By Alfred Branch, Jr.
They say the only sure things in life are death and taxes, but they may want to add to the list TicketNews’ exclusive weekly ranking of Top Ticket Sellers, because it seems very little has changed in quite some time.
For the week ending Sept. 29, latest data available, Ticketmaster bested the competition, again, as the nation’s leading Primary Ticket Seller, a title it has held continuously for nearly a year. It’s rival, StubHub!, also topped the list of Secondary Ticket Sellers for the week, an honor StubHub! has held for most of this year. Tickets.com and Live Nation rounded out the top three among primary ticketers, and TicketsNow and TicketLiquidator were second and third in the secondary market.
Whether the rankings of any of those companies, or others in the Top Ten, will change anytime soon is anyone’s guess, but it’s beginning to appear that the landscape for all ticketers may start to shift.
And the catalysts could be a teen-age singing sensation and the officials of a progressive New England state.
The perfect storm that is the Hannah Montana situation has so many moving parts – parents, children, money, brokers, technology, free enterprise, state legislation, etc. – that some entity, somewhere, is bound to make some changes.
Which is where Massachusetts could come into play. The Bay State is on the cusp of changing its current laws prohibiting ticket reselling in favor of an open market, but with all the hoopla surrounding Hannah, some officials may fight for amendments to its proposal. North Carolina is another state where ticket scalping remains illegal, and a lawsuit over the Hannah mess is being closely watched by legislators in that state, as is what happens in Massachusetts and Arkansas.
To see all the Top Tens rankings, check out the press release in the Daily Buzz section of TicketNews.com. Visit the Industry resources section of TicketNews.com for full lists of the Top Twenty Secondary Ticket Sellers and the Top Twenty Overall Ticket Sellers, to read an explanation of how we calculate the rankings, or to download the application for inclusion in our rankings.