The merits of paperless ticketing, and the decision by the Miley Cyrus camp to go that route for her upcoming tour, were the focus of a segment on CNBC this week, as StubHub President Chris Tsakalakis admitted the new technology could adversely affect his business.
Tsakalakis and David Butler, president of Ticketmaster North America, took questions from CNBC’s Dennis Kneale and disagreed over how easy the process will be for fans who use paperless tickets. See the video below.
“I don’t think a lot of parents are going to like having to hand over their credit card, and not be able to gift these tickets or even transfer them or give them to someone else if they’re not able to make the event,” said Tsakalakis, who will be among the speakers next month at Ticket Summit Las Vegas, the annual trade show and conference hosted by TicketNews’s parent company TicketNetwork.
“So, I think there will be quite a few customer problems with people trying to get into the event, especially as all 11,000 tickets will be based on credit card entry.”
At the artists’ request, Ticketmaster used paperless ticketing for recent Metallica shows and an AC/DC tour without any problems, according to Butler. The Cyrus tour is marketed to a significantly younger audience who often do not have their own credit cards for identification and proof of purchase.
“We’re not trying to crack down on scalping. We’re trying to give more tools to the artist to control the relationship with their fans,” Butler said. “In Miley Cyrus’s case, she’d like the purchase of her tickets to be directly to the fans, and have a limited resale or no resale market, because she had a lot of fan complaints a year and a half ago that so many tickets were in the secondary market.”
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how do people buy tickets for these types of shows if they do not have any credit cards,?
Miley Cyrus is not selling out her tickets. There are great seats available at all venues. I guess the “paperless” tickets are backfiring. LOL.
I was at the Pollstar CIC conference and asked Butler directly if Ticketmaster was channeling inventory through TicketsNow – he basically swore on his mothers grave that they were not.
Two months later – the Bruce Springsteen blows up in his face.
This is just another blow-hard-for-hire from Paciolan that will be hung out to dry in the next 90 days.
Unreal.
Maybe you should do some reading up on what the actual issue was… Enough of the misinformed, ignorant, biased comments already.
When Ticketsnow, Razorgator and any of the other secondary ticket listing companies bow down to Ticketmaster and not list these paperless tickets, they’ve feed right into their hands, they own the market now, you might as well get ready to close shop in a year or so.
It will be very interesting if more concerts decide to go this route. The artists will run the risk of having a lot more empty seats and a lot less revenue than they ever had before. I believe in the long run it will show the value that the secondary market does add.
David Butler is a flat out liar you are trying to prevent ticket brokers from making a buck
and here is what you have. Hannah Montanas fans are mostly under the age of 16-18; therefore they probably do not own a credit card to purchase tickets. And how many kids really want to have their parents usher them into a show. Of course there are some that are young enough where this is a necessity but seriously how many of us really wanted to go anywhere with our parents when we were kids. So alot of the parents are going to have to waste a ticket on themselves just to get the kids into the show. This is a real inconvenience for those parents. I completely understand doing for Metallica and AC/DC, but I foresee major issues with this type of show
Everyone is complaining about the service that the secondary market provides, but nobody is going to complain that MILEY is charging 300 a ticket for her primo seats (THAT WERE HELD OUT OF HER FAN CLUB PRESALE)?
The money being made ALREADY for this “paperless” experiment is amazing. People were paying 30-100 JUST FOR THE PRESALE PASSWORD. I for one applaud Miley for helping us make even more money.
Of course I read the article and listened to the entire interview. The reason I made the comment is because neither of them addressed the credit card issue with young adults which I believe is an important one for this type of show. Especially for David Butler and his success rate for paperless ticketing. Her fan base doesnt have their own credit cards because they are kids! Maybe you should stop being misinformed and ignorant on the issue
You are an idiot. People know what the actual issue is on this topic, but this particular article is not about the resale of these tickets. This article was about the CNBC piece which was a debate of the use of paperless tickets. The comments posted fit into the debate of this issue. Why is it that the people who bash others for being misinformed seem to always be the ones who are clueless?
Let’s not forget, ANY customer can chargeback a paperless ticket purchase and say they never got in or the credit card was stolen…good luck credit card companies…
I would like to see an “ARTIST”/PERFORMER along with their partners in GREED/TICKETMASTER, price the tickets to their show at the levels of the secondary market and watch to see if ANY of them SELLOUT. It will never happen. Let’s be real, the number of tickets for any show or game on the secondary market is usually about 5-7%…a 16,000 seat venue rarely has more than 1,000 tickets on the secondary market and of that maybe 80% of that is actually brokers. When you look at the big picture, the number of seats being resold is peanuts. The real issue is that the primary and secondary ticket seller’s TRUE PRODUCT are 2 different animals. One other thing to consider, how often does TM sell below face or take a loss on a show…NEVER!!!!
Yes, I suppose anyone CAN chargeback anything they want. At that point it is up to the vendor to prove they got what they paid for and even with “paperless” ticekts, there are plenty of ways for Ticketmaster and the venue to verify that the “ticekts” were used.
I would like to know if anyone knows the answer to this question. If someone
used two different credit cards (card in same name)to purchase two different sets of tickets to the same paperless concert, will there be a problem getting into the concert? The person who purchased all tickets will be going to the concert with the three other people. So, that person will show up with 2 credit cards in hand used used to make original purchase of tickets (2 seperate transactions to same concert) and id. Should we expect any problems?
Thanks