Power to the People: New Sites Let Fans Set Prices, Level Playing Field?

Tickets.com Chief Commercial Officer, Derek Palmer, was recently interviewed for the "Power to the People" article featured in the July 2008 Venues Today magazine. He commented on the evolution of the ticketing industry:

Derek Palmer, chief commercial officer for Tickets.com, thinks anything that sells more tickets is good for venues, whether it's his company, StubHub or fan-to-fan sites. But he sees a potential downside with some of the new non-integrated sites that are not tied to a ticketing application. "The venue loses out on being able to market and build a relationship with the customer and make sure the ticket is valid," he said. "From a customer service standpoint, it's better to use an integrated product, like ours, for instance."

Long term, Palmer thinks that ticketing companies will figure out how to integrated more dynamic pricing and it will benefit everyone involved. "The artist might get people into their performance that might not pay full price or might pay a bit more without having a premium on the top and the venue will have more people in the house buying concessions," he said. "What Barry (Kahn, CEO of Fanprice, and others) have done a good job of is challenging the primary market to truly be more nimble and right pricing tickets."

Giving as an example Major League Baseball, Palmer said companies like his need to figure out how to make pricing changes in real time. "In baseball, teams go out with season ticket prices and they put $2 extra when the Yankees come to town and they think that's dynamic pricing," he said. "The dynamism is how is your team doing going into a home stand with the Yankees? What's the weather like and there's no ticketing application we have now that can look forward enough to when that ticket is actually sold. We have to provide value to teams in shrinking that gap and making those changes in a near real time environment."