Concerts And The Venue Marketing Dilemma in Ticketing

Quick note…

Techchrunch posted this tonight about how some of the other Ticketing companies out there have responded (in fear) to the Ticketmaster/LiveNation merger talks.

Ticketing Startups Launch Multi-Million Dollar Funds To Combat Ticketmaster Merger

I couldn’t help but Comment.

There I go again on one of my marketing rants. Like this one on Marketing In Music.

Seriously… it’s time people stopped whining about the power of companies that venues have willfully chosen to give up control to for some benefits in return.

Here’s the real concern I see coming which is really a symptom of another problem-

Too many people want to leave core business activities to companies that will leverage and exploit being the vendor of choice in the middle of each transaction. (Ticketmaster provides ticketing and some ease and comfort in marketing, and venues trade part control of their business and marketing)

In short, it’s harder to do it right in business when it comes to systems, marketing and how you handle your data. A trade-off is made when you choose a ticketing company. Venues need to stop worrying and start recognizing and considering these trade-offs if they’re serious about long term success regardless of the ticketing woes.

I appreciate that these other ticketing companies don’t want this potential mega-corp wrapping everything up. But if these ticketing companies were truly and “altruistically” concerned for venues… they’d be out there helping and coaching venues just because.

And they’d be providing ticketing for lesser margins and instead finding more innovative and value added ways to monetize the ticket service they provide.