New program from BattlePass.com offers up-to-date event listings and money for MMA bloggers and website owners.

(OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE) BattlePass.com today announced the launch of a new affiliate marketing program that pays website publishers for referring ticket-buying visitors to the BattlePass.com website. Under the program, affiliates will be paid 35% of all net revenues collected by BattlePass.com for events ticketed through the BattlePass web site.

The program, the first of its kind for combat sports and MMA events, is also one of the first affiliate marketing programs to make real time RSS feeds available to website owners. By signing up with the affiliate program and implementing the BattlePass FightFeed®code, website owners can benefit from valuable, dynamic, and accurate content – the most comprehensive list of MMA fights and combat events on the internet – and make money for click-throughs that result in ticket sales. Publishers may also choose to carry provided graphic banners or text links to refer traffic to the BattlePass.com web site.

Signing up for the BattlePass affiliate program is free.

“The BattlePass affiliate program is going to be a win for everyone,” CEO Jeff Gale commented, “Website owners now have an easy way to monetize their sites and add a great section of relevant and updated MMA and combat events from the BattlePass FightFeed. MMA fans get better awareness of fights and events in their area.  And promoters can now instantly list their fights on BattlePass.com and have them spread across the BattlePass network of affiliates, exponentially increasing the exposure and credibility of their events.”

For details on the BattlePass Affiliate Program and instructions on how to sign up, please visit http://www.battlepass.com/battlepass/affiliate.aspx

About BattlePass.com: BattlePass.com carries the most extensive list of combat and MMA events and ticket information on the web today. Promoters can list their fights on BattlePass.com and the BattlePass affiliate network for free.  Additionally, promoters can get free ticketing and event marketing by signing up with BattlePass Pro, the only ticketing system custom built for MMA and combat events.

Wow. As we took the covers off of BattlePass Pro, our newest MMA Ticketing product earlier this week, we’ve seen the combat sports community react in an overwhelmingly positive way. It feels cool to launch a new product built specifically to the needs of the community of fight and combat event promoters, and we’re excited about the new partnerships and relationships we’ll form as a result of it. If you haven’t checked out BattlePass Pro yet, read the press release here and check out product details here.

Oh, and we’re offering free hard tickets to all promoters who sign up with BattlePass Pro this year, so if you’re in the market for a ticketing solution, check it out.

Because the TicketBiscuit core audience differs somewhat from the BattlePass core audience, we’ve decided to give BattlePass it’s very own blog. Starting now, we’ll carry all BattlePass-related news on http://buzz.battlepass.com. Not only will we feature product news and updates, but we’ll also feature in depth reviews and previews of fights that we ticket. It should be a very cool platform to expand the audience and awareness of our promoter clients,  so be sure to check it out.

Buzz.battlepass.com will carry all BattlePass related news from now on. Check it out!

Through the Music Liberation Fund, a TicketBiscuit initiative promoting music independence and diversity, TicketBiscuit will make a donation equal to all ticket fees from Georgia Theatre booked shows.

TicketBiscuit CEO Jeff Gale commented,”Wil [Greene] has been a great client, and we have enjoyed the privilege of working with the Georgia Theatre. The Music Liberation Fund exists to preserve independent venues like this, and we’re happy to help; we look forward to the day when the doors reopen.”

In addition to the benefit show on the 23rd, TicketBiscuit will donate ticket fee proceeds from the Perpetual Groove show on June 20 at the Classic Center, the upcoming  Very Disco  and Jenny Lewis shows on June 25 and July 1 at the 40 Watt, and The AthFest Shows at the Morton Theatre June 26 and 27.

 More Information on these upcoming shows can be found at http://www.georgiatheatre.com.
For More Information on TicketBiscuit, visit www.ticketbiscuit.com or www.musicliberationfund.org  .
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A twitter friend brought this to my attention last week. I was at the beach getting some much needed R and R but felt that I should weigh in on it today.

According to this article by Al Branch over at Ticket News, Ticketmaster is advancing bills in Florida and Minnesota that would effectively give them greater control over concert presales. You can read the full text of the article here. Now, just the fact that Ticketmaster is lobbying in support of legislation on the ticketing industry should be enough to scare you into action, but if not…

I visited the websites for both the Minnesota and Florida Legislature to get the text of the actual bills- you can view them by visiting the links below:

Minnesota HF 819: Internet Sale of Event Tickets

And

Florida CS/ HB 1287: Resale of Tickets (summary and full text)

Interestingly enough – there are two other bills making their way through Florida as well – SB 1962 (summary and full text) and SB 2074 (summary and full text).

For those of you uninterested in navigating the legalese, I will simplify the gist of the legislation:

Ticketmaster is making a power grab to limit ticket presales and re-sells unless authorized by the primary ticket seller – in many cases, Ticketmaster. So Ticketmaster, in the midst of trying to establish a monopoly on the national scale, is now simultaneously looking to eliminate competition in the presale space and eliminate the reseller market altogether.

For those of you who aren’t savvy in this space, “presales” are tickets that go on sale before they are made available to the general public, often going on sale to, for example, fan clubs. They have been an established component of the concert industry for decades, but now Ticketmaster wants them stopped. Check this language in Florida HB 1287: “requiring that a person or entity that offers to sell or resell over the internet tickets to specified public entertainment or amusement events of any kind may not offer tickets for sale until such tickets have first been offered for sale via an event-provider –authorized outlet or offering.” The Minnesota bill has a similar anti-presale tilt: “The initial seller shall not divert tickets from the initial sale to be sold in any other manner.”

In other words, if Ticketmaster doesn’t feel like allowing a presale in Florida, it won’t happen. In Minnesota, it will be ILLEGAL to have presales.

There is also language in these bills that prevents or limits tickets from entering the secondary market. While in theory (and to the average state legislator) this sounds great, it sets a dangerous precedent. Some of you may recall many moons ago when I blogged about the Seven Principles of the Ticketing Industry. Principle four is what we see in action here- “Where there are nuisances, there are regulators.” It is dastardly (and again, should cause concern) that the very same company causing all of the nuisances is the one driving regulators to action. Of course, the well paid Ticketmaster lobbyists are keeping the true grim future scenario out of the minds of the regulators deciding the fate of the issue, as seen in Florida, where the bill has passed unanimously through two committees so far. If successful, Ticketmaster will both outlaw presales and resells, gaining a pretty tight death grip on the large entertainment venues of Florida and Minnesota.

So, if you live in Florida and occasionally buy tickets to live events, read HB 1287
(it won’t take long) and get in touch with the members of the General Government Policy Council Pronto. They are listed here: http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Committees/committeesdetail.aspx?CommitteeId=2469 . At least contact Representative Troutman and let him know that this legislation deserves further scrutiny and revision. Ditto for you Minnesotans: http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/members/hmem.asp

The answer to scalping is NOT to limit presales or introduce harmful regulation into this industry. The bottom line is this: scalping takes place because the face value of some tickets is significantly lower than the market value. Until all parties involved can agree on how to make these two values close enough at onsale to discourage scalpers, the practice will continue.

In related news: The Grateful Dead may have introduced a solution to this problem. What do you think?

Last week both the House and Senate committees grilled panelists including Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff and Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino about the impending merger. Bill Wyman (@hitsville), myself (@ticketbiscuit) and a handful of others covered the events via twitter. You can check out the live stream here and here.

The Senate session was brutal. Seth Hurwitz of IMP Productions and Jerry Mickleson of JAM laid into the behemoth companies like cold assassins, and both Azoff and Rapino stayed on the defensive most of the time. The overwhelming feeling coming out of this session was that the merger would be very bad for independent promoters.

My favorite part of this session was when one audience member said to a panelist (probably Hurwitz) – ‘Dude, you were under oath!” After the cameras had quit rolling but the mics were still on. One telling moment was when Mickelson approached Azoff after the hearings in a sort of détente manner, assuming him that the testimony was not a personal attack. It is clear where the power is currently, and the consequences of upsetting the forces that be (see Pearl Jam).

Then came the House session, and it looked like Rapino had taken a crash course from Dale Carnegie. He was much more polished and convincing, helped somewhat by the undereducated committee and their softball inquiries. Robert W. Doyle, a partner with Doyle, Barlow & Mazard in DC had some excellent sound bytes, but despite his eloquent words and pointed delivery, I came out of this session pretty convinced that the merger will pass muster and Live Nation Entertainment will be born.

My favorite part of this session was when Peter Luukko (President of Comcast-Spectacor) was attempting to show that because he has his own in-house ticketing system, that Ticketmaster does not have a stranglehold on the primary market. Upon continued grilling, he revealed that his ticketing system is Paciolan, owned by Ticketmaster. Of course, the panel didn’t pounce on this, to my dismay.

Notably missing from both sessions were the voices of the artists, venues, and fans. Because of the softball treatment from the committees, and due in part to the absence of these voices, I think the merger will happen. Here’s what to expect:

 
• Ticketmaster will jettison TicketsNow. I think they will have to for approval. And I think Azoff is cool with the idea. Joe Lewi (@eventpromoter) posted to his blog that he expects this as well.
  

 

• Live Nation Entertainment will try to do some cool things with the “Amazon” storefront concept- that you can buy tickets, songs, merchandise, etc. through one portal. Rapino mentioned this in his testimony. This will be convenient, but customers should also expect to pay for this convenience. Charging for convenience is how these guys make money. Since this whole move is about control, LNE will try to build / buy a competitor in the music distribution space. They will not even approach Apple’s market share because the interface will suck.
  
• Rapino seemed to gain some support in the house hearing when he said that the new company would hire people, instead of laying folks off. The committee didn’t ask him if the new jobs would be American jobs. In fact, a source of mine, a former Ticketmaster employee, shared that Rapino’s claim was unequivocally false. According to the source, Ticketmaster has been outsourcing both development and QA activities to their Shenzen office, which opened in January of 2008 – and the new development jobs will likely be in China instead of the US, since the Chinese only demand about 30% of the salary of their US counterpart.
  
• The market will striate – with LNE owning the “top end” arenas and amphitheatres, and the middle market pursued aggressively by viable ticketing competitors such as ourselves. LNE will soon look to expand its footprint in the middle market as growth on the top end stagnates, and fears will resurface regarding their abuse of leverage.
  
• Ticket prices will not come down. This merger never was about what is good for the fans. It is about control and profit, plain and simple. Convenience fees will probably go away, but ticket prices will increase to compensate for the lost revenue.
  

 

A question I get often is: what does this mean for us (TicketBiscuit)? From a business perspective, the news of this merger has had positive effects. Venues and promoters are looking for options. They see that this much centralization of power is not good for the overall ecosystem. With our Music Liberation Fund, we’re removing the risk of switching away from Ticketmaster. And, we’re the only ticketing company continuing to invest, daily, in tools that help our clients sell more tickets. It’s always been our position to compete well, execute flawlessly, and do the right thing for our clients. And we’ll do that, merger or not.

A colleague forwarded me this article today – apparently Spirit Airline is considering making customers pay for the privilege of booking tickets anywhere other than their ticket counters in airports.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123604492886515417.html

Wow. Spirit must have some Ticketmaster folks on its board.

This is effing hilarious, and a good example of why the air travel industry is in such dire straits. I assume that Spirit Airlines either has paid up front costs for their reservation system or pays an annual licensing fee, but I doubt the cost ties directly to usage volume. I further suppose that the costs incurred by having ticket counter agents and space at airports exceeds the costs of the online reservation system.

So the airline is, in effect, penalizing consumers for utilizing a more efficient means of transaction. WTF? I can follow (but not necessarily agree with) the thinking behind charging fees for checked baggage or in flight refreshments. These things drive up costs. But not online booking.

What if other industries followed suit? Fees for online banking? For booking hotels online? For using the drive thru at restaurants? For pumping your own gas?

The parallels to live entertainment are obvious. I have often wondered why so few promoters and venues choose to flip the common fee arrangement on its head. That is, charge fees for a box office (ticket counter) sale but offer incentives (no fees) to purchase online. We have a couple of clients who do business this way, and their online sales represent over 90% of their total ticket sales. Self Service is more efficient.
If customers and computers are doing the work, it frees up your resources to grow the business. Our system is one of the few ticketing systems out there with the flexibility to allow venues and promoters to set the fee structure that their customers see (completely independent of the per ticket fees we charge for providing ticketing services). In essence, it empowers businesses to encourage the self service option.

It’s time for more businesses to embrace a shifting paradigm. Encourage the efficient transaction and grow your business the right way, instead of taking the easy route and squeezing your customers who self serve.

Oh, and Spirit, if you guys want to REALLY grow revenues, you should try an online check-in fee, a boarding fee, or even a “seat bottom cushion flotation device” fee.

Geez.

Dear musicians, promoters, managers, artists, and especially fans:

Tonight I read this breaking news on the Wall Street Journal Online:

Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc. and Live Nation Inc. are close to a merger, people familiar with the matter said, in a deal that would consolidate two of the most powerful forces in the music industry under one roof.

The newly created company would be called Live Nation Ticketmaster, and would combine the world’s biggest concert promoter with the world’s dominant ticketing and artist-management company.

Recent shady and allegedly crooked activity on the part of TicketMaster through their subsidiary TicketsNow just further reinforces the inkling that many live entertainment fans have had for a couple of decades: this company seems to care little if at all for the fans. And how much of those ridiculous fees are they sharing with you, promoters? Artists? 

As for Live Nation, there was a glint of hope as they released their ticketing platform earlier this year. Then there was the Phish incident, along with those damn familiar and ludicrously high fees, which served as the one two punch of reality, letting us know that superpowers in this industry have all of their own interests aligned, and they are not with us.

The good news is, there are companies out there founded by, staffed by, and driven by live entertainment fanatics who appreciate the entire experience. This new generation of entrepreneurs is unbridled by the old way of doing business, unencumbered by overhead, and as disenfranchised and tired of the superpowers as you are. So to the musicians, venues, and promoters, here is our plea to you:

Say NO to MasterNation. Don’t buy it. get out, do research on other ticketing providers. Check us out, of course. But don’t stop there. Check out Capterra for a directory, or Google. I guarantee you’ll be surprised. Innovations like social media ticketing, viral marketing tools, and mobile ticketing are all within your reach. And ticket fees? We let YOU control them. Hell, you don’t even have to charge service fees if you don’t want to.

Visit http://www.ticketbiscuit.com, Call 866.757.8330 or email info@ticketbiscuit.com. Say NO to MasterNation and YES to the future of live entertainment.

To the fans, please realize the importance of activism here. Encourage your favorite venue, promoters, and artists to say no to MasterNation. 

Stay tuned for more updates.

Back in July, when the IPhone 3G launched, I wrote about the future of Mobile Ticketing. In October, Juniper Research released a study estimating that by 2013 over 400 million users worldwide will choose to purchase tickets over their mobile device. I think that number will be higher, partially because of the ongoing convergence of mobile devices and the PC, partially because of the increasing proliferation of cell phones, and partially because today, TicketBiscuit released our Mobile Ticketing software, and made it available to all of our clients free of charge.

Wait, what? Oh, yes. TicketBiscuit becomes one of the first ticketing providers in the nation to release this technology, and the absolute first to make it free.

For our clients, this means that they get a mobile optimized version of the TicketBiscuit powered pages on their website.

For our clients’ customers, this means they can now buy tickets using their cell phone, or handy, or celly, or piece, depending on where you’re from.

Check out the video release below.

If you want to see the mobile software in action, point your smartphone to any of these sites and click the “buy tickets” link

www.exitin.com

www.thebottletree.com

www.minglewoodhall.com

or check out any of our other clients’ websites. If your favorite club isn’t feeling the TicketBiscuit love yet, send them our way.

Today TicketNews posted a story about the soft rollout of Live Nation Ticketing, signaling that the giant’s move away from Ticketmaster is still on course. Since Ticketmaster has extensive long term contracts in the industry, the move will take time. As one Live Nation insider put it, it won’t be like “flipping a switch.”

So Live Nation enters the event ticketing space. As a competitor of ours, I had to go check out their system. Live Nation partnered with German-based CTS Eventim to develop the interface, and on the surface it is clean and elegant. They even have a java powered seat selector like the one we feature, although ours is a bit easier to use, I think (of course that assertion is free of bias).

The event I checked out was a Temptations concert in New York. On a $66 dollar ticket the fees were over $15. High, sure, but being in New York there are probably facility fees and parking fees rolled into that amount.

Then I went through the purchase process, and was forced to create an account and provide personal info (including phone number?!?!?!) before I could complete the purchase. This is where we start to see the cloak lift, and as the industry moves away from ticketing fees as a primary source of revenue we can see that they have their intentions aimed squarely at advertising.

Look at the event page- There is a prominent Citi Cards ad. The venue is The Capitol One Bank Theater at Westbury. Rest assured after you buy tickets you’re going to get pummeled with direct mail and email from “Live Nation Partners.” The beast feeds the beast.

I’m glad Ticketmaster now has a big name competitor, but I hardly think this is good for the business. The “360” or “all inclusive” deals that Live Nation and Ticketmaster have been making recently are engineered to squeeze every last cent out of the live entertainment marketplace. Exploit the big acts and venues at the expense of the customer.  Only play our acts on the radio. Sell your CD in Wal Mart. It will be a semi-profitable bloodbath between the two companies for a while, until the mass public finally realizes they’re being force fed garbage like the Pussycat Dolls and starts to embrace real music again. 

Real music won’t be dead. It will be at venues like WorkPlay, or Minglewood Hall, or Exit In. It will be at the local 1200 seat clubs being created passionately by folks who are actually good at it, listened to by folks who appreciate it, and yes, bought by those who value it.

The future of the business looks a bit like the past.

We’ve said this since, oh -2001. Why do companies break the ticket fee out in a line item to consumers? I’ve blogged about it on several occasions, but our general feeling is that “convenience fees” are hated by customers. I personally helped work the call center for an event recently, and more than one person expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that fees were charged at all.

Now, the company who trained consumers to hate convenience charges by systematically defrauding and flogging them for the past two decades has decided to swipe a page from our playbook. You can read the article here, but basically, TM is trying an “all in” ticketing price. The article implies that this was the idea of Irving Azoff, the high powered new CEO of Ticketmaster Entertainment who joined the company when Front Line Management merged with Ticketmaster earlier this year. They will test the strategy on the upcoming Eagles concert tour.

I tried to buy Eagles tickets for the “Hell Freezes over” tour back around 1994, Tickets were $90 for nosebleed seats at BJCC. I can imagine once you factor in all of the TicketMaster fees this time around you may drop two or three benjamins to see Glen, Don, and the crew phone in your favorites.

Regardless, this is a good idea. I have no doubt that Ticketmaster will see better numbers with this experiment, and this may become their standard operating practice in the future.

So let’s see- in the past couple of months Ticketmaster has:

• Merged with FrontLine Management in a copycat strategy to address LiveNation
• Renamed the company to reflect the acquisition
• Named a new CEO, and
• Changed their ticketing strategy

Seems like straw-grasping to me. In their quarterly revenue report, Ticketmaster showed that revenues dropped 76% from the quarter earlier. The economic downturn is hurting them (as it is most live entertainment businesses) and they are trying to respond. Will any of their responses benefit musicians or music fans?  Probably not.