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Comment by smallnamespace | Hacker News Reader

Ticketmaster either owns or has deals with all the venues. I wouldn't be surprised if all those deals specified exclusivity.

No venue will switch to a new entrant unless the new entrant can guarantee the same demand, so you have the normal chicken and egg program.

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Of course the venues use exclusive deals. It would be foolish to try and maintain multiple ticketing systems, extra overhead with no benefit.

The venues provide the demand, not the ticketing system. The venues will use the ticketing system they can get the best pricing from.

Yeah, but I would think there's a corner of the market that TM doesn't have yet...maybe the really small venues. Start with those as MVP/proof of concept and then "wow" the medium venues, repeat.

There are a handful of smaller companies that have enough market share to be relevant. Ticketfly comes to mind. Parent mentioned an important point: Ticketmaster is owned by Live Nation, which also owns many of the venues (eg, the entire House of Blues chain). Independent venues are becoming more scarce, especially at the 500+ capacity size.

I've tried and failed in this space. In your MVP, you have to be relatively feature complete and be ready to handle chargebacks, CC processing, customer service, and be willing to sustain on whatever price you set as the surcharge -- the established players are often "free" to the venue.

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