would be likely to get $150,000,000 for it now. They are probably going to sell it to StubHub
You could tell she was smart but had NO interest in learning the business. Dudley Doright is a moron, the employees got paid in cash on the sale. Her buddies got more stock options which are now worthless (check their stock price Dudley) it is um...down I do agree though, the story is way generous to her. so who will the new CEO be?
boo hoo brokers suck
The market has spoken TicketMaster is better off without Cheryl
I meet Cheryl Rosner a couple of years ago at the Ticket Summit in Las Vegas. What I came away from the meeting was that she looked down on brokers. She was acting like she was better then everyone else. But what goes around comes around.
She said she was building a house in Telluride if I recall correctly. ?? So...don't think she's walking away empty handed, I'm sure she's perfectly fine moving on.
Is the question - She knew nothing about brokers or this ticket business - i heard the employees there aren't aren't to thrilled about this guy either
Not surprising to hear about the feelings of the employees. I heard they had similar issues at a previous company they worked at together as wells as rumors around the nature of their relationship.
which sends chills down my spine...disgusting
Come shine my shoes ! I have a extra nickle in my pocket.
you might want to keep that nickel. Your going to be the first around heew to be shinning shoes.
Nick is right, and the story is generous to her--she merely fired many popular executives, brought in a friend or two, then sold the company to her pal at Ticketmaster for a measely one year's sales. The employees got screwed as the shares of oustanding stock multiplied many times over, diluting the value and shifting the wealth to the new executive hires, in reverse-Robin-Hood style. Next up: the TicketsNow techies will begin to disappear, because Ticketmaster has those, too, and Ticketmaster will use the bar codes it owns to put brokers out of business.
This story keeps getting repeated whenever there's consolidation in the industry.
I used to troll the message boards at Ticketlife and heard the same story from the Select folks and the Ticketron people. More recently this same story played out at Paciolan another recent TM acquisition. You can take this sentence from DDR: "The employees got screwed as the shares of outstanding stock multiplied many times over, diluting the value and shifting the wealth to the new executive hires, in reverse-Robin-Hood style." and apply it to Paciolan.
Why do small ticketing companies continually attract CEOs with no conscience when it comes to long term employees. Is it the nature of the beast?