TicketsNow, the nation’s second-largest secondary ticket company, according to TicketNews’s exclusive industry rankings, was bought in early 2008 by Ticketmaster Entertainment for $265 million. Besides being the second-biggest secondary ticket company behind StubHub, TicketsNow is the third-largest overall ticket company, according to the ranking.

The company claims it “lists the world’s largest online inventory of secondary market tickets—nearly 6 times more than eBay,” and was once known more for being a broker-to-broker exchange through its EventInventory software product and marketplace. Now, it has opened up its exchange and accepts and lists tickets from fans.

Since it was acquired by Ticketmaster, the company has come under fire from brokers and fans for being the destination where customers are rerouted when they cannot buy tickets from Ticketmaster’s Web site. The complaints stem from the fact that tickets resold on the secondary market are often priced higher than those on Ticketmaster at face value, so some have believed that the two companies were colluding to get customers to spend more. Both Ticketmaster and TicketsNow have denied they purposely redirect customers to the site, but they have admitted that artists and their representatives have resold tickets through the exchange.

In the fall of 2008, TicketsNow laid off 60 employees, and its President and CEO Cheryl Rosner resigned from the company in December of that year. She was replaced by Shawn Freeman, formerly the company’s Chief Technology Officer.