| Because it's not Ticketmaster you have to overturn, it's the venues. They have exclusive deals locked in for several years. Can you convince a small venue to use your new system? Maybe? But since the big venues use Ticketmaster, it's advantageous for the smaller venues to use the same thing. Can you convince a big venue to use your new system? Absolutely not. You're some unproven little company. Example: Broadway theaters. There are three organizations that collectively own the vast majority of the Broadway theaters, Shubert, Nederlander, and Jujamcyn. These are very wealthy and very old fashioned organizations. Even when it's time for them to renew their contracts, do you think you can convince any of them to leave Ticketmaster/Telecharge? Not a chance in hell. Lastly, Ticketmaster already covers all of the use cases that these venues have. It doesn't do the best job, but it does the job. Even if you do a great job of covering 90% of the use cases, they won't switch to you if there's even one thing they need that your alternative can't handle. Even these small and rare edge cases are absolutely essential to their business. To even come close you will need to hire several experts in the ticketing industry to learn that business to even know what these cases are. Ok, so let's say you hire ticketing experts and you build a system better than Ticketmaster that does indeed cover 100% of the use cases the venues have. And you have perfect timing, the venue's exclusive deal with Ticketmaster is coming to a close and you have the opportunity to sell to them. Can you do it? Can you convince them to take a huge risk to use your platform? What's the upside other than the fact that its nicer for ticket buyers? Sticking with Ticketmaster is a safe bet for them. If you fail to convince them in that one window, you won't be able to try to sell to that venue again for several years. TL;DR: Ticketmaster's customers aren't the ticket buyers, it's the venue. Source: I have worked in ticketing in the past. |