Ticketmaster Revamping Early Ticket Access

The New York Times is reporting Ticketmaster will introduce a revamped system for handling ticketing services like V.I.P. packages and early allotments at a New York City event today, Oct. 5.

The event is said to gather musicians’ managers at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn to apparently do away with the industry accepted norm of acts allowed to sell around eight percent of tickets through fan clubs, etc.

“A growing number of managers say Ticketmaster has lately been enforcing archaic rules about what counts as a fan club, making it harder for bands to obtain these tickets and work with third-party companies that specialize in these packages,” says the paper’s Ben Sisario talking to Traci Thomas, manager of Jason Isbell. “Among Ticketmaster’s more irksome requirements, several managers said, were that an artist’s website must have a chat room — which they say is an anachronism in the age of social media.

“For Ticketmaster, which last year sold $23 billion in tickets, these fan club sales represent a negligible amount of income, particularly for midlevel acts like [Isbell]. But they are part of a growing market of ticket services that Ticketmaster and Live Nation have moved into aggressively.”

So far, the paper notes complaints over fan club tickets have been mostly confined to smaller acts, with only a few managers speaking publicly.

Since its Live Nation merger in 2010, Ticketmaster has been in a state of flux in an effort to capture more revenue from the ticketing sphere.