Word: ticketeer
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There is so little we control, but I'm aware of the issue--especially when it comes to ticket prices, because I come from a country with a lot of poor people. Of course, I wish everybody had the opportunity to go see games, especially with their children. But some teams' high payroll makes it a little bit tougher for them to have low ticket prices or to make it easier for people to take their family to the baseball field...
When Peter Shapiro owned the wetlands, a New York City concert hall where Dave Matthews and Pearl Jam played in the 1990s, there was one sure path to a sellout: team up with Ticketmaster. Fans would line up outside record stores for tickets processed by Ticketmaster or call one of Ticketmaster's phone banks to score seats. No other distributor had the worldwide labyrinth of retail partnerships and phone outlets to move millions of tickets in minutes. And they charged for it--as much as $15 on a $50 ticket. But the music industry, if you hadn't noticed...
...decade after Pearl Jam's failed "Ticketbastard" crusade against the ticketing giant, the Web is doing what lawsuits couldn't: raising the bar with a healthy dose of competition. While Ticketmaster, part of Barry Diller's Interactive Corp., still dominates the industry--it sold 128 million tickets last year, compared with Tickets.com's 76 million--it is fending off threats from every direction. Some of its biggest customers--concert promoters and professional sports leagues--are finding ways to sell their own tickets. Smaller ticketing outfits are attracting museums and concert halls with software that gives them closer fan connections. Worst...
Ticketmaster has the most ground to cover in the red-hot resale market. The secondary market for online sports and entertainment tickets--on websites such as StubHub, RazorGator and TicketsNow--has grown to an estimated $3 billion since 2000. The industry leader, StubHub, operates as an open auction, taking a surcharge on each sale. Popular events go for incredible amounts--$10,287 for Super Bowl XLI and $5,500 for Elton John's 60th-birthday bash--but there are also bargains to be had from season-ticket holders, for example...
Ticketmaster at first ignored resale. But as teams and artists have realized the benefits--more seats get filled, and fans buy food and merchandise--it eventually joined the crowd. Its resale site, TicketExchange, sold 600,000 tickets last year, compared with StubHub's 3.3 million. TicketExchange touts its status as the reliable authorized reseller for 230 venues and 46 pro teams. "[We deliver tickets] at a level of scale and consistency better than anyone else," says Ticketmaster CEO Sean Moriarty. Since teams usually limit the ticket prices that sellers can charge, TicketExchange eliminates both the deep discounts and the outrageous...