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Indeed, look at their filings:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1335258/000119312512...

LOL: "Competition in the live entertainment industry is intense. We believe that we compete primarily on the basis of our ability to deliver quality music products, sell tickets and provide enhanced fan and artist experiences. We believe that our primary strengths include:

[...]

• ticketing software and services;

[...] "




"Competition... is intense", hah.

TicketMaster's big advantage is that competition between venues isn't intense. Smaller cities will generally only have 1-2 venues of a decently large size, especially if you require things like alcohol licenses and permission to stay open late at night.

In any market where opening a new competitor was easy, someone would be fighting TicketMaster on prices and services. But since they deal in heavy venue lock-in, and opening new venues is essentially impossible (hi there, zoning laws), they get to gouge basically everyone involved.


Wow what did they do in 2009 to 2010 to increase their customer database from 25 million to 96 million?


Merged with Live Nation.




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