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Comment by kinkrtyavimoodh | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately for us (and fortunately for TicketMaster), there usually is no alternative to them. That doesn't hold true for Booking.com

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Do you know any alternatives? Because last time I looked, every booking site I could find was also owned by the same company that owns Booking.com, other than Expedia, which is also a terrible site that uses dark patterns and other scamminess.

I use booking sites to find, look at and compare hotels. But I try to book by phone or E-mail. Often the hotel asks what rate are you seeing online and negotiations start from there. Except for the dark patterns I believe these companies are also known for channeling their profits to tax evasion paradises. Yeah, it might cost me a few minutes, but I don't book tens of hotels a year.

Lastminute.com and TripAdvisor.

I never make any hotel decision based on booking.com information, other than their price. To be fair, the clue is in the name, make your decision elsewhere and then come back and use them to make the actual booking (assuming it was cheapest). I appreciate this keeps them and their dodgey tactics going but I'll pay that price.

I've used Expedia a bunch of times, and I've never been burned.

Though I do only use it for flight tickets, not for hotels. And I always go there in an incognito tab, to make sure I avoid any cookies etc.

I think that it would only take a startup selling a few really big names before the monopoly breaks.

Sell Taylor Swift on a different booking system that isn't pathological to users. A few other top shelf performers. Venues will be switching like there's no tomorrow to keep the top performers.

The tricky part of this is getting an audience with people like Taylor Swift. On the other hand, with people like Trent Reznor working for Apple, if you had an alternative that worked well and didn't suck, you could probably get some attention pretty quickly.

It's almost as though there is a market that needs to be disrupted. And all the elements are there.

Ticket Master is part of Live Nation Entertainment and Live Nation is the Ticket Master of the promoter and venue side. They are the largest promoter in the US. If an artist tries to circumvent the TicketMaster/Live Nation monopoly they will find that they aren't able to book any of the venues in the market they need. This a near monopoly, they are the mob. No startup is going to "fix" this.

Live Nations was spun out of Clear Channel which controls the majority of the important radio stations in the US. Needless to say the relationship between Clear Channel and Live Nation is a very "special" one. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Nation_(events_promoter)

and

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/business/25ticket.html?mcu...

I find the current "market equilibrium" for both hotel booking and event ticket sales quite weird. I mean, both of them charge ridiculously high fares for a service that costs a fraction of that to produce. I mean, take hotel booking. Hotels could (technically) easily set up a booking co-operative (or two to get some competition), and refuse to sell anywhere else online. The fees to be able to run the co-operative would be sub 1%. It needs no marketing budget because that is the only site that comes up when googling hotels (others are dead).

Or then I am missing something in the market dynamics of hotel booking.

For tickets, some of that booking fee is actually going to the venue.

My 30s search gave no answer. If my total cost of a ticket is 100, how much of that ends up typically to ticketmaster's pocket and how much to the venue?

Do people not Google for alternatives? I can think of at least 5 competitors to Ticket Master. There's even one that only charges 5% seller fee and no buyer fee.

For most events (at least in the US), you can only get tickets via TicketMaster. Venues sign an agreement with TM that forbids them selling tickets elsewhere. TM controls venue's entire ticket sale workflow, including inventory, printing and sending tickets, etc.

Going with another vendor is a gigantic undertaking, you would need to overhaul most of your processes. Most venues don't have the resources/bandwidth to pull that off.

And that's how TM stays a monopoly.

Source: used to work for a large venue.

Ticketmaster pay a substantial share of their "service fee" to venues and promoters. By signing an exclusivity deal with TM, venues can guarantee themselves a greater share of the effective ticket price. Artists are powerless to negotiate because of TM's dominant position in the ticketing market. It's a grubby little money-go-round scheme that exploits artists and fans alike.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/business/12tickets.html

Sure and it's the same on the artist side. If you want to tour you can not avoid Ticketmaster. Remember Perl Jam at the height of their popularity and powers tried to take them on and lost:

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/pearl-jam-sues-ticketmaster/

>"I can think of at least 5 competitors to Ticket Master"

Not in the US you can't. And certainly not for venues large than a club.

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