Ticket industry News: Ticket Summit Wraps Up Conference with Justice on Their Side

by Dave Brooks
August 2008 issue of Venues Today

LAS VEGAS - Ticket Summit wrapped up its third annual conference in the desert, bringing together its broadest mix of primary and secondary ticket providers to date. TicketNetwork CEO and President Don Vaccaro said he plans to expand the event to twice per year and will be holding the winter session in New York City on Jan. 6-8, 2009.

"We're continuing to see the blending of the primary and secondary in many segments of the marketplace and we're seeing a continued demand for this type of dialogue," said Vaccaro. "It's also an opportunity for our partners on the East Coast to participate in Ticket Summit."

Vaccaro estimated that over 450 registrants and 22 exhibitors participated in this year's conference, which included a keynote address from Avery Gardiner, counsel to the Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department's Anti-Trust division. Gardiner told the audience that she would not be able to comment on specific cases, but that didn't stop the audience from getting a pulse on Ticketmaster's recent acquisition of TicketsNow.

"What alternatives do customers have if prices suddenly increased because of the acquisition? Our job is to predict how consumers will act in the future," she told the audience, offering a tacit pact to watch the acquisition deal years after it is complete.

"Just because something doesn't seem to harm competition today doesn't mean we can't revisit it five years from now and take up the issue again," she said.

And as it had been just one week prior at the National Association of Ticket Brokers annual conference, Ticketmaster's acquisition of TicketsNow remained a hot topic of discussion, surfacting in almost all 12 panel discussions.

"Ticketmaster thinks that if they can eliminate brokers, they can capture all the revenue," said Eric Baker from resale site Viagogo. He believes Ticketmaster's recent attempts to control ticket transferability are an example of their malaise for brokers.

"Tickets will always be transferable because that's what people want," he said. "If you tell me I need to show my passport, blood type and eyeball scan, I'm not going to want to go."

Derek Palmer of Tickets.com said most primaries aren't trying to squeeze out brokers, but they do want a piece of the action.

"The cost to participate in this market is going up while our revenues are going down," he said. "I assure you that we have the lowest margins in this room."

Palmer said primaries are beginning to change the way they look at ticket value, scrutinizing "the final price the ticket is sold for."

"We have the key differentiator - we have the data about the customer and the remaining inventory," he said. "The data can be worth more than the individual ticket sold."