Curious: why is there so little competition to Ticketmaster? It seems like the barriers of entry are relatively low — it's not like you have to build a battery factory or anything like that.
Curious: why is there so little competition to Ticketmaster?
It seems like the barriers of entry are relatively low — it's not like you have to build a battery factory or anything like that.
The big reason is that LiveNation (Ticketmaster's parent company) owns nearly every large venue in the United States, so if you're going to compete with Ticketmaster, you're going to be stuck...
The big reason is that LiveNation (Ticketmaster's parent company) owns nearly every large venue in the United States, so if you're going to compete with Ticketmaster, you're going to be stuck selling to small, indie venues.
I wish I had a reliable citation, but I bet they own well over half of the concert seats in the country.
Ok, so you're a venue, and you want to host events. You don't know anything particular about payment processing or online ticket sales. Someone comes to you and says "We'll handle the whole thing...
Ok, so you're a venue, and you want to host events. You don't know anything particular about payment processing or online ticket sales. Someone comes to you and says "We'll handle the whole thing for a small cut of the proceeds." That's a pretty compelling sales pitch for the venue, who is the real customer here.
Now if you want to compete with Ticketmaster, you've got to undercut their prices or give better service, and beyond that successfully convince the venues to switch. Can you do it? Sure. Can you unseat them all over the country? Can you handle hundreds of thousands of transactions and billions of dollars? Maybe, maybe not.
Makes sense. From what I can gleam from a cursory Google Search, their profit margins are around 27% on average but can regularly spike to 40% for certain events! Wow. Who wants to build a...
Makes sense.
From what I can gleam from a cursory Google Search, their profit margins are around 27% on average but can regularly spike to 40% for certain events!
Curious: why is there so little competition to Ticketmaster?
It seems like the barriers of entry are relatively low — it's not like you have to build a battery factory or anything like that.
The big reason is that LiveNation (Ticketmaster's parent company) owns nearly every large venue in the United States, so if you're going to compete with Ticketmaster, you're going to be stuck selling to small, indie venues.
I wish I had a reliable citation, but I bet they own well over half of the concert seats in the country.
Ok, so you're a venue, and you want to host events. You don't know anything particular about payment processing or online ticket sales. Someone comes to you and says "We'll handle the whole thing for a small cut of the proceeds." That's a pretty compelling sales pitch for the venue, who is the real customer here.
Now if you want to compete with Ticketmaster, you've got to undercut their prices or give better service, and beyond that successfully convince the venues to switch. Can you do it? Sure. Can you unseat them all over the country? Can you handle hundreds of thousands of transactions and billions of dollars? Maybe, maybe not.
Makes sense.
From what I can gleam from a cursory Google Search, their profit margins are around 27% on average but can regularly spike to 40% for certain events!
Wow. Who wants to build a competitor with me?