Ticket brokers 2.0

Ticketmaster, like any market leader, has taken its fair share of criticism over the years. Perhaps due to its historic stranglehold on ticket distribution, it has at times been characterized as less than generous.

Despite the fact that many people loved to hate them in the pre-Internet days, Ticketmaster continued to grow and envelope more kinds of tickets. And when the Web came along, suddenly you could go through Ticketmaster to buy just about any ticket to any event online, and not have to deal with persitent busy signals as you tried to get through to the phone operators for popular concerts.

Anyway, over the past couple of years some competition has emerged in what is now called the “Secondary” ticket market. Companies like Razorgator and StubHub are messing with Ticketmaster’s monopoly.

It’s nice to see some competition emerge. I think it makes the experience better for fans.

Much as ebay has created a market for just about anything that anyone would want to re-sell, StubHub and RazorGator have done the same for tickets. StubHub, which as recently purchased by eBay, has positioned itself as a “marketplace” (i.e. a place where fans can buy and sell tickets, rather than a point of distribution for a ticket broker, er distributor, like Ticketmaster).

While Ticketmaster remains the dominant player in ticketing, these other guys are building their brands and gaining traction and causing Ticketmaster to try some new tricks, particularly online. I took a look this morning at all three of these ticketing Websites to see how they’re leveraging the internet to create community around their brands.

I only did a quick scan of the sites, but it appears StubHub! has done the best job positioning itself as a service “by the fans and for the fans”. Here’s a screenshot of its “fanzone”:

Notice how the content of this section is about the FAN and not about the TICKET. When you read the fan comments, you see that fans are giving StubHub! credit for enabling an experience they could not have had otherwise. This is an especially strong position to take when competiting with a market leader that does not have a great reputation with fans.

No such fanzone exists on Razorgator, but I did find this little section which shows what are the most popular events.

This is smart. People like to know what other people are buying. If you want more people to buy more tickets, this is a good way to do it. But it doesn’t necessarily build community. In addition to this viral tactic, Razorgator also offers an online ticket marketplace, but based on where they promote it (near the bottom of their left hand navigation bar) it doesn’t seem to be a main feature of the site.

TicketMaster has come out with a ticket marketplace which it calls TicketExchange, and like the other two sites, Ticketmaster offers its users a tool to organize all their ticket endeavors

These tools are OK, but they don’t seem to indicate to me that TicketMaster’s perspective is quite as 2.0 enlightened as it could be.

Can any of these sites expect community to form around their brands? Sure it is. I don’t care what you buy – if someone makes the experience better for you, then you’re going to tell someone else about it, and next time you’re in the market, you’ll probably use that service again before trying a competitor.

That being said, I think these sites would be well served to spend less money on buidlng their brands and more time helping the ticket sellers (the bands, the teams, the performers) connect with the ticket buyers. This could be done by providing a “white label” version of the ticketing software that is “powered by” the ticket distribution company. Set up this way, the ticket distributor becomes a “sponsor” of the team or band rather than an “advertiser” or 3rd party broker. It’s a subtle difference, but especially for Ticketmaster, which already faces image challenges, enabling the teams and band to “add value” to their fans experiences is more valuable in the long run than simply “buying” the right to “own the secondary market.

After the concert and after the game, fans want to talk about their experiences. In my opinion they won’t go back to the ticketing website to have this conversation. They will (and do) go to the team’s website or the band’s website, etc. If the ticketing company took a “sponsor” approach, then it’s sponsorship could “enable” this “after talk” too…and perhaps the ticket broker could use this positive environment and offer links to other upcoming events.

In the end, I doubt any of these companies will evolve much past the point they’re at now. Their businesses are centered around TICKETS rather than FANS. They’re focused so much on the transaction that they probably will be prevented from capitalizing on the EXPERIENCE they are enabling.

Case in point, this law suit filed by TicketMaster against Stubhub is very revealing. First of all let me say that I am not offering my opinon on the merit of the suit. That said, let me point out that filing suit is a tactic that traditional-minded companies use to protect their territory against insurgents playing by new rules. Other examples would be EMI’s suing Napster and Viacom suing YouTube.

It makes sense. Someone’s trying to muscle in on your turf? Sue them!

But look at what’s happened in these cases. EMI suing Napster didn’t stop people from downloading and sharing mp3s. Viacom suing YouTube is unlikely to stop people from uploading and sharing copyrighted video. And while the TicketMaster v. StubHub case has nothing to do with intellectual property, it does seem to me similar in spirit to the other two cases. New technology has enabled StubHub to gain a foothold in TicketMaster’s territory, and thanks to a more enlighted business model, StubHub is gaining market share. It makes sense that any mega corporation would drag its smaller competor into court, only the rules have changed, and in this case, StubHub is actually owned by eBay, a company that has mastered the art of online marketplaces and can easily stand toe-to-toe with TicketMaster.

Where’s the Love? Bloggers share frustration with the whole business:
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StubHub fan (rated R for language)