Jared Smith Responds To Senators’ Letter For Rapino

Ticketmaster
 – Ticketmaster

Ticketmaster president Jared Smith responded on behalf of Michael Rapino Oct. 5 to the letter sent by two senators regarding TM’s TradeDesk platform and its relationship with brokers.

Smith opens the letter, obtained in full by Pollstar, by explaining that he is best positioned to answer the senators’ original questions addressed to LN CEO Michael Rapino regarding purchasing limits, TradeDesk and the company’s relationship with resellers. 

“Let me start by assuring you that Ticketmaster does not have, and has never had, any product or program that allows ticket scalpers, or anyone else, to buy tickets ahead of fans and circumvent the policies we have on our site regarding on-line ticket purchasing limits,” Smith writes in the introduction.

Smith goes on to address the senators questions regarding ticket limits, bot protection, OTL limit processes, new technologies, TradeDesk and the role of its Professional Reseller Handbook, among other aspects of its business.

Prior to the letter, Ticketmaster announced Oct. 4 its intention to participate in a Federal Trade Commission workshop on online ticketing in March 2019 to educate consumers and lawmakers on various aspects of the ticketing industry.
The Senators’ questions were prompted by investigative reports by the Toronto Star and the CBC that dug deeply into the company’s relationship with professional ticket resellers. A key element of the reports was video of a Ticketmaster employee from the Ticket Summit in Las Vegas essentially telling undercover reporters the resale division would not enforce terms and conditions from the primary side.
Some brokers had “a couple of hundred Ticketmaster accounts,” and “I think our biggest broker right now has probably grabbed around five million [tickets],” a TM rep told the reporters. The reports also pointed out the existence of TM’s TradeDesk platform, which is available for use by brokers after approval and registration.

Patrick Ryan (whose company, Eventellect, manages ticket inventory on Ticketmaster Resale, StubHub, SeatGeek, and all the leading ticket platforms) said the articles and senators’ questions bespoke an incomplete understanding of all that TM does in the current ecosystem to control bad actors.
“Ticketmaster has always held its suppliers’ [standards] above all others,” he told Pollstar. “You had to have the ticket in hand. Not just by and large – always – they made sure the inventory was valid, they made sure it was in the person’s possession. They went to great lengths to prevent bad broker behavior.”
Brett Goldberg, co-CEO and co-founder of TickPick, told Pollstar it’s tough for marketplaces to set rules about who can or cannot resell tickets.

“If someone gets more than eight tickets in a legal way, is that violating the limit? It would be extremely challenging for [the marketplace] to police that. Say there are five friends who have season tickets, and one of them is pretty good at buying tickets and selling them. Those guys and gals pool [phone numbers and credit cards] and create a brokerage. They share their TM resale platform and have five accounts. Are they breaking the rules?

“Sometimes, you have aggregated companies that represent tons of people. [Someone] could go to a broker and say, ‘I have season tickets. I want to go to these games, but you can manage the rest of them. Here is access to my account, sell these for me.’ Should that be legal or wrong, for brokers to help season ticket holders sell their tickets?”
Smith’s letter answers the Senators’ questions regarding TradeDesk, stating that the platform is simply Ticketmaster’s version of inventory management and point-of-sale tools that competitors have used for years, and that TM’s purchasing limits and other terms in its seller agreement still very much apply to its users.
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