Both Ticketmaster and Live Nation plan to aggressively move into dynamic pricing and paperless ticketing initiatives early in 2010 as two of the ways the companies hope to land serious body blows against the secondary ticket market, CEOs Irving Azoff and Michael Rapino said earlier today.
The two voiced those sentiments during a Bank of America Merrill Lynch media, communications and entertainment conference in California, and while they both said they believe there will always be a secondary ticket market, they continued their crusade against the industry by making it clear they don’t like it. Interestingly, Rapino said Live Nation looked at ways the company could get involved in the secondary market while it was ramping up its ticketing operation in 2008, but the company did not have the resources to gain a foothold.
“If primary ticket sales are more accurately priced, that would help,” Azoff said, emphasizing that that could be achieved through dynamic pricing, where artists, sports teams or venues set ticket prices on the fly depending on market conditions.
Ticketmaster is planning a major dynamic pricing initiative in the first quarter of 2010, Azoff said, and both Azoff and Rapino said paperless ticketing will also be ramped up significantly in the near future.
“Nine Inch Nails, which has been very critical of us, recently used paperless tickets and was very happy with it,” Azoff said. “What it does is give the rights holder more control over the transaction. They’re able to manage onsales the way they want.”
Azoff believes Ticketmaster’s TicketExchange will also play a larger factor in the ticketing marketplace in the future, as sports teams look at possibly limiting ticket transferability to one and ruling out resale at prices below face value.
“We won’t solve the secondary ticket market with one bullet,” Rapino said, adding that Live Nation’s recent “no fees” promotions, where tickets sell for a single, all-in price, have been a big hit. “We’ll do it by being a better overall company.”
In addition to paperless ticketing and dynamic pricing, Ticketmaster also plans to ramp up its own all-in pricing model and launch an extensive interactive seating map initiative on its Web site.
“We need Live Nation because we can’t get it all done alone,” Azoff said.
While the two could not offer a specific date on when they expect the planned merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation to close, both men reiterated their confidence that federal regulators will support the move.
“We’ve invested a lot of dollars to date for this merger, and we remain confident, and our respective boards remain confident, that we will close on it by the end of the year,” Rapino said.
Last Updated on September 10, 2009
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Dont think so. Brokers will have to be sharp, but dont think TM can do a better job at this…… Except (the evil empire can hold back seats which they know they hold in their hand and we don’t). As long as everyone knows what is being held back TM does not stand a chance. If everyone does not know and only TM knows, well all bets are off.
Could someone in a position of power at Live Nation please explain to me, a TM employee whose boyfriend is a LN employee, why does Live Nation’s newsletter to its employees never mention any news about the merger while Ticketmaster’s has a section specifically for news about the status of the merger? Is Live Nation keeping their employees in the dark because they’re the ones who are going to get the shaft? Should my boyfriend jump ship before thousands of ticket industry morons hit the streets looking for jobs?
Here we go again. These folks are determined to do something that people hate. Look at the Miley Cyrus tour that is fully paperless. Nobody is buying tickets. Nobody liked paperless.
Both Rubino and Azoff are so arrogant. They put it in Schummer’s face that he can buy TicketsNow. Mislead congress about reselling tickets. They make all promoters and managers look like Scumbags. Now they are acting as if it’s a done deal and this merger is going through. If they get it through because of their connections with Obama I’ll be so disenchanted that even with a different party things don’t change.
The only people Ticketless ticketing helps are the airlines. Now its easier to get great seats and you just have to fly somewhere for a couple hundred to make $1000 and unlike will call and walk in you don’t have to eat any tickets to go in.
ticketmaster and live nation going with dynamic ticket pricing will pretty much be the end of ticket broking
Here’s why dynamic pricing won’t work…because you will have to choose between alienating fans or rewarding brokers. Based on the models I’ve seen, events with dynamic pricing will have their prices fluctuate one of two ways:
1. Increase the prices of tickets as time goes on and they (theoretically) sell more tickets to an event, therefore decreasing supply. So if you’re a broker, just buy tickets early when they’re cheap, and sell them later when they go up.
2. If they go with an opposite plan that DECREASES prices to an event as time goes along and tickets don’t sell as well as they had hoped, then they piss off the customers who bought a ticket on day one for one price, only to see it selling for 20% less a month or two later.
So what’s it going to be, boy geniuses? Reward brokers or alienate fans? My guess is they will choose the latter because they probably figure enough of their customers can’t stand them that it doesn’t matter if they piss off the rest of them. But what happens when people stop buying tickets in advance because of the practice, hoping for the prices to go down? Might have a tough time explaining how dynamic pricing is beneficial to your artists, promoters, venues, and shareholders then, won’t you?
As for TicketExchange, what a joke!!! They say they don’t want to allow people to sell tickets below face value (a policy most teams on TicketExchange already employ). How does that curb the secondary market? It just makes it easier to make money, seeing that every ticket on the TicketExchange will be marked up!
Love it guys…keep up the good work!!!
Parents in Atlanta are not happy about the paperless tickets.
We have to now drive to the arena and pay for parking just for running our kids in the arena. This is very upsetting and I for sure do not want to mess with this idea ever again.
It is a joke how they claim paperless is so great/People hate it.You pay for paperless tickets to miley 6 months in advance then something comes up and you can’t make it guess what? you are sol cause unless the person who purchased the tickets is there you are not getting in.Now what if a loved one dies who had the CC? you going to tell the poor kids sorry dead person is not here you can’t get in? this is a joke they are talking BS to make them look good so there merger will go threw that is the whole reason.
What a joke!! Let’s get rid of the secondary ticket market…what a great idea boys. Ticketmaster and Live Nation are all for themselves…isn’t that great. The artist and sports teams just want there events to be sold out. That is the bottom line.
80-90% of the time dynamic pricing will mean # 2 from above. Only rarely will it take the form of #1 and ONLY if new tickets get dropped in that price category. So if a show takes on a life of its own, they boost the price of hot locations which in-turn increases the price of all tickets, especially the hot tickets that have already been acquired. This will help brokers who are already holding this inventory.
#2 is not news because it is and has already been a current pitfall. TM and LN currently employ this tactic to move overpriced tickets that otherwise would never sell. Example: U2 shows in Foxboro. Sunday 9/20 has many more tickets in the lower level priced at $252. Most of those same lower level sections are now magically priced at $97 for the Monday 9/21 show. Why? Because they would otherwise be left with thousands of prime unsold seats which would not only be a loss of revenue, but also an embarrassment and would obviously anger fans who paid the same $97 price to sit in the nosebleeds (it may still anger fans to know they could have had much better seats but at least they will not see a bunch of empty seats downstairs). It also trains savvy consumers to wait until the final 2-3 weeks to buy and more importantly, punishes them for buying early, which fosters more badwill toward an entity that is already trusted by no one. So adjust your strategy accordingly. You need to be part fortune teller to know in advance what is going to be hot and what will bomb. Monday night stadium concerts are a no-no and if you got caught in it, the weak demand should have been forseen.
Although ego has much to play in any decision coming out of TM/LN these days. This decision is not necessarily made with the intent of damaging the secondary market. All that is really happening is TM/LN are getting the OK of the promoter/artist to drop prices on unsold tickets that were already priced too high and, in rare occaisions, raise them if demand warrants it, or if the artist does not want to add more shows to cover the uptick in demand. The primary market strategy is obvious: Overprice tickets early, then retreat on price when and where you have to. If some genuine fans get burned in the process, so what. Keep an eye on TM for the Jay-Z ticket prices going into October and watch them fall.
…so I can sell all my TKTM stock.
I can give you several theoretical reasons why this wouldn’t work, but I don’t have to. It’s been piloted before at Stubhub with concerts and immediately kaboshed when sales sucked. The Jets are another example. They sold some of their best PSLs for the new stadium at 1000s under value.
That’s ok though, Irving, your coveted artists will figure this out soon enough when you start sending them their paltry checks. You did a decent job of managing the Eagles. Maybe you should just manage the Eagles and spend the rest of your time on the beach.
How can Ticketmaster say they want to wipe out the secondary ticket market when they own TicketsNow who is a huge player in the secondary ticket market, so they want to eliminate a market in which they do a lot of business in??? That makes no sense!
Brokers on TNow should sue because they are charging you for a service that they are admittedly not employing best practices to provide services.
What hypocrites…they blast the mere existence of the secondary market, but, through TicketExchange, want to make sure that every ticket sells for above face value. So which is it, is ticket re-selling evil or not? By what they’re saying, it’s obvious they only believe the secondary/resale market is only evil when they’re not profiting off it. Fortunately, once the TM/LN merger is rejected by DOJ, we will probably see the last of little man Azoff as TM’s CEO.
True, and one thing people may fail to realize is that dynamic pricing already exists in pro sports to a degree. Many teams have different pricing depending on anticipated demand for a game (i.e.-a higher ticket price on a weekend game against the Yankees game than a midweek game against the Orioles). If a game gets close and there are a lot of empty seats, you’ll see promotions and discounts to get people out to the game. I’m not sure how many teams are going to let Ticketmaster handle their pricing when the teams know their market and their customers better.
It will be interesting to see how Ticketmaster will apply this to the concert industry. I really think you’re going to see a LOT of people complain when they pay $ 100 for a ticket that gets dropped to $ 50 the week before the show due to lousy ticket sales. Yes, the airlines and hotels do it, but they have for decades and we’ve gotten used to it. I don’t think, in the middle of a recession, people are going to welcome a pricing scheme that could leave them paying more money than they need to for concert tickets.
The only way to get people to buy early, which I assume is Ticketmaster’s objective, is to make the pricing scheme as the event gets closer, much like the airlines model works. But then all brokers need to do is buy their tickets early and be almost guaranteed of a profit once the price in the ticket goes up. I’m really curious to see how they’re going to roll out a dynamic pricing system next year, because I think there’s no way for the system to achieve what they want it to achieve. It will be nice to know that once the merger is rejected, Ticketmaster will give the public yet another reason to hate them!
Any broker listing their tickets on TicketsNow at this point is insane.
Ticketmaster is truly the greediest & most unethical company to enjoy monopoly status in America. Then Live Nation felt Ticketmaster was making too much money off of their inventory so they decided to cut Ticketmaster out of the equation & form their own ticketing company. Ticketmaster was upset about losing such a large account, but Live Nation’s technology was not adaquate to handle the large volume of activity for a major concert onsale plus they didn’t have the brand recognition that Ticketmaster has built over the years. Now the two companies are looking to merge & try to control the primary & secondary markets. Ticketmaster is already in the secondary market with TicketsNow as well as Auctions & VIP packages. Ticketmaster was the most profitable ticket reseller in America with the luxury of having all of their inventory on consignment. The government should do more to protect the public from such an evil & arrogant empire that has way to much control of the ticket inventory being offered to the public when tiokets go on sale. Many times for most major tours, auctions & VIP packages are being offered by Ticketmaster & Live Nation. These tickets often bring way over the face value & Ticketmaster & LiveNation profit greatly from this scalping scheme. Ticketmaster & Live Nation feel that they are entitled to profits reaped from this unethical activity, but condone others who resell tickets. Both companies are parasites off of the performers & sports teams and are ripping off their customers.