TJ Chambers
(c) freepik.com
Since the last post (The Monetisation of Superfans … – https://tjchambers.blog/2025/04/26/the-monetisation-of-superfans-and-in-other-news-25-04-25/) I had the pleasure of attending the 2025 edition of the Ticketing Business Forum (https://www.ticketingbusinessforum.com) which brought together hundreds of national and international delegates and speakers from the overlapping technology and service sectors that impact the evolving ticketing industry to a sunny Emirates Old Trafford.
Unless you attend conferences, meetings and seminars, network and immerse within the various sessions or debates, how are you going to learn something new, escape internalised orthodoxies and/or experience different perspectives, reacquaint yourself with industry colleagues and understand the new sector insights or innovative strategies employed elsewhere. Or be inspired by new personalities, evangelical start-ups or market-defining corporate operators and their various business models.
All of that, and more was experienced in Manchester and special thanks to Ian + Angelina, Andrej, Ben, Brian, Carolyn, David C., David H., James, Jason, Johannes, John, Juan Pablo, Katy, Lou, Lucy, Marcus, Martin, Nadeem, Oliver, Phillip, Pierre-Mary, Rinalds, Sam, Sarah, Shah-Zeib, and Tom, and many others, it was a real delight.
Other fine ticketing trade assemblies include: Forum de la Billetterie (https://forumbilletterie.fr/); INTIX (https://intix.org/); Ticketing Australia (https://ticketingaustralia.com.au/); Ticketing Business Asia (https://www.ticketingbusinessasia.com/); and the Ticketing Professionals Conference (https://ticketingprofessionals.co.uk/), as well as the various platform-specific user hubs, education and learning conferences. Each event appeals to a slightly different constituency (entry-level or C-Suite, genre or regionally based, education or ROI-focussed etc.), albeit some service suppliers will be present at every event, and it’s certainly one way to see (parts) of the world.
Another aspect of attending these symposiums, especially as a freelance consultant is the number of frogs you may end up kissing (*oblique reference to ‘The Frog Prince’ / ‘Iron Heinrich’ from the Brothers Grimm collection of stories, published 1812) in the belief that one, or (if particularly lucky) more, may turn out to be a new ‘prince’ / paying client.
As my accountant reminds me, I have three types of engagement.
Firstly, as a mentor, typically with a cash-restricted pre-revenue start-up, I buy the coffee.
Secondly, as an advisor to a scale-up, subject to initial seed funding and cashflow, we take it in turns to buy the coffee.
And thirdly, and obviously not often enough, as a consultant (typically with a ticketing-adjacent organisation retaining me for corporate development strategies or buy/sell-side advisory services) I get to raise an invoice which pays for the coffee and has a little bit left over.
Anyway, #TBF25 was an interesting mix of educational, social and commercial, and I’m already looking forward to next year’s conference.
But before then there is Onsale Live (15.05.25) (https://www.onsale.live/) which has been created and curated by Dawn Farrow (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawn-farrow/), an award-winning and highly respected marketing figure across the experiential economy.
Or the Museums + Heritage Show (14+15.05.25) (https://show.museumsandheritage.com/), which is sort-of live entertainment / experiential / ticketing, albeit populated by too-many delegates who worry whether the new-fangled internet commerce is (a) to be trusted, or (b) here to stay.
So maybe we’ll meet up at one of those events?
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In other news, I appear to have been quoted by a number of journalists, and/or been referenced as a ticketing maven (or is that gob-shite) in various media forums.
Firstly, in a long-form overview of Live Nation Entertainment by Daniel Thomas (https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-thomas-b66a0583/) the Financial Times global media editor, with Eri Sugiura (https://www.linkedin.com/in/eri-sugiura-5b50431a4/) the leisure industries correspondent, who detailed the merger in 2010 between Live Nation and Ticketmaster, the growth in scale and subsequent market consolidation, the alleged abusive monopolistic behaviour, the company’s economic flywheel driven by the high-margin sponsorship + advertising and ticketing divisions, the utilisation of dynamic pricing and whether the bipartisan support In Congress and dozens of U.S. states will mean the DOJ antitrust lawsuit will succeed in breaking up the company – How Live Nation calls the tune for the live music industry, Daniel Thomas and Eri Sugiura, 30th April 2025 – https://www.ft.com/content/fdf2ba90-fc50-4c1f-a2c8-8efcec140980 .
Live Nation Entertainment: Revenues (2014-2025)
© Financial Times / Cleve Jones
Separately Dan Runcie (https://www.linkedin.com/in/druncie/), the founder of Trapital (newsletter, podcast and market intelligence for the music industry)in a LinkedIn post offered an explanation as to why the Beyoncé ‘Cowboy Carter’ tour had not sold out (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/druncie_why-the-cowboy-carter-tour-has-not-sold-out-activity-7323466196123533312-tYAK) and when prompted by Will Page (https://www.linkedin.com/in/wpage/) I offered a comment that a sell-thru rate of 94.5% wasn’t too shabby, especially given her last tour was in 2023, and there is currently a more nervous if not weaker consumer economy. And more flippantly suggested that the social media chatter and speculation surrounding one of the best-selling artists of all time, was more linked to the fact she is a woman, and black.
Then another long-form article appeared in the Guardian by author and journalist Dorian Lynskey (https://www.dorianlynskey.com/) who focussed on the omnipresent scale and apparent centrality of all that is wrong with contemporary ticket buying, and suggested that Ticketmaster was ‘behind the great rock’n’roll ripoff’.
(c) Noma Bar/The Guardian
This extended piece of writing detailed the history of Ticketmaster, its 2010 merger with Live Nation (approved at the time by the U.S. Department of Justice), the subsequent dominant market share ‘the company … ‘sells about 70% of all concert tickets worldwide, and an even greater proportion of the arena and stadium market’, the above price inflation trend for tickets (in part reflecting the negotiating strength of artists), the industrialisation of opaque ticketing service charges, and the most recent tactic of deploying demand-driven dynamic-pricing (claiming the increase in prices was re-capturing some of the unauthorised secondary market arbitrage) – Who is behind the great rock’n’roll ripoff? How Ticketmaster swallowed the live entertainment scene, Dorian Lynskey, 4th May 2025 https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/may/04/how-ticketmaster-swallowed-the-live-entertainment-scene.
The complexities (and contradictions) of Ticketmaster were neatly summarised: ‘For the last 40 years, the company has faced allegations of predatory pricing, misleading fees, restrictive contracts, technical blunders, suppressing or colluding with competitors and generally abusing its monopolistic power. It has been the target of numerous hearings, investigations, class-action lawsuits and multimillion-dollar penalties’ – Dorian Lynskey.
And yet it doesn’t just survive, it thrives.
The article struck a chord with David Reece (Chief Strategy Officer, Baker Richards) who posted on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7324798713036501010/) that Ticketmaster’s apparent immunity from competition, and its acceptance of being the ‘villain’ of live entertainment ticketing, was proof not that the system was broken, but rather that the ticketing industry should be understood as working as required for its (B-2-B) stakeholders.
That (as oft-stated by this author) ‘ticketing is a bad-news business’ and is in fact designed that way.
See:
#Ticketing: The ‘Bad-News’ Business (2023) RePost – https://tjchambers.blog/2024/10/09/ticketing-the-bad-news-business-2023-repost/
More Bad-News (2024) RePost – https://tjchambers.blog/2025/02/21/more-bad-news-2024-repost/
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Postscript:
And the hits just keep on coming. Yet more investigations.
7th May 2025: Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission Seek Information on Unfair and Anticompetitive Practices in Live Ticketing – https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-and-federal-trade-commission-seek-information-unfair-and-anticompetitive
More no doubt to follow.
***
Until the next time.
TJ_Chambers 