Ticketmaster buys Czech ticketing company Ticketpro

Live Nation's ticketing arm Ticketmaster has bought Czech ticketing company Ticketpro, boosting its presence in Central Europe and especially the Czech Republic. Ticketmaster International's Mark Yovich said "Acquiring Ticketpro enables us to better service our clients in Central Europe, while providing a world class service to the many fans in these countries" and Ticketpro chief Serge Grimaux added: "Having started our business in the Czech Republic, Ticketpro has established a proven track record in Central Europe and many emerging markets around the world. Combining this with Ticketmaster's global scale and reach will ensure that Ticketpro continues to provide an even better experience to its current fans, while attracting considerably more. This is an exciting time for the business and the live entertainment industry in this part of the world. For me, it is the end of a ticketing journey which has lasted over 25 years".

Ticketmaster reaches into festivals and DIY

Ticketmaster has snapped up two more companies, expanding its reach into the festival and DIY ticketing space. Front Gate Tickets was started in 2003 as an alternative ticketing service for venues in Austin, Texas, and  now helps venues, artists, promoters and festivals grow their business and effectively promote events to fans. Clients include music events as Coachella, Austin City Limits, Electric Forest, The Governors Ball Music Festival, Lollapalooza, RBC Royal Bank Bluesfest and X Games. Additionally, Front Gate Tickets offers RFID-powered access control, experiential marketing and cashless POS systems that streamline festival entry, sponsorship activations, and concession sales. DIY ticketing platform Universe helps event organisers sell tickets online. It works with thousands of event organizers worldwide and provides them with tools to sell tickets, and promote and manage events online.

Ticketmaster faces anti-trust law suit from StubHub

In what could prove to be a landmark case in the sports ticket marketplace, Live Nation's Ticketmaster is being sued by eBay-owned StubHub over its official alliance with the Golden State Warriors basketball team. Ticketmaster is the primary ticket seller for the Warriors, and also operates the official season ticket resale platform, where tickets can be officially resold. The basketball team threatens to cancel any tickets it sees being touted on other secondary sites, like StubHub: reselling a ticket is usually a breach of the terms and conditions of the original purchase. The threat has apparently worked. StubHub claims that listings for Warriors tickets, which is currently the hottest ticket in the NBA, are down 80 percent in the past year.

But StubHub has alledged that this amounts to anti-competitive behaviour on Ticketmaster's part. The eBay firm says in its complaint: "If you are a Warriors fan and you want season tickets, you have one choice: buy them through Ticketmaster". The company's General Counsel Michelle Fang then told Bloomberg that her client was suing in the interest of Warriors' fans, adding of Ticketmaster's motives: "Given that they haven't been able to win when we've competed on a level playing field, they're trying to compete unfairly".Ticketmaster responded to the litigation, saying: "We are disappointed that StubHub has filed a baseless lawsuit that asks the courts to help prop up its business against true fan-friendly competition. NBA teams like the Golden State Warriors have implemented ticket exchanges powered by Ticketmaster because they want ticket resale to be a secure experience, not an opportunity for scalping and fraud".

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/12584885/stubhub-sues-golden-state-warriors-alleging-monopoly

Ticketmaster buys Seatwave

Ticketmaster has bought the 'operating assets' of secondary ticketing firm Seatwave which will enable the ticketing giant to extend its resale business into a number of new European markets, including Germany, Italy and Spain. Under the new deal, Seatwave will continue to operate separately but as "a Ticketmaster company". According the official statement, this move "builds on Ticketmaster's successful strategy of creating best-in-class, consumer-friendly resale platforms in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States".

Live Nation moves into Qatar

Live Nation's Ticketmaster has opened an office in Qatar. Live Nation's Michael Rapino told reporters: "As Ticketmaster continues to deliver innovative products and services, more venues in more countries are choosing Ticketmaster solutions. We have had good success in this region in a short period of time, and we are looking forward to expanding our business into Qatar's rapidly growing market where there is an ever-increasing demand for live events".

Aussie ticketholders disgusted by 50% Janelle Monae refund

Australian fans have heaped criticism on Live Nation - Ticketmaster over a 50% refund for abandoned Janelle Monáe show. Live Nation had begun the process of issuing refunds after the Janelle Monáe and Kimbra co-headline tour of Australia was cancelled due to the former's ill-health. The tour was actually cancelled mid-show during a Melbourne concert on the 17th May once Monáe's ill-health was confirmed, and ticketholders for that gig have only been offered a 50% refund with the promoter saying "Live Nation has advised that due to the inconvenience caused by the mid-show cancellation of the Janelle Monáe with Kimbra show which took place at the Forum Melbourne on Saturday 17 May 2014, a 50% refund of your total ticket value will be processed". Disgruntled concertgoers have flocked to the Ticketmaster Australia and Live Nation Australia & New Zealand Facebook pages to complain about the situation, with the words "disgusted" and "unacceptable" cropping up particularly often.

ASA rejects ticketing complaint against Ticketmaster

The Advertising Standards Authority has rejected a complaint against Ticketmaster UK, which accused the company of misleading customers by saying that it had tickets for The Cure's Royal Albert Hall show on 28 Mar, while actually directing fans towards more expensive tickets on it's own secondary ticking site, Get Me In.

CMU Daily reports that the complainant said that they had logged onto the Ticketmaster website in time for when tickets went on sale for the Cure show at 9.30am on the 31st January. However, despite repeated searches, they were never offered tickets directly, and instead given the option of going to Get Me In.  In 2009 in the US Ticketmaster faced a Federal Trade Commission investigation and an angry Bruce Springsteen after fans buying tickets for two of his gigs in New Jersey via his official ticket agent - Ticketmaster - were pointed towards the TicketsNow website (that being Ticketmaster's US secondary ticketing website), where tickets for said gigs were being sold at a mark up, even before Ticketmaster's allocation of normal priced tickets had sold out.

This time the complainant inferred that Ticketmaster itself may have listed at least some of its tickets for the concert onto its secondary site before anyone had had a chance to buy them on the primary site. In response, Ticketmaster pointed out that it only had a certain allocation of all the primary tickets on offer for the show, with various other outlets also selling them, and that demand meant that 90% were sold by 9.45am. The remaining 10%, data provided to the ASA showed, were at that time reserved in other customers' shopping baskets, meaning that they were temporarily unavailable for purchase (the site holding tickets for fifteen minutes before returning them to general sale if they are not bought). The company added that as well as suggesting users go to the Get Me In website to see if any tickets were available there, it also recommended that customers search the main Ticketmaster site multiple times to check if tickets previously reserved in another customer's virtual basket had become available again.  However, the vast majority of primary tickets for that particular show were gone by 10am.

The ASA said it was happy that the Cure tickets available on Get Me In were being offered by various resellers, and not Ticketmaster itself.

Ticketmaster launches new US resale platform

Audience had reported that Ticketmaster is launching a new 'integrated' primary and secondary ticket re-sale platform in the US called TM+ saying the site can prevent ticket fraud and provide customers with a "safe, secure transaction" and greater transparency for buyers according to Live Nations COO Joe Berchtold. Ticketmaster are also opening a Vienna office to build a presence in the Austrian market. And Live Nation itself has set up a new venture with BDG Music in the Baltic States. Headed up by BDG's Peeter Rebane, the new venture will be be called Live Nation Baltics and operate in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. 

Ticketmaster and Facebook make online improvements

Ticketmaster has added a 'transfer' option to it's US-based platform, which means that American customers can transfer tickets to friends at no cost, with the barcode from the original ticket cancelled and a new bar-code issued to the friend.The process will enable consumers who buy tickets for a group to more easily distribute the actual tickets to each group member, and people who can no longer attend a show to transfer their ticket to another person within the Ticketmaster system - friends receiving transferred tickets will need Ticketmaster accounts. And Facebook is testing a 'buy tickets' button that could be added to event pages on the social network site, and which would link to primary sites selling tickets to the featured event. 

Ticketnews.com reports that former Ticketmaster customers who had signed onto a class-action lawsuit against Ticketmaster for charging excessive processing and shipping fees will have to wait a little while longer to receive their compensation, after Los Angeles Superior Court judge Kenneth Freeman rejected a proposed settlement agreement between Ticketmaster and the class-action plaintiffs' attorneys, which included a $16.5 million payment to the plaintiff’s lawyers. Judge Freeman said that the settlement of $1.50 or $5 coupons to class action members "represents a windfall for Ticketmaster and does not represent 'real value' for class members" adding that he was concerned that a failure to reach some 20%  of the estimated 50.7 million class members by email was a "significant concern".

Radiohead ticketing row erupts

Radiohead, vocal critics of secondary ticketing, have been caught up in a row with their own fans after it was discovered that rules put in place to stop the re-sale of tickets on the secondary market are actually penalising fans who can't attend a concert - as they cannot sell or even give away the tickets to friends. Anyone else attending with a buyer is also effectively barred from attending. 

Tickets for the bands upcoming Manchester Arena and London O2 Arena can only be collected on the day of the show and the buyer must present the credit or debit card with which the tickets were purchased as well as some form of photo ID - meaning that fans who cannot attend are stumped - as are their guests - especially as the tickets are unrefundable. Ticketmaster said "Terms and conditions relating to the purchase of paperless tickets are clearly outlined to customers at multiple stages during the purchase process, including the initial purchase page, the shipping page and the billing page. Information relating to their purchase of paperless tickets is also conveyed on the confirmation email they receive" adding "our dedicated customer services team are happy to work with both customers and our clients, be that the venues or promoters, if a customer's circumstances change".

Ticketmaster to service Barclays' needs

The soon-to-open Barclays Center, bringing sports and live entertainment to Brooklyn, NY, announced this week that Ticketmaster will handle both primary and secondary ticketing for the venue. Ticketmaster will manage primary ticket sales, and ticket resale will be handled at the company's secondary ticketing site, TicketsNow.

String Cheese revolt

Colorado jam band String Cheese Incident have taken a stand against Ticketmaster and what they consider unwarranted costs and fees – allowing fans to purchase tickets to their shows from their official website at face value without the added service charges – but its been a battle – more here http://www.ticketnews.com/news/jam-band-string-cheese-incident-fights-ticketmaster-fees051221370?utm_source=email&utm_medium=2012-05-24

London 2012 ticketing woes continue

The official London 2012 ticket resale site, which went offline for a whopping 12 days after failing on its launch day, is back up and running. Initially the site simply failed to work with users reporting difficulties in uploading tickets to the exchange to sell, whilst buyers discovered at checkout that their selected tickets were no longer available. On January 17th Ticketmaster finally got the site up and running again but it now seems to be just a refund site, not the face value swap site originally planned by games organiser LOCOG. The site will now just buy back tickets at face value in the next two and a half weeks until February 3rd. Re-sale of Olympic tickets outside of the official system and windows is illegal in the UK. The London 2012 ticket sales have been beset with a number of problems, not least when tickets sales were restricted to Visa debit and credit cards only (the official credit card sponsor) and a large number of Visa cards were rejected and sales cancelled because of approaching expiry dates. In December it transpired tickets for the synchronised swimming dates had been oversold. Any returned tickets and a final batch of 1.3 million tickets will be put on sale in April and Olympic football and Paralympic tickets remain on sale until 6th February.

Ticketmaster and Walmart finally launch in-store scheme

Ticketmaster and Walmart are finally launching their previously announced scheme to sell tickets out of hundreds of Walmart stores throughout the USA. The move comes about 18 months after Walmart and Live Nation, Ticketmaster's parent company, first announced the partnership, but a little late in the current summer concert season to take full advantage of the added exposure.