Online Ticket Selling Meets Scalpers and Social Networks
By Mark Levy CEO of MaxxoMedia
Reselling tickets, once viewed as illegal and a rip-off of consumers, is now being legitimized. Over the past few months there have been a number of large acquisitions of “ticket resellers” made by leading e-commerce companies in an effort to take advantage of this lucrative secondary ticket market. eBay purchased Stubhub for $365 million; last month Ticketmaster purchased TicketsNow for $265 million. Many of the tickets that are re-sold on these secondary marketplaces are initially purchased from the Ticketmasters of the world.
The new combined business model aims to cut in the venue owners and promoters. Ticketmaster President and Chief Executive Sean Moriarty said, “Clients who five years ago were not willing to allow a ticket to be resold now want a piece of it.”
The size of the secondary ticket market is hard to judge, but estimates range from $2.5 billion to $5 billion a year in the U.S. So it’s no surprise that new companies are popping up looking to enhance the experience and take a slice of the pie.
The New Breed of Online Ticket Sellers
Pittsburgh-based ShowClix.com has a novel approach to the online ticket market. Launched in 2007, the company uses online social media tools to offer artists, musicians and promoters a platform to reach their fans, promote shows and sell their tickets completely free.
Users of the website can share, track and promote shows, as well as keep real-time tabs on the shows they like via RSS feed. An advanced search feature also allows them to find shows in their local areas. Additionally, they have enabled embeddable show listings that can be posted to pages on other social networks and web pages.
Imagine being in Chicago for the weekend and looking for a local show. You don’t know the newspapers there, and you don’t know the venues. Look in ShowClix and 150 shows come up. The site also tags the popularity of the show, so you get a better sense of which bands are most interesting.
They recently expanded the live music search engine to allow music venues, concert promoters and musicians from around the world to promote their international tour dates on ShowClix.com free of charge. The database has more than tripled in size since it launched, and now offers information on more than 18,000 concerts taking place in over 2,000 cities around the world.
“In addition to focusing on our global launch, our team has been working hard to continue to develop tools to help musicians promote their live music,” said ShowClix President Joshua Dziabiak.
The service will be expanding in the coming months to include an updated ticketing platform and a developer’s network that will promote users’ upcoming shows on music-related websites around the world.
http://www.showclix.com
http://www.ticketsnow.com
http://www.stubhub.com
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