Ticketmaster Opens Italian Office

Ticketmaster has opened an office in Milan, Italy, where it expects to take part in a growing live entertainment business that is estimates to reach 19m sold tickets by 2020.  

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The Live Nation company continues its European expansion. In the beginning of this year, Ticketmaster bought Ticketpro in the Czech Republic and in summer it launched in Switzerland through a strategic partnership with tixtec.

Ticketmaster now operates in 29 markets. Ticketmaster’s president international Mark Yovich described Italy as “one of the world’s most vibrant and popular destinations for live entertainment and cultural events,” adding, “this was an organic move for the business.”

The first major event where Ticketmaster will be selling tickets is Firenze Rocks, which just announced Foo Fighters, Guns N’ Roses, Iron Maiden and Ozzy Osbourne as headliners for its next edition, June 14-17, 2018, in Florence’s Visarno Arena.

Ticketmaster’s secondary ticketing offering Seatwave has been operational in Italy since 2014, when Ticketmaster acquired the service. However, it didn’t play a part in last year’s secondary ticketing scandal, which saw Live Nation Italy managing director Roberto de Luca confirming in a TV interview that he sometimes sold inventory directly to secondary sites not owned by LN/Ticketmaster.

For many years, most major promoters in Italy had exclusivity deals for the online sale of tickets in place with Ticketone, which is owned by Eventim. Those deals ended in July.

An industry source told Pollstar that several promoters have already decided to renew their exclusivity deals with Eventim.

Most of them subsequently sold their respective companies to the German live entertainment giant, such as Vertigo in September or Friends and Partners in November.

Pollstar has reached out to both Live Nation and Eventim to find out whether they intend to allocate tickets to each other’s respective ticketing offers or keep them in-house for own-promotes.