Amazon To Lock Horns With Ticketmaster In Fee-Happy Ticketing Market
Ticketmaster is one of the premier vendor of tickets for concerts, sporting events, and other forms of entertainment. However, it might be getting some big time competition from the world's largest online retailer. There is chatter from multiple sources that Amazon is in talks with venue owners in the United States about partnering up to sell tickets through the etailers online store front.
Amazon enjoys a massive customer base. The appeal for venue owners is having access to all those eyeballs that already shop on Amazon anyway. And for the online retailer, the motivation is obviously money, and lots of it. According to estimates by research firm BTIG, Ticketmaster raked in a whopping $1.6 billion in revenue from initial sales of tickets to events last year. That figure does not include revenue from reselling tickets, which BTIG estimates to be an additional $250 million.
How this would work for Amazon is not yet finalized. It's said that Amazon talked to at least one league about selling tickets on the secondary market, which would be a business similar to that of StubHub (owned by eBay). StubHub is a popular place to score tickets for venues that are sold out, although depending on the popularity of the event, prices can be way above face value.
As for being a first-hand seller, one challenge Amazon faces is making it financially worthwhile for venues. Ticketmaster's foothold in the industry comes in part from paying fees to venues for the right to sell tickets and manage the box office. Venue owners aren't exactly looking to give up that revenue, even though it means consumers face high ticketing fees.
One thing Amazon has brought up is writing sponsoring checks worth millions of dollars to venues. However, Amazon has not been willing to share information on customer data, which is something that venue owners are interested in. They use that information to promote events on social media, and also to make sure they are booking acts in places where they will make the most money.
If Amazon is successful in forging a deal to sell tickets, it will be interesting to see if it adds some kind of perk for Prime members. Prime has been a point of focus for Amazon, and if it gets creative, some kind of benefit related to ticket sales could be yet another selling point.
Thumbnail Image Source: Flickr (Tennis Tickets)
Amazon enjoys a massive customer base. The appeal for venue owners is having access to all those eyeballs that already shop on Amazon anyway. And for the online retailer, the motivation is obviously money, and lots of it. According to estimates by research firm BTIG, Ticketmaster raked in a whopping $1.6 billion in revenue from initial sales of tickets to events last year. That figure does not include revenue from reselling tickets, which BTIG estimates to be an additional $250 million.
How this would work for Amazon is not yet finalized. It's said that Amazon talked to at least one league about selling tickets on the secondary market, which would be a business similar to that of StubHub (owned by eBay). StubHub is a popular place to score tickets for venues that are sold out, although depending on the popularity of the event, prices can be way above face value.
As for being a first-hand seller, one challenge Amazon faces is making it financially worthwhile for venues. Ticketmaster's foothold in the industry comes in part from paying fees to venues for the right to sell tickets and manage the box office. Venue owners aren't exactly looking to give up that revenue, even though it means consumers face high ticketing fees.
One thing Amazon has brought up is writing sponsoring checks worth millions of dollars to venues. However, Amazon has not been willing to share information on customer data, which is something that venue owners are interested in. They use that information to promote events on social media, and also to make sure they are booking acts in places where they will make the most money.
If Amazon is successful in forging a deal to sell tickets, it will be interesting to see if it adds some kind of perk for Prime members. Prime has been a point of focus for Amazon, and if it gets creative, some kind of benefit related to ticket sales could be yet another selling point.
Thumbnail Image Source: Flickr (Tennis Tickets)
