ON SECOND THOUGHTS… JON CHAPPLE DIVES HEADFIRST INTO THE SOMETIMES MURKY, OFTEN CONTROVERSIAL, BUT ALWAYS FASCINATING WORLD OF SECONDARY TICKETING.
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here is perhaps no aspect of the international live music business that evokes such passion and apathy in equal measures as that of secondary ticketing. It would be no exaggeration to say that the growth in online ticket resale is one of the biggest stories of the past ten years in our industry. Almost everyone has an opinion on the economics and ethics of the secondary market (running the gamut from that of honest businesses providing a necessary service, to devils incarnate ripping off hard-working fans,
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with most falling somewhere between the two). And yet, for many, it’s an issue that’s been done to death. Whatever your take, one thing that can’t be ignored is that ticket resale is big business – and getting bigger.
A DREAM TICKET? Every major secondary ticket outlet for which there is publicly available financial data posted positive results in 2015, not least overall market leader Ticketmaster, which had a recordbreaking year. The Live Nation-owned behemoth shifted over 530 million
tickets worldwide, with much of the growth coming from its secondary platforms – such as TicketsNow and TicketsExchange in North America, the UK’s Get Me In! and Seatwave in Europe – which collectively experienced an increase of 34% in gross transaction value (GTV) to $1.2billion (€1.1bn). The trend has continued throughout 2016 so far: Ticketmaster’s first-quarter (Q1) 2016 results reported an incredible 43% jump in GTV from resold tickets in the three months from 1 January to 31 March, contributing to