Ticket Seller

[Fesival_goer]

Hi All,

I am a huge gig and festival fan. Done Glastonbury, Download, and doing V and Reading.

Due to my current job being made redundant soon, i am in the process of thinking of setting up a business.

My aim is to set up a new online ticketing company, but to be fair for fans, offering a better service than the big boys do, ie you ticketmasters, seetickets etc.

Before i even go to the promotors, i was wondering if you guys would have an opinion and vote on this.

I will post this on other festival areas in here, to get an overall view point, as i want to set up a company that caters for all music lovers.

Thanks for your time

TR

[Mackem]

Seems to me the ticket agencies fall into 4 categories:

a. The Big Boys - Ticketmaster, Seetickets and their sub-brands such as LiveNation, gigsandtours etc

b. The small independent agencies that offer a full service - Stargreen and Ticketline

c. The indy agencies that pick and choose a small selection of gigs, and are generally more focussed on theatre and events, such as Ticketzone

d. The rip off, semi-official resellers that act as outlets for touts but call themselves fan-to-fan sites (eg Seatwave, GetMeIn

e. Just plain rip off merchants (no names) that sell tickets before they have them and often find they can't get them.

a, b and c all charge face value plus booking and admin fees. They're often criticised for their fees but these are generally no more than 10-15% and compared to the other 2 categories (and eBay touts) they are virtual charities!

I think the opportunity is for an agency the size of Stargreen, but offering harder to get tickets - maybe a week or so after they've sold out - at a small premium over a-c (say 25% fees). The fees would be justified in that you may have to pay over the odds to secure the tickets (grease a few palms) and subsidise your cash flow (buy the tickets then keep them in stock until release). I'd be interested how you get on as I've been thinking the same thing myself. Where do fans go when the initial sale is over: eBay or hang around until the last minute for extra releases. I want Florence & Machine tickets atm. I either pay double+ their price on eBay or I wait until the last minute and hope some more are released - with no certainty.

It'd be nice to know I could go somewhere kosher and pick up tickets for a small premium without having to pay eBay prices.

Edited August 18, 2009 by Mackem

[eFestivals]

It's easy to set up a ticket agency. It's far far harder to get the tickets to sell thru that agency.

Best of luck with your idea, but some people with long high level experience from working in the major ticket agencies have set up on their own in the last few years and are barely making a ripple, because they can't source the tickets. If people with good experience and the necessary contacts are having difficulties in getting the tickets then it'll be far more difficult for someone with no experience and no contacts.

It's also very likely that if you can get promoters to deal with you, they're very likely to only supply tickets if fully paid for in advance. So for an average £100 festie ticket, you'd need to have £100,000 handy to get your hands on 1,000 tickets - and from those 1,000 tickets you'd see a profit of less than £1,000. So it's a very high outlay for a very small return.

And then there's all of the many 'underhand' practices that go on. A well known agency (but not one of the mega agents) I talk to tell me that they often have to pay 10% above the face value of a ticket for the promoter to give them tickets, so I suspect that's the case for many of the smaller agents from at least some of the promoters - and that 10% will wipe out any chance of profits on those tickets. The agency I'm talking about go with this 10% only because it helps them establish and keep a major-ish profile in the ticketing market, via which they get to sell more of the other tickets that they handle .... but the owner ain't getting rich.

All in all it's likely to be far more difficult than I suspect you're thinking it might be - you need to bear in mind that whoever has as promoter's tickets holds the fate of that promoter in their hands, because if the tickets don't get sold then the promoter isn't making any money, and so promoters will always want their tickets to be going to the ticketing sites that have the greatest footfall (or more correctly for online businesses, visiting users) to help ensure their own success. It'll be a VERY difficult business to get established in.

Edited October 13, 2009 by eFestivals

[tolywoly]

It's easy to set up a ticket agency. It's far far harder to get the tickets to sell thru that agency.

Best of luck with your idea, but some people with long high level experience from working in the major ticket agencies have set up on their own in the last few years and are barely making a ripple, because they can't source the tickets. If people with good experience and the necessary contacts are having difficulties in getting the tickets then it'll be far more difficult for someone with no experience and no contacts.

It's also very likely that if you can get promoters to deal with you, they're very likely to only supply tickets if fully paid for in advance. So for an average £100 festie ticket, you'd need to have £100,000 handy to get your hands on 1,000 tickets - and from those 1,000 tickets you'd see a profit of less than £1,000. So it's a very high outlay for a very small return.

And then there's all of the many 'underhand' practices that go one. A well known agency (but not one of the mega agents) I talk to tell me that they often have to pay 10% above the face value of a ticket for the promoter to give them tickets, so I suspect that's the case for many of the smaller agents from at least some of the promoters - and that 10% will wipe out any chance of profits on those tickets. The agency I'm talking about go with this 10% only because it helps them establish and keep a major-ish profile in the ticketing market, via which they get to sell more of the other tickets that they handle .... but the owner ain't getting rich.

All in all it's likely to be far more difficult than I suspect you're thinking it might be - you need to bear in mind that whoever has as promoter's tickets holds the fate of that promoter in their hands, because if the tickets don't get sold then the promoter isn't making any money, and so promoters will always want their tickets to be going to the ticketing sites that have the greatest footfall (or more correctly for online businesses, visiting users) to help ensure their own success. It'll be a VERY difficult business to get established in.

[kanne11]

It's easy to set up a ticket agency. It's far far harder to get the tickets to sell thru that agency. wink.gif

Best of luck with your idea, but some people with long high level experience from working in the major ticket agencies have set up on their own in the last few years and are barely making a ripple, because they can't source the tickets. If people with good experience and the necessary contacts are having difficulties in getting the tickets then it'll be far more difficult for someone with no experience and no contacts.

It's also very likely that if you can get promoters to deal with you, they're very likely to only supply tickets if fully paid for in advance. So for an average £100 festie ticket, you'd need to have £100,000 handy to get your hands on 1,000 tickets - and from those 1,000 tickets you'd see a profit of less than £1,000. So it's a very high outlay for a very small return.

Edited October 14, 2009 by eFestivals