Rosen Times

Fred Rosen, the man who created the modern business model for ticketing, was recently featured in the New York Times with plenty of people adding their voices to the story.

Rosen is credited with building a small company called Ticketmaster into the unstoppable force it is today, unseating Ticketron by partnering with venues rather than artists. Today, Rosen believes he has a chance to dethrone his former company as chief of Outbox Technologies, the upstart ticketing company that has partnered to become AEG’s ticketing source.

The article is an exposé on Rosen’s ascension in the ticketing business and his larger-than-life personality, most of which is well-known to the concert industry. The article did include, though, some choice quotes.

Alan Citron, who ran Ticketmaster’s online operations from 1995 to 1998, told the paper that Rosen ran a bawdy office.

“Fred used to say the only four-letter word you weren’t allowed to say in the office was ‘free.’”

Rosen says he has mellowed out since his TM days, where he kept an egg timer on his desk. Employees had three minutes to tell him their problems.

“I just didn’t want to wait 20 minutes to get to the punchline,” Rosen told the Times.

AEG President Tim Leiweke provided his own take on the ticket master, known for not taking no as an answer.

“Fred is a bulldog,” he told the paper. “When he gets hold of your leg, he’s not going to let go so easily, and you better have a tetanus shot.”

Rosen lost a partner in Microsoft’s Paul Allen in the mid-’90s who sold his 18 percent stake in Ticketmaster to Barry Diller. The “two alpha dogs,” as the Times put it, duked it out until Rosen left in 1998, dabbling in trade show business, carnival midway business and ticketing for eight months at AudienceView. But now that he’s at Outbox and Diller is no longer involved with TM, the latter had some nice words to say about Rosen’s latest venture.

“It’s what he knows, and he knows it awfully well,” Diller said.