Even eventbrite didn’t need square readers, people mostly buy their tickets in advance. Maybe it’s for event organizers to upsell at the event to attendees?
Maybe this is a play to demonstrate investment in black community, as someone else mentioned?
They are positioned to own not only how people transact in person, but who will be doing those transactions, where, and when.
Imagine they roll out a data product to their merchants that shows an Uber Hot-Spots style dataset of sales, demand, and trends in both merchandise and the wild psychographics you can learn from a music service.
I'm curious about that, because everyone I know that has had to pay the Ticketmaster tax hates them. Many artists are vocal about their hate as well.
I assume there's a reason venues continue to use them exclusively, which makes me think Ticketmaster's grasp on the industry is fragile enough that it'll break once there's enough momentum behind an alternative.
Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster, had operating income of $325M on $11.5B in revenue in 2019[1]. That’s less than 3% margin.
Most of the “Ticketmaster Tax” is going to the artist or venue, who get to offload any displeasure onto a convenient third party for a small fee.
[1] https://www.livenationentertainment.com/2020/02/live-nation-...