Ticketmaster is the dominant primary ticket provider for major entertainment events in the United States. Founded in 1976, Ticketmaster sells tickets for concerts, sports competitions, theater shows, and other live entertainment events. It has a near-monopoly in the primary ticket sales market, with exclusive contracts with many major venues and artists. However, Ticketmaster does have some major competitors trying to take a piece of the lucrative ticket sales business.
AXS
One of Ticketmaster’s biggest competitors is AXS. AXS was founded in 2011 as a subsidiary of Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), one of the largest owners of entertainment venues and sports teams in the world. AEG venues include the Staples Center, The O2 in London, and the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Shanghai among dozens of others. AXS provides ticketing services for all AEG-owned venues and events, giving it a significant position in the live entertainment ticketing marketplace.
AXS has several features aimed at directly competing with Ticketmaster. Its website and mobile apps allow for simplified ticket purchasing with interactive seat maps and paperless ticket delivery. AXS has focused on technological innovation, being one of the first ticketing companies to offer paperless ticketing through electronic tickets on customers’ mobile devices. It also provides ticket resale services through secondary ticket marketplaces like StubHub.
While AXS may not have the overwhelming market share and brand recognition of Ticketmaster, its association with AEG gives it a strong footing in the ticketing industry by servicing AEG venues. According to AEG, AXS sells over 50 million tickets annually for more than 10,000 shows and events. As AEG continues to expand its venue portfolio, AXS will likely continue growing as a major Ticketmaster competitor.
SeatGeek
SeatGeek is another growing player looking to challenge Ticketmaster’s dominance. Launched in 2009, SeatGeek is a mobile-focused ticket marketplace bringing technological innovation to ticket sales. SeatGeek allows customers to search for, compare, and purchase tickets from both primary ticket sellers and secondary ticket exchanges like StubHub.
A key feature of SeatGeek is its interactive seat maps with Deal Score technology. This system rates each seat based on its value using factors like ticket price and seat location. SeatGeek’s Deal Score and interactive maps make it easy for customers to find the best seats for their budget. The company has also focused heavily on mobile ticket integration, partnering with venues to allow completely mobile ticket transactions without needing to print paper tickets.
While SeatGeek still has a small share of the primary ticket market, it has grown rapidly since its founding. It has raised over $190 million in funding, has ticket resale partnerships with the NFL and MLS, and became the official ticketing partner of the Dallas Cowboys in 2019. If SeatGeek can continue expanding its primary ticketing partnerships, it may be able to significantly eat into Ticketmaster’s market share in the coming years.
Ticketfly
Ticketfly is a ticketing service tailored specifically to concerts and live events at small- and medium-sized venues. Founded in 2008 and acquired by Eventbrite in 2017, Ticketfly sells tickets for over 2,000 concert venues, nightclubs, and festivals across North America. Some of Ticketfly’s notable venue partners include the Brooklyn Bowl, the Troubadour in Los Angeles, and the 930 Club in Washington D.C.
Ticketfly aims to provide an easy-to-use ticketing and event management platform for venues that lack the resources and technology of larger arenas and stadiums. It offers features like customizable event pages, fan club presales, marketing tools, and mobile ticket delivery. While Ticketmaster dominates ticketing for major touring acts in large venues, Ticketfly has successfully carved out a niche providing ticketing services to independent venues and up-and-coming bands.
According to Ticketfly, it sells around 50 million tickets per year and hosts over 8,000 events per week on its platform. So while it does not compete with Ticketmaster in terms of market share, Ticketfly has established itself as a go-to ticketing provider in the independent music space. As it continues expanding its venues and artist roster, Ticketfly may begin encroaching more significantly onto Ticketmaster’s turf.
Bandsintown
Bandsintown is a concert discovery app that allows music fans to track their favorite artists’ events and buy tickets. Launched in 2009, Bandsintown has over 60 million registered users and maintains a database of concerts, festivals, and other shows for over 500,000 artists around the world. When users follow artists on Bandsintown, they receive notifications as soon as new tour dates and ticket on-sales are announced.
In recent years, Bandsintown has been expanding beyond just an event discovery app by integrating primary ticket sales. Through partnerships with venues and promoters, Bandsintown now offers direct ticketing links on artist pages that take users to Ticketmaster, AXS, or other providers to purchase tickets. Essentially serving as a bridge between fans and ticketing platforms, Bandsintown eases the ticket buying process by connecting engaged music fans with concert tickets.
Bandsintown has accumulated a massive user base and music community. If it can convert more of its users into ticket buyers through further ticketing partnerships, Bandsintown’s already significant reach will make it a player in the live events ticketing space. The company was acquired by Live Nation in 2021, the world’s largest event promoter and Ticketmaster’s parent company. This now gives Bandsintown even greater opportunities to potentially integrate with Ticketmaster itself.
Other Competitors
In addition to these major contenders, there are a range of other companies nibbling away at Ticketmaster’s market dominance:
- Eventbrite – An independent primary and secondary ticketing platform focused on smaller music venues, independent promoters, and niche events.
- eTix – Provides white-label ticketing services for venues, theaters, minor league sports teams, and more.
- TickPick – A no-fee secondary ticket marketplace competing with StubHub.
- TodayTix – Focuses on last-minute discounted tickets to Broadway shows, concerts, comedy acts, and other city events.
- Lyte – Specializes in waitlisting and ticket transfers for sold out events.
While each of these competitors has a small fraction of Ticketmaster’s market share, they demonstrate an opportunity for companies with innovative models to chip away at parts of Ticketmaster’s ticketing empire.
Ticketmaster’s Enduring Strengths
Despite this growing competition, Ticketmaster still has some key advantages that will make it difficult for any single company to unseat its dominant position in ticketing:
- Unparalleled brand recognition – Ticketmaster has been a household name in event ticketing for over 40 years.
- Exclusive agreements – Ticketmaster maintains exclusive ticketing agreements with many major venues, promoters, leagues, and teams that competitors cannot access.
- Marketplace scale – Ticketmaster has an enormous volume of ticket inventory and site traffic that makes competitor marketplaces less attractive to consumers.
- Data and analytics – Enormous amounts of sales data give Ticketmaster key insights into event demand, pricing, and more.
- Financial muscle – Being owned by well-capitalized Live Nation allows Ticketmaster to make strategic acquisitions and invest heavily in technology.
These structural advantages have helped Ticketmaster maintain around 80% market share of the primary ticket sales business despite two decades of disruption attempts by online companies like Ticketfly and SeatGeek. Competitors may continue to erode Ticketmaster’s stranglehold in niche areas, but unseating its commanding overall position will likely remain an uphill battle.
Conclusion
Ticketmaster sits alone at the top of the event ticketing world, but competitors like AXS, SeatGeek, and Ticketfly have been able to successfully carve out niches in venues, markets, and events where Ticketmaster is less dominant. These companies will likely continue to expand their footprints by focusing on areas like mobile ticketing and technology where Ticketmaster has been slower to innovate.
However, Ticketmaster’s brand power, exclusive deals, vast resources, and decades of consumer data make it unlikely that there will be a single “Ticketmaster killer” anytime soon. The massive scale required to replicate Ticketmaster’s capabilities make it more likely its reign will be gradually chipped away rather than abruptly ended. An oligopoly with 2 or 3 major ticketing platforms seems a more plausible outcome than a new monopoly player.
In the end, vibrant competition in the ticketing industry will be a win for consumers and venues. As technology continues evolving the live events experience, Ticketmaster will be pushed to improve its own products and services or risk losing more ground. While it will remain the 800-pound gorilla, Ticketmaster will likely need to modernize its offerings to keep its dominant perch as challengers nip at its heels.
