Live Nation CEO On Amazon And Ticketmaster

Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino made it clear at a recent Goldman Sachs conference: Amazon is awesome but Ticketmaster is awesome too. 

“It’s Amazon; it’s obviously an incredible business. I give Jeff Bezos all the credit in the world,” Rapino told the conference Sept. 14, according to The Street. “But, I’m not going to give my front door away.”

Live Nation’s Ticketmaster dominates the ticketing landscape but, in August, Reuters reported that Amazon would court venue owners to switch to its new ticketing service and would likely contact sports teams and promoters to get access to tickets Ticketmaster didn’t sell.

Yet, even with Amazon’s superior foothold on technology, Rapino says it will have a tough time establishing a pulse in Ticketmaster’s market.

“We control 80 million tickets, we have a great software program,” Rapino said. “If Amazon wants to sell some of our tickets, if that makes the pot bigger for us, great.”