The Blue Note and Mojo’s, two venues in Columbia, MO owned by Richard King, are planning to switch from Ticketmaster to Etix once their ticketing contracts expire at the end of June, King announced this week.
The venues mark the latest to dump Ticketmaster as their ticket provider, following Minnesota’s famed First Avenue, which announced earlier this month that it was leaving Ticketmaster for Etix.
“With more and more people moving to online purchases, this will offer a significant reduction in added fees,” King told the Columbia Daily Tribune, adding that he had been trying to leave Ticketmaster for more than a year. “I’m just ready to move on peacefully.”
King expects service fees to customers to drop significantly as a result of the switch, which he said was partly due to his not wanting to continue with Ticketmaster after the company’s merger with Live Nation.
Though the merger created a live entertainment and ticketing colossus, a growing number of venues, promoters and teams have begun to look at their options as it relates to ticketing and companies such as Etix have benefitted from the move.
For its part, Ticketmaster is not taking the defections lying down, as the company has stepped up efforts to attract and retain clients through various strategies to help entities sell more tickets.