Features
On The Record With Ticket Masters
Relix magazine editors Dean Budnick and Josh Baron gave Pollstar a wide-ranging, behind the scenes look at what went into their book “Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped” and what they took away from the experience.
On the subject of notoriously tight-lipped agents, few of whom were directly quoted in the book, Budnick said, “It’s not that we didn’t think agents were part of the story; unquestionably, they are. There were a couple of Pollstar award-winning agents that did speak with us, and I’ll leave it at that.”
One of the more interesting threads that runs through the book is the genesis of fan club ticketing and how bands have always exploited a crack in the ticketing armor.
“It’s sort of quaint and charming, thinking back to the Grateful Dead Ticketing Service and everyone sitting around the table with their index cards and yet they are the ones who created that beachhead within the Ticketmaster machine,” Baron said. “Other people saw what they did and everything sort of flows through that.”
But it puzzles them that while “Ticketmaster was complicit” in allowing bands to grab at least part of the ticket inventory to their shows, few bands take advantage of the opportunity to take those tickets off the table and transparently sell them.
“There’s really only four bands that do it and they are all legacies of the Grateful Dead: the various Grateful Dead iterations, the Dave Matthews Band, Phish and String Cheese Incident,” Baron said.
“I don’t think any other band is requesting and getting up to 50 percent of the venue anymore. Clearly, the precedent is so well known that if you wanted to do it, you can. And yet, to this day, nobody really does it,” he continued.
Budnick agreed, but said not every band is able to tackle its own ticketing and distribution.
“SCI Ticketing’s settlement set a precedent,” Budnick said. But I also think there has to be a certain amount of infrastructure within a band’s camp where they’re going to support it on their side because there is some work that is going to have to be done.”
It’s no secret that former Ticketmaster CEO Fred Rosen put Ticketmaster front and center in terms of being a bogeyman to fans, keeping heat off its venue clients – the only ones to whom he owed his loyalty.
“He’s like a self-made straw man,” Baron said. “He definitely enjoys being a contrarian. To his mind [it doesn’t matter] whether we agree with him or not. He’s very consistent. He’ll toe the line for that.”
A trend that Budnick and Baron picked up on while writing the book is that sometime during the 1990s, a different sort of language and zeitgeist began working its way into the concert industry.
“We both feel very strongly that there was a very strong culture shift with what we call MBA-speak,” Baron said. “We did a panel in Tribeca and that was part of where the friction was. We had [Viagogo’s] Eric Baker and [Metropolitan’s] John Scher and [former SCI exec] Mike Luba on the panel. To hear Eric Baker and John Scher go at it was great.
“But you get a lot of guys coming out of Wharton, or wherever, and coming into this business looking at how to maximize profits, leverage this and synergize that. Obviously, when the concert industry suddenly had a publicly traded company in SFX, that brought a bunch of interest.
“I don’t necessarily think that the MBAs have helped the industry,” Baron continued. “I think there’s a lot of double-talk and mystique. And I think the public is much more inclined to listen to people like Fred or some of the older promoters like Gregg Perloff or Seth Hurwitz, who speak plainly and direct.
“I think that’s been lost and people like [Michael] Rapino have turned [consumers] off,” Baron said. “He’s a smart guy; he’s not an idiot. But he faces some incredibly tough challenges. Same with Brian Becker, who was in the same situation.”
Budnick and Baron were not sparing in their critiques of the current business or if they thought the Live Nation public model was compatible with the business of live entertainment.
“I think that it’s obvious,” Baron said. “It’s challenging to make it compatible. “Apple is a good example. Steve Jobs has a vision. You may not like how he monetizes everything, but you can see the creativity. The old school had a vision … and they had some personality to what they did. And not just personality contrived by naming a venue after another longstanding heralded venue,” Baron continued.
“We have [all these] Fillmores across the country. That’s not adding personality. That’s just dignifying a concert venue for want of creativity.”
The book’s prologue begins with Live Nation Chairman Irving Azoff’s first tweet. And Pollstar’s conversation with Budnick and Baron ended with him as well. A chapter talks at length about Azoff’s seemingly contradictory attitudes about ticket resales.
“Clearly, for him, it’s about himself and his artists,” Budnick said. “That’s money he truly believes belongs to his artist. And himself. He’s not reaping those benefits [when scalpers do it].
“At some level, not in his words but in his actions, he’s consistent. He’s looking after the financial interest of himself and his people. Don’t pay attention to his words, pay attention to his actions and know that he’s always going to try to do the best to support the financial interests of his people. It’s OK if he does it, because the artists are getting some of the money. And everyone else be damned,” Budnick concludes.
“It was one of the things that made people listening to the congressional hearings just groan and say, “Really, Irving? Give me a break, man. You’ve been, for decades, one of the main suppliers of this. You don’t have to come out with this amount of vitriol,” Baron added.
“He’s probably correct to say he wouldn’t have bought TicketsNow because he thinks it would make it easier for him to be exposed funneling tickets to TicketsNow for his own clients.”
Budnick and Baron aren’t done yet. There’s a paperback and second edition in the future, and for which the authors hope the reluctant will consider opening up.
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