Ticketmaster Chief Operating Officer Amy Howe is in the process of transitioning out of the company, according to several reports. The COO will transition to a consultant role over the next year, and will depart the company after, according to Pollstar.
“Amy began shifting her responsibilities earlier this Fall to move into a consulting role for the next 12 months, after which she has decided it is the right time to continue on to the next chapter in her career,” a Ticketmaster statement sent to Pollstar confirmed. “We wish Amy well on all of her future endeavors.”
Howe represented Ticketmaster at the February 26 meeting of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce February 26. Much of her testimony related to the data privacy policies in place for the company, which Howe stressed allowed access and sharing of minimal data when consumers are forced into mobile-only ticketing systems such as Ticketmaster’s SafeTix. Subsequent investigation of the company’s actual privacy policy showed such statements to be misleading, as the company requires users to opt in to far more broad data access in order to use these required systems to access tickets.
Howe’s departure is one of many that have occured at Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation since the start of 2020. Howe began the year as President, North America for Ticketmaster, transitioning to the COO role as part of a shakeup that included Jared Smith’s move from Global President to Global Chairman and Mark Yovich’s elevation to Global President. Smith subsequently announced his pending departure from the company in the fall. Other promotions have been announced related to promotions backfilling the roles of those who were promoted to take over in the wake of Smith’s departure. The company also recently announced leadership changes in its Australia-New Zealand region, with Gavin Taylor taking over as Managing Director for Ticketmaster Australia and Maria O’Connor moving to Chairman of Australia and New Zealand.
With Howe’s departure, Ticketmaster will have a dramatically different leadership team in place when the hoped return of live events “at scale” expected for 2021 begins to take place.