Date confusion re ticket sale for Semi-final v Crows

[Danzar]

Yes Ticketek ARE terrible.

After being online from 9am, I eventually managed to get a ticket sometime after 10am (fourth attempt, first three tickets allocated disappeared at payment stage and I had to start again).

I then moved to the Sydney Theatre Company online site where subscriber bookings had also opened at 9am. Dream run, everything worked smoothly, was able to go to a seat map for each of the seven plays (in three different theatres) I was booking and choose my own seat. Not a hiccup and have chosen exactly what I want.

Now obviously the demand load on the STC site would have been minuscule compared with Ticketek but that surely is a system capacity that Ticketek should be able to plan for and provide.

And equally the technological capacity to have a seat map from which you can choose your own seats exists - Ticketek just won't invest in it because as a duopoly they make big profits without bothering to do so.

Meg, I firmly believe they should be seen as a monopoly. By doing stitch up deals with specific venues, they capture that entire market for all events at that venue. No customer has the ability to choose either Ticketek or Ticketmaster to acquire tickets for a specific event or a venue.

There is no choice for the consumer; only the venue has choice of reseller, and the venue doesn't care one iota because they themselves are monopolies, and they get paid irrespective of whether ten tickets are sold, or 10,000.

[Meg]

Date confusion re ticket sale for Semi-final v Crows

Meg, I firmly believe they should be seen as a monopoly. By doing stitch up deals with specific venues, they capture that entire market for all events at that venue. No customer has the ability to choose either Ticketek or Ticketmaster to acquire tickets for a specific event or a venue.

There is no choice for the consumer; only the venue has choice of reseller, and the venue doesn't care one iota because they themselves are monopolies, and they get paid irrespective of whether ten tickets are sold, or 10,000.

I understand your point. But the client for Ticketek is (in this case) the AFL which has two choices - Ticketek or Ticketmaster.

As customers, you are right, we have no choice if we want to buy AFL tickets. But the AFL is in competition with other sports providers and other forms of entertainment. Make it too difficult or frustrating to book tickets and some will decide to save their money for other things. Just this morning I was on the verge of giving up and staying home to watch the game on television.

I have exactly the same issues with Ticketek booking cricket tickets. I've given up booking in the priority period to which I have access because I can't get the tickets in the area I want. But that means I forego a member discount and so probably will go to fewer days of cricket, or sink into apathy and just watch on TV.

I'd like to see the AFL and Cricket Australia (as the two biggest Australia-wide sports providers) form a joint venture and set up their own ticketing system with choose-your-own seat technology. They could probably then sell the service to other sports.

That would put a rocket up Ticketek!

[Doctor]

I could queue up at St George Leagues Club's Mitchell's Bass ticket outlet in 1985 and pick exactly which seats I wanted to sit in to see Dire Straits. That was 30 years ago!!!! The Ticketek system is more of a rort than Cabcharge adding 10% to every fare just because you're using a credit card (now down to 5%). The fact that we can get screwed over like this in this day and age is disgraceful. Their system is clearly desperately out of date but they have no imperative to fix it because we're stuck with them. Then they charge you $7 or something to print your own ticket!! They don't care though because, to them, it's money for nothing.

[KTigers]

Yes, each venue signs a (usually) long term contract with a ticketing company. The ticketing company sells the tickets for every event at the venue. Ticketek & Ticketmaster between them have about 80% of the market in Australia. Ticketek is owned by an Asian private equity firm, and Ticketmaster is part of a large US music industry conglomerate. Competition between the two companies is very intense. The venues do care (a lot) about how many tickets are sold to events at their venues as they are paid a flat fee plus a percentage of the ticket receipts. They also receive the food and beverage sales and a percentage of the merchandise sales.
Those sales are dependant on how many people attend each event.

Meg, I firmly believe they should be seen as a monopoly. By doing stitch up deals with specific venues, they capture that entire market for all events at that venue. No customer has the ability to choose either Ticketek or Ticketmaster to acquire tickets for a specific event or a venue.

There is no choice for the consumer; only the venue has choice of reseller, and the venue doesn't care one iota because they themselves are monopolies, and they get paid irrespective of whether ten tickets are sold, or 10,000.

[Danzar]

Yes, each venue signs a (usually) long term contract with a ticketing company. The ticketing company sells the tickets for every event at the venue. Ticketek & Ticketmaster between them have about 80% of the market in Australia. Ticketek is owned by an Asian private equity firm, and Ticketmaster is part of a large US music industry conglomerate. Competition between the two companies is very intense. The venues do care (a lot) about how many tickets are sold to events at their venues as they are paid a flat fee plus a percentage of the ticket receipts. They also receive the food and beverage sales and a percentage of the merchandise sales.
Those sales are dependant on how many people attend each event.

I thought Ticketek was owned by Nine?


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[KTigers]

No, Ticketek & a few other assets like Qudos Bank Arena were spun off Nine maybe eighteen months ago. Ticketek is now owned by an Asian private equity mob called Affinity Equity Partners.

I thought Ticketek was owned by Nine?


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[Bindo]

Oh great, just to add insult to injury, there are now a lot of overpriced tickets for sale on Ticketmaster Resale!! I thought this was scalping??

[Mauzza]

Oh great, just to add insult to injury, there are now a lot of overpriced tickets for sale on Ticketmaster Resale!! I thought this was scalping??

Well this is just a theory and can apply to any club (not pointing a finger at a specific club) but if you are a supporter from an away club who has to travel there is nothing stopping you buying tickets with no intention of going and then onselling through the Tickmaster Resale and making a small profit. Of course the risk is not selling and getting struck with tickets you don't want.

As for lots of better seats coming on public sale some of those could have been from the Crows allocation that was not exhausted. Just a thought.

[barracuda]

Wow, just took a look at ticketmaster. Yesterday I couldn't get seats I wanted as a member. I ended up in bay 28. Today, if I was a member of the public the seats I wanted are available. In fact there are loads of seats available to the public.

Talk about getting shafted.

[AnnieH]

Whew.
Got my hot little ticket in my hot little hands.
Brewongle, Level 5, Sec 3, Row M.

[Meg]

No, Ticketek & a few other assets like Qudos Bank Arena were spun off Nine maybe eighteen months ago. Ticketek is now owned by an Asian private equity mob called Affinity Equity Partners.

Thanks for the information in a couple of your posts about the ticketing agencies which I found very interesting.

I didn't know that it was the venue that made the contract with the agency - although it now falls into place in my experience of booking both footy and cricket tickets. So this means my little plan of getting the AFL and Cricket Australia to set up their own ticketing agency would only work if they could convince the grounds (e.g. SCG) to use them (rather than Ticketek). And then the new ticketing agency would have to handle other events - e.g. Rolling Stones performing on the SCG. H'mmm.

But does it have to work like this? For example, I book tickets at the Opera House for theatre, opera and concerts using the three separate websites of the three different arts companies (all of which have easy to use ticketing selection, unlike Ticketek) - not through the Opera House itself.

[Danzar]

There is no reason why any ticket agency or promoter cannot have their own system that has venue specs. As for the venues, those machines that scan you in are just glorified barcode readers. They can be programmed to read any.


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[Untamed Snark]

I heard from a reliable source (me ) that ticketek is run by the same people that took care of the census recently...
Really does explain a lot

[KTigers]

The AFL & CA would not be prepared to spend the kind money required to develop the systems that say Ticketmaster has developed internationally over many years. The investment would be hundreds of millions of dollars. They would essentially be starting a new business from scratch and trying to compete with the existing major players who are large multinationals and who are already very established in the marketplace. Re the systems used by the arts companies, there is a considerable gap in the systems required to sell a few hundred tickets to a play and 50,000 tickets to a football game. There is this sense that the technology that allows you to sell thousands of tickets to footy games simultaneously in stadiums is widely available. It's not.

Thanks for the information in a couple of your posts about the ticketing agencies which I found very interesting.

I didn't know that it was the venue that made the contract with the agency - although it now falls into place in my experience of booking both footy and cricket tickets. So this means my little plan of getting the AFL and Cricket Australia to set up their own ticketing agency would only work if they could convince the grounds (e.g. SCG) to use them (rather than Ticketek). And then the new ticketing agency would have to handle other events - e.g. Rolling Stones performing on the SCG. H'mmm.

But does it have to work like this? For example, I book tickets at the Opera House for theatre, opera and concerts using the three separate websites of the three different arts companies (all of which have easy to use ticketing selection, unlike Ticketek) - not through the Opera House itself.

[Meg]

The AFL & CA would not be prepared to spend the kind money required to develop the systems that say Ticketmaster has developed internationally over many years. The investment would be hundreds of millions of dollars. They would essentially be starting a new business from scratch and trying to compete with the existing major players who are large multinationals and who are already very established in the marketplace. Re the systems used by the arts companies, there is a considerable gap in the systems required to sell a few hundred tickets to a play and 50,000 tickets to a football game.

I understand (and agree with all that) and wasn't being serious in my suggestion - rather it is an indication of my frustration about booking both football and cricket tickets that I muttered 'why don't they set up their own system?'. I was just interested in understanding the current situation and the hypothetical alternatives.

(And there are actually over 20,000 subscribers to the STC, all of whom can easily book up to 12 plays in three theatres choosing their own seats off seating plans as I did yesterday. So it's not just 'a few hundred tickets'. But I still agree with your overall point.)