Ben McConnell has some recommendations for the big time concert promoters, artists, promoters, and the ticketing industry:
Summer concert attendance this year was dismal, according to the Wall Street Journal. The most likely culprit is overpriced tickets. The full year may be off by as much as 40 percent.Clearly, some fans will pay $350 to watch Madonna live; more power to her. But for the majority of music lovers, most artists are pricing themselves out of the market. Concert promoters exacerbate the phenomenon by agreeing to too-high guarantees, and most lose money if they don't come close to selling out. Why should ticket prices for a show at Madison Square Garden be exactly the same at the Mayo Civic Center in Rochester, Minnesota?
One potential solution to flagging attendance: Let the marketplace decide the value of artists' concerts at each venue via auction.
In an auction-based system, fans and artists see the real-time value of their future performances, location by location. Fan communities and fast-moving word of mouth are the key players here: Remarkable, buzz-worthy performances early in a tour could subsequently drive up bids for future tour dates. An auction-driven ticket system is a transparent solution to what's perceived to be a too-opaque industry. A fairer system means more access for a larger community of evangelists.
If eBay were to enter the concert ticket business, it might even compel Ticketmaster to lower its exceptionally high service charges, too.
I'd have to agree. Ticket sales would be a perfect business for ebay or even amazon or yahoo auctions to get into. Or even a small upstart with some clever "word-of-mouth" techniques for promotion. Ticketmaster/IAC has a lock on this market. They even have the low end concert (mid-sized venues) locked up pretty well with TicketWeb.
But, this area is ripe for some innovation. And although the Ticketmaster hegemony is locked up with long -term contracts and an awesomely scalable online ticketing and boxoffice management backend, there are lots of companies working on each of these pieces. And the pieces are getting cheaper and cheaper to hobble together.
I've pitched some major tours/major venues on using some of WhizSpark's services to promote shows/sell tickets, but haven't had anyone take a bite yet. Soon, we'll be announcing a little project to test the waters with big time concert pre-ticketed shows. We will definitely be letting the market have what they want: low priced tickets. And even some zero priced tickets.
Beat that!
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