Really they just play Bad Cop for the venues. Most of the "fees" that TM collects go right back to the people putting on the concert. It's really a great business model - clubs get to look like their tickets are cheaper than they actually are, and Ticketmaster gets a nice cut of pure profit.
Maybe that's part of it, but it's certainly not the whole story.
TicketMaster aren't only criticised for the various fees, though they do take flak for those and it will be interesting to see how the new European consumer rights laws that have been coming into effect recently will affect them.
TicketMaster also take flak because their experience for customers is so poor. For example, I've had to make special arrangements at considerable personal inconvenience to get into a venue because TicketMaster hadn't sent tickets that were ordered well in advance in time to arrive in the post before the day of the show. In my experience they are also among the worst e-mail spammers I have ever dealt with, completely ignoring any request to stop, and they have been all but impossible to contact so you can speak to a real person who can get problems fixed before they escalate.
I don't see how any of that is just playing bad cop for the venues. If the tickets hadn't turned up as promised and we hadn't been able to go, we would obviously have charged back the entire cost as well as thinking ill of all concerned and being less likely to try again another day, and the venue would have had empty seats and lost money.
My last experience booking with TicketMaster actually made my last experience flying with Ryanair look pleasant. Neither is something I'll be doing again any time soon.
Money quote: "Rather than ordering Tickets through the TM System, customers purchased Tickets to the Attractions in person at the Facility Box Office to avoid the prohibitive Convenience Charge. The effect on the Debtor of the increase in the Convenience Charge has resulted in a reduction in the Royalties that it receives due to a decrease in the number of Tickets sold through the TM System."
Apparently they were selling tickets at not quite break even, and depending on their cut of ticket master fees to turn a profit.
Aligns with my experience trying to avoid fees by buying in person. Usually there ends up being a "box office window" fee.
Lots of criticism in the comments so far. Maybe Ticketmaster is acquiring them in order to resurrect their bad reputation and improve their services. Or maybe that's just what they wrote on the checks to Eventjoy...
My guess is Ticketmaster was scared and bought them out before they became a big enough target to do big damage and creep into their main territory.
Eventjoy is less than a year old, probably received funding after YC and most startups raise for 18 months of runway which means unless something went terribly wrong they should still have a few months of runway before they raised their Series A. It's a perfect time to buy a company that's growing because after each round you have to pay that much more.
If Ticketmaster thought they were going to die, they would have let them.
P.S. I've also learned that there are usually two types of founder scenarios. 1.) the founders that are really passionate about a subject and have a lot of domain knowledge and they've made it their life goal to solve the problem they're going after. 2.) the founders found a niche or area that they believe they can solve but they aren't considering it their life's work. Yes there are tons of variations and exceptions but that's what I've seen the few years I've been around startups.
