In today’s ongoing coverage in the world of Live Nation, Billboard is reporting that Live Nation has teamed up with Starwood Resorts on a multi-year deal to offer its Starwood Preferred Guest members “access to ticket offers, premium seating, backstage access at concerts and other things.” In return, Starwood Resorts will serve as the official hotel partner for certain Live Nation venues.
The article also states “Live Nation, which recently launched an in-house ticketing platform, will direct concertgoers to Starwood hotels on the “Where to Stay” pages on livenation.com. Likewise, Starwood plans to help drive Live Nation ticket sales by offering online and in-room television exposure across its chain of hotels.”
Billboard is also reporting that Live Nation has also worked out a multi-year deal with CBS Radio to promote approximately 12,000 concerts Live Nation offers, as well as collaborate on events.
Last week, Billboard also ran an interview with Live Nation’s Ticketing CEO, Nathan Hubbard. The interview occurred prior to the Phish ticketing onsale last weekend. Here is a snippet of the interview:
Billboard: How’s the ticketing business?
Nathan Hubbard: It’s holding up. We just underwent the largest ticketing migration in the history of the business and we’re still standing. We’re not taking any victory laps yet, but we feel really good about the system we have in place and we feel really good about the sales. We’ve put some big shows on the system and it has held up very well.
We really tried to focus ourselves on the fact that every other ticketing system in the history of the world has had one client called the box office manager. We really get to be the first ticketing company that can focus on the fan and in order to do that we had to get to par. Our objective was to try to replace what we had and get to par, and then from there we could really start to innovate and use this platform to change the industry.
BB: What have you learned in the ramp-up of Live Nation Ticketing?
NH: You really get underneath and understand what a complex e-commerce challenge e-ticketing is. It’s not like selling something on eBay or an airline or hotel ticket. You’ve got 500,000 people who want 5,000 pieces of inventory that are all unique and that all go on sale at the same time at 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning. That is a very difficult, complicated challenge. The last year for us has been about not yet reinventing the wheel but building a wheel that looks about the same so we can figure out how to take it apart and put it back together again.
BB: Is the Saturday morning on-sale model going to be relevant for the future?
NH: I don’t think so. I think Saturday at 10 a.m. is not the best time to put tickets on sale. It’s a legacy of a time when people were working and couldn’t go to their retail outlets or pick up the phone and call. One of the things we’re going to do is attack the notion of a 10 a.m. Saturday on-sale and that first-come, first-served approach to getting tickets, only because that isn’t always the most equitable way to get the right ticket at the right price in the hands of the right fan.
Given Hubbard’s view of finding an “equitable way to get the right ticket at the right price in the hands of the right fan,” this fan would be interested in knowing what he feels the right price is and what type of fan is the “right fan.” I’ll leave that can of worms for another day.
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I’m not sure what he means either. The idea that the best tickets are all released at 10:00 is silly. I’ve seen plenty of times where there’s nothing worth buying (I’m picky) and then 10 minutes later I get floors.
For other shows, I’ve seen so-so tickets for a period of time and then all of a sudden rows 1-15 are available.
In the end, there is no fair way to do it. No matter what they do, the brokers will figure out how to work the system to their advantage, just like when a band I like is going to tour, I figure out how I can work the system to my advantage.
There’s always away, you just have to figure out how to do it….IME, it changes all the time and varies based on where you live.