In the 30 years since Jim Holzman founded Boston, MA-based Ace Ticket Worldwide, Inc., he has grown it from a one-man shop Brookline into one of the most-powerful ticket brokerages in the Northeast, with seven storefront locations and about 35 employees.
Ace Ticket sells tickets to concerts and theatre shows, but its specialty is sporting events in the Boston area and throughout the country. It was through its expertise and brand-name recognition in Massachusetts that the company was able to land an exclusive contract as the Boston Red Sox official secondary ticket reseller, beginning in 2008. The deal was at the expense of StubHub, which had struck a deal with Major League Baseball to be the official ticket resale marketplace for the league, but the Red Sox opted out of that arrangement, the only team in the league to do so.
The company has received numerous awards, including an Industry Achievement Award from the National Association of Ticket Brokers, and has been named the best ticket broker in the city by the “Boston Phoenix” and “Boston Magazine.”
Holzman and Ace Ticket were founding members of the Ticket Technology software company, as well as the Massachusetts Association of Ticket Brokers. The later ran into controversy when paid accountant Richard Vitale allegedly to lobby on its behalf to with legislators and former state Speaker of the House Salvatore DiMasi to have the state’s anti-scalping laws repealed. The ticket brokers’ group was never accused of any wrongdoing, but the law has not been repealed and both Vitale and DiMasi investigated by the state and had their reputations tarnished.
