Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome. My name is Bob left Sef. You're
Speaker 1: listening to the Bob left Sets podcast, and today my
Speaker 1: guest is Nathan Hubbard, businessman extraordinaire in the music business.
Speaker 1: He's done a number of things. We're gonna get through
Speaker 1: the history, but he's most known for running ticket Master,
Speaker 1: which many people have a negative opinion of what. We'll
Speaker 1: get deeper into that, having no fault having to do
Speaker 1: with Nathan. And then he was head of media at
Speaker 1: commerce at Twitter. Now he's into some new projects. Nathan,
Speaker 1: how you do it? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. Okay,
Speaker 1: so where were you born? I was born in Chicago, Chicago.
Speaker 1: Did you live in Chicago only briefly? I really grew
Speaker 1: up in Washington, d C. You grew up in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1: And what's your father do for a living? My dad
Speaker 1: was a was in the nonprofit world. Actually, he helped
Speaker 1: foundations that make grants to make the world of place. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's why I was in d C. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And did your mother work outside the home? My mom
Speaker 1: was a teacher for a long time. But other than that,
Speaker 1: there were five of us and I sort of come
Speaker 1: from a patchwork quilt of a family. There's five kids
Speaker 1: with a bunch of different last names and all of
Speaker 1: us from different backgrounds. So we got stuff together and
Speaker 1: that actually drove a ton of like who I am
Speaker 1: and my business interests and everything. Well, let's go back.
Speaker 1: So your mother has been married? How many times your
Speaker 1: father and your father has been married? How many times?
Speaker 1: I lost I lost count? So they're not still together? No, okay,
Speaker 1: So the five kids, where are you in the five?
Speaker 1: So I'm technically in the middle, in the middle. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So how old is the oldest? How much older is
Speaker 1: the oldest? So I have too, I have two older
Speaker 1: older brothers. Actually, sorry, I have five siblings. So now
Speaker 1: at six by the end of the podcast, will I
Speaker 1: lose track? Now I have two older brothers and two
Speaker 1: younger sisters and then a baby brother. Okay, So what
Speaker 1: did we do? Get attached to music growing up? I
Speaker 1: mean it was the center of everything that I did.
Speaker 1: You know, I used it. I started writing songs at
Speaker 1: at a really young age, and uh, I used it
Speaker 1: kind of as an escape to sort of get through
Speaker 1: family stuff. And so the family was chaotic, I mean
Speaker 1: in the beginning it was, and then and then we
Speaker 1: sort of all came together again like this patchwork quilt
Speaker 1: and and uh and actually built a family that is
Speaker 1: super strong and and you know continues to this day. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're writing songs at like early teenage years. What
Speaker 1: believe you're gonna be rich and famous now? You know?
Speaker 1: Even sooner? I sat next to a kid in first
Speaker 1: grade who today is like the foremost leading academic expert
Speaker 1: on American bluegrass musically. Yeah, and he's a teacher at
Speaker 1: Pomona east of l A. Uh do you still see
Speaker 1: all the time. And we sat next to each other
Speaker 1: in first grade and we started writing songs and we
Speaker 1: did it through our sort of pre pubescent years. We
Speaker 1: wrote songs about frogs and ship and then uh, and
Speaker 1: then in high school and then into college, we start
Speaker 1: writing real songs. And he's just a fabulous musician, and
Speaker 1: I you know, I had a way with words, I guess,
Speaker 1: And so we created a duo and we started making
Speaker 1: albums and touring around and helped to put us through college.
Speaker 1: And okay, let's go back. So you're in school. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's certainly things that I know about you that the
Speaker 1: listeners will find out, But you went to Princeton. Is
Speaker 1: that a legacy in your family? Uh? There, my my
Speaker 1: my brother went to Princeton. My parents were went to Northwestern.
Speaker 1: But uh so so no, I hope that I got
Speaker 1: in on my own blood, sweat and work. But you
Speaker 1: never know, how did you decide to go to Princeton
Speaker 1: as opposed to anywhere else? You know? It was, Um,
Speaker 1: I just went there and loved it. I just loved
Speaker 1: the way that it felt. And uh, um, I just
Speaker 1: sort of it felt like a place where I could
Speaker 1: figure out who it was that I wanted to be.
Speaker 1: And do you still feel that way now having spent
Speaker 1: the four years there? Yeah. I I met a bunch
Speaker 1: of people who I still are you know, count as
Speaker 1: my closest friends. And uh I met my wife and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great place. So your wife was also a
Speaker 1: student at Princeton. Yes, well I didn't know that. So
Speaker 1: what did you study at Princeton? So I studied. I
Speaker 1: was a politics major, but I really focused on South
Speaker 1: African politics, And you know, I started my whole life
Speaker 1: been fascinated with the ways in which people from a
Speaker 1: bunch of different backgrounds calmed together. After you know, all
Speaker 1: those different backgrounds and experiences and sometimes tragedies and come
Speaker 1: and get together and what they do. And so that's
Speaker 1: the story of my family, and it's also the story
Speaker 1: of South Africa, which in nineteen ninety six, two years
Speaker 1: out of you know, Mandela being released, was sort of
Speaker 1: building this nascent democracy. And and so I went to
Speaker 1: South Africa and spent a bunch of time there doing
Speaker 1: like hardcore on the ground thesis research. And in high
Speaker 1: school I had worked for an organization with a woman
Speaker 1: named Amy Beale, who was killed in South Africa a
Speaker 1: couple of years later. Um, and so I sort of
Speaker 1: went in her footsteps and and studied the sort of
Speaker 1: emergence of democracy in South African, interviewed everybody from like
Speaker 1: Conservative Thatcher right economists to the Communist party, you know,
Speaker 1: trade unions to senators and so forth, and sort of
Speaker 1: painted a picture of how, in particular the a n
Speaker 1: C was I can't believe we're talking about this, sorry,
Speaker 1: but in particular, how the a n C had made
Speaker 1: this transition from being a uh you know, sort of
Speaker 1: rebellious uh liberation movement into actually a governing political party.
Speaker 1: And it turned out, just like our political parties, they
Speaker 1: had all sorts of differences, and it was creating fissures,
Speaker 1: which you know, as a liberation movement, those were not
Speaker 1: ever something that could come to the surface as a
Speaker 1: governing party. It was starting to affect the way that
Speaker 1: they actually ruled the country. And it felt like being
Speaker 1: in the presence of Jefferson and Washington and Adams and
Speaker 1: Hamilton's and all of them when you were there at
Speaker 1: that time. And but for me, it was just an
Speaker 1: opportunity to go and study and and learn how all
Speaker 1: these different people come together to to make something happen UM.
Speaker 1: And I also wrote my second album there. Okay, well
Speaker 1: was the last time you were there? I was there
Speaker 1: a year and a half ago. And what do you
Speaker 1: think about what's going on now? Well, I mean I
Speaker 1: think um, the latest uh sort of reports out of
Speaker 1: South Africa are pretty clear, which is that their project
Speaker 1: in post Nuremberg democracy like South Africa, from my perspective,
Speaker 1: is the most important democracy since post Nuremberg Germany. And
Speaker 1: because it is a it is a lesson in how
Speaker 1: you know, post racial violence, hatred, awful things, um can
Speaker 1: be reconciled and forgiven, and whether or not those people
Speaker 1: of different backgrounds can actually come together and govern themselves
Speaker 1: in democracy, and it was working for a while, and
Speaker 1: it is not working right now, and they're they're just uh,
Speaker 1: there has been Zuma's administration has just become thoroughly corrupt.
Speaker 1: Uh And so it is not in good shape. And
Speaker 1: it's a sad said thing, because it is so important
Speaker 1: to how we as human beings think about governing ourselves.
Speaker 1: To what degree do you see parallels in our own country? Well,
Speaker 1: I think, um, I see a ton which is that,
Speaker 1: you know, the institutions. You know, there's some there's some
Speaker 1: quote that that was in an article that Bloomberg wrote lately,
Speaker 1: but it basically says, you know, institutions are only as
Speaker 1: strong as as the character of the people who are
Speaker 1: running them. And and in the case of South Africa,
Speaker 1: the character that people running those institutions has has sort
Speaker 1: of fallen by the wayside, and there's a you know,
Speaker 1: massive population in Africa that's suffering because of that. So
Speaker 1: you're in college. We all have to study something in
Speaker 1: college to graduate. Did you anticipate having a future in
Speaker 1: that field? No, I didn't. I really needed something to
Speaker 1: do with my summer while I'm my friends went to
Speaker 1: work at banks and consulting firms, because at that point,
Speaker 1: you know, I would we were. We'd made a couple
Speaker 1: of albums with with we got named John Aalaysia, who
Speaker 1: had produced Dave Matthews band. He did John Mayer's first record,
Speaker 1: Room for Squares, he did Jason Mraz and a lot
Speaker 1: of folks. So we'd made we'd made our second record
Speaker 1: with him, and I was just trying to get passing
Speaker 1: grades in college so I could figure out how to
Speaker 1: how to write songs and play music. Okay, so the
Speaker 1: name of the act was you two. I've seen them,
Speaker 1: I've heard of them. Well, so this is the problem.
Speaker 1: When you meet a kid in first grade and you
Speaker 1: sit next to each other, you create a band. Uh,
Speaker 1: you usually funk up the name. And so my middle
Speaker 1: name is Church. His last name is Rockwell. So the
Speaker 1: band was called Rockwell Church, which was great until we
Speaker 1: got a record deal and everybody started calling asking who
Speaker 1: the hot young Christian band was, and radio had hard
Speaker 1: decisions to make about whether to play you know, suburban
Speaker 1: woosy acoustic rock and pretend it was Christian or not.
Speaker 1: So Okay, so when you're in high school and it's
Speaker 1: already rock old Church are you gigging at high school? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we played, we had we had a couple of
Speaker 1: bands that we played with our with our classmates. We
Speaker 1: didn't really play shows until college. When we got into college.
Speaker 1: He went to Haverford down the road and from Princeton,
Speaker 1: and so we would go to the Fez in New
Speaker 1: York City or the biterand in New York City would
Speaker 1: go to teena Angel and Philadelphia or you know, back
Speaker 1: to some of our old stomping grounds in d C.
Speaker 1: And play shows. And then we we'd also you know,
Speaker 1: play a bunch of schools and just like you know,
Speaker 1: we sort of followed the map of the day Matthews band.
Speaker 1: That's why I ended up obviously working for Corner Cap
Speaker 1: Sean and and love him to death, sort of watched
Speaker 1: his model and how he nurtured those bands and um
Speaker 1: and and that was that was how we did it.
Speaker 1: And were you making any money? Yeah, you know, we
Speaker 1: ended up doing okay, you know, uh again, when you
Speaker 1: focus on touring, it's it's a great way to go.
Speaker 1: And and was there a manager and agent? Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Corns red Light Management to care of us. Really. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So what year did you graduate from college? Uh, so
Speaker 1: Dave Matthews man had already made Dave Matthews Band was
Speaker 1: taking off right sort of as we were entering college,
Speaker 1: and uh, and John Elisia connected us with the Red
Speaker 1: Light guys and and and a sweet wonderful man named
Speaker 1: Chris ted Selly took us on his management client and
Speaker 1: sort of shepherded us through that that that process. And
Speaker 1: so while you're in college, this is happening. Yeah, we were.
Speaker 1: We were out gigging on on weekends a lot. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we put out I think we put out
Speaker 1: to yeah, two of our albums while we were in
Speaker 1: college and um, selling them out of the back of
Speaker 1: our you know, of our dorm rooms and uh and
Speaker 1: doing it well. Were you famous on campus as the musician?
Speaker 1: I don't know that. Nobody's famous at Princeton the uh,
Speaker 1: the nuclear physicists are famous at Princeton. But but you know,
Speaker 1: we had a good thing going where we could go.
Speaker 1: Played a couple hundred people, um in most of the
Speaker 1: you know, major towns on the East coast, and we
Speaker 1: ended up when graduated, playing a lot of schools sort
Speaker 1: of west and almost every state we played in. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so we've been do you enjoy it. I loved it.
Speaker 1: They loved the road and every that I loved everything
Speaker 1: about it. I I mean, what's wrong with turning around with
Speaker 1: your best friend and meeting people? And you know, um
Speaker 1: an underappreciated thing about about gigging is you get to
Speaker 1: see all parts of the country. You get to meet
Speaker 1: people in the middle of Utah, you get to go
Speaker 1: play pulled pork barbecue at the University of Western Alabama,
Speaker 1: and and you know, you understand how the sort of
Speaker 1: cultures match up and how they flow and driving it
Speaker 1: is so important because when you fly in you don't
Speaker 1: really see how not only sort of topography changes as
Speaker 1: you drive across the land, but the people change and
Speaker 1: sort of how they flow and how those cultures pass
Speaker 1: and um. So it was a great learning experience for me,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of consistent with understanding how people of
Speaker 1: all these different backgrounds get together to to to make
Speaker 1: a moment. Well, yeah, it's fascinating you say that because
Speaker 1: in light of the election, you're reading the mainstream media
Speaker 1: and you realize, other than the people on the opinion page,
Speaker 1: they don't interface with any of these people all day long.
Speaker 1: I'm writing about Paul takes I'm hearing from people across
Speaker 1: the spectrum. So when you go to these places, you
Speaker 1: learn something that a lot of the Bloviators on television
Speaker 1: and in print really have no idea of. Yeah, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg took a lot of ship for traveling state to state.
Speaker 1: But if you don't go and spend your time there
Speaker 1: and and dig in, I don't know how you you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know how you can pretend to understand who
Speaker 1: who people are, whether you're in whether you live in
Speaker 1: Alabama and you don't go to Los Angeles, you live
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles and you don't go to Alabama, it
Speaker 1: sort of creates the same set issues. So you're pursuing
Speaker 1: the dream in your mind, you're gonna hang in there
Speaker 1: as long as it takes to make it, or well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna hang in there as long as it takes,
Speaker 1: and and uh, and keep writing songs and and keep
Speaker 1: playing and um, you know, we did it for a
Speaker 1: couple of years. We end up making five albums. Um.
Speaker 1: But there's a time when he and I are driving
Speaker 1: down the back roads of Iowa headed to a gig
Speaker 1: in the fall about this time of year. It's gorgeous
Speaker 1: and Iowa. Everything turns golden and we're head to do
Speaker 1: gig and he turns to me hours on the road
Speaker 1: where we don't and say ship to each other. You're
Speaker 1: driving an suv or whatever. And he turns to me
Speaker 1: and goes, my dad's gonna kill me if I don't
Speaker 1: go to grad school. I was like, oh God, I
Speaker 1: gotta figure out what I'm gonna do with the rest
Speaker 1: of my life. And uh, you know, one thing that
Speaker 1: another we pivoted. I we kept playing for a couple
Speaker 1: of years after that. Really, yeah, so I picked up
Speaker 1: with a startup in San Francisco. Before you do that.
Speaker 1: As I said, I didn't know until this conversation that
Speaker 1: the guy is now a bluegrass expert. So what did
Speaker 1: he go to graduate school in? So? So he went
Speaker 1: to he went to to get his PhD in music
Speaker 1: and and so, uh he went to University Chicago. And
Speaker 1: while he was at University of Chicago, I was at
Speaker 1: the startup that I'll tell you about. And and we
Speaker 1: would still hop on the plane and fly to Philadelphia
Speaker 1: and play absolutely and and and keep doing it. Um,
Speaker 1: so you're at this startup, tell me about that. You know?
Speaker 1: It was like Nielsen is to consumer package because this
Speaker 1: company was to wireless mobile data, and so it was
Speaker 1: the first come funny that really was helping the CEO
Speaker 1: and CMO of a ten t year Verizon measure their
Speaker 1: business and make decisions based on But how did you
Speaker 1: look up with this company? I had a friend who
Speaker 1: was starting it in San Francisco, and I looked at
Speaker 1: what they were doing and it looked boring as hell.
Speaker 1: It looked awful. But I looked at it and said,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a massive internet boom happening in San
Speaker 1: Francisco right now. I'm gonna learn a ton and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go for it. And I don't know if this
Speaker 1: is going to be two months or you know, two decades,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna go for it. And just stopping for
Speaker 1: a second, you met your wife in Princeton. When you're
Speaker 1: gigging on the road whatever, you're maintaining a relationship, I mean,
Speaker 1: as best as you can when you're on the road. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And what was she doing at that time? She was
Speaker 1: a management consultant. Okay, so you moved to San Francisco.
Speaker 1: You gotta work for the start up and uh and
Speaker 1: I did three years there. I got an awesome business education.
Speaker 1: We grew from probably six people to couple hundred and um,
Speaker 1: and I just could not get the desire to be
Speaker 1: in the business of music out of my heart. And um.
Speaker 1: So that company eventually got bought by Nielsen and and
Speaker 1: did really well and not too long after I left,
Speaker 1: and and I learned a ton about mobile and tech
Speaker 1: and data and um, you know, things that I ended
Speaker 1: up using even you know, when I was a ticketmaster
Speaker 1: and Twitter for sure. Did you have any stock in
Speaker 1: the company? Oh yeah, absolutely, like everything, like like every
Speaker 1: person do well on the sale and did okay? I did?
Speaker 1: Yeah for for me at that age, right, yeah, for
Speaker 1: me at that age, it was great and and I
Speaker 1: never thought it would amount to anything. But but that
Speaker 1: was a gift, just uh, you know, serendipitous happenstance. But
Speaker 1: but I really, I really wanted to be involved in music.
Speaker 1: And so I went back to business school. And because
Speaker 1: it just felt like again you asked me why I
Speaker 1: went to prison, I went to business school because it
Speaker 1: felt like two years to figure out how to pivot
Speaker 1: and and to learn some things that again my friends
Speaker 1: who had gone and gotten banking and consulting education had
Speaker 1: probably picked up some of the basics UM, and that
Speaker 1: hopefully that skill set would give me some leg up
Speaker 1: in the business. Okay, so you felt you actually that's
Speaker 1: why I went to law schools. You're thinking, you go
Speaker 1: to business school and then you figure out your place
Speaker 1: in the music business. Absolutely, Now you went to Stanford.
Speaker 1: How did you decide to go to Stanford? Uh? You know,
Speaker 1: I felt like, uh, that school. You know, I've since
Speaker 1: done a lot of board work for them and spent
Speaker 1: I'm a big advocate, so I'm super biased. But that
Speaker 1: school does not just sort of teach the X and os.
Speaker 1: It teaches xs and os. It teaches you how to
Speaker 1: uh manage and lead people and and it teaches you
Speaker 1: how to understand yourself to be sort of the best
Speaker 1: leader that you can be. And Stanford was also at
Speaker 1: the sort of heart of a bunch of the dot
Speaker 1: com things that were happening at the time and UM,
Speaker 1: and so it just felt like a place that that
Speaker 1: was going to be supportive of me as a sort
Speaker 1: of non for aditional MBA candidate, you know, songwriter guy
Speaker 1: who also had been at a startup UM. But a
Speaker 1: place that that that could welcome me and teach me
Speaker 1: and make me better. So, but to my understanding, it's
Speaker 1: not my area of expertise. Stanford has a slightly different
Speaker 1: model than a lot of these other business schools that
Speaker 1: there's smaller groups and you stay within a group. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a much smaller school overall. And uh, and
Speaker 1: you stay with your class. Most business schools they sort
Speaker 1: of divide you up into sections. Stanford here with your
Speaker 1: whole class and and so that's an opportunity to get
Speaker 1: to know three sixty people at the time, really really well.
Speaker 1: And these are people who go off and do amazing things,
Speaker 1: from you know, steel mills and in Argentina to you know,
Speaker 1: oil business in Russia to you know, uh, startups in
Speaker 1: the valley. Now to what degree that those relationships continue
Speaker 1: to pay dividends for you? Uh, they continue to this day.
Speaker 1: I mean you know that there's a there's a great
Speaker 1: network of Stanford Business school people all over the world
Speaker 1: and all in almost all industries. Um, candidly, the only
Speaker 1: the only place didn't help me was in music. Um Um,
Speaker 1: I think there were no graduates in the music field.
Speaker 1: There weren't. There weren't and um and that was okay
Speaker 1: because it actually, you know, I think probably at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, it was a nice little brand
Speaker 1: that gave me a leg up and an interest in
Speaker 1: some places and gives you that sort of validation. But um,
Speaker 1: but certainly the education gave me a lot that I
Speaker 1: used in every single thing I've done in business sense.
Speaker 1: So would you recommend people today to get an mp Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do. I I'm I am not. I am not
Speaker 1: in the camp that says you should drop out now,
Speaker 1: I don't recommend that people go get any m b A.
Speaker 1: And what you're seeing right now is the drying up
Speaker 1: of a lot of those programs. They're just having problem
Speaker 1: feeling a two year education in some schools because the
Speaker 1: opportunity cost of going to school x versus taking those
Speaker 1: two years if you know what you're gonna do and
Speaker 1: going and starting a company is not there. Um. I
Speaker 1: do think that the program and the ideas that you
Speaker 1: know an MBA program like Stanford each is are super
Speaker 1: universal because at the end of the day, it's shifting
Speaker 1: more from here's how you um you know, here's how
Speaker 1: how you do accounting, and here's how you do statistics.
Speaker 1: It's moving more to here's how you understand yourself to
Speaker 1: know how you influence people and read other people and
Speaker 1: motivate them and give them candid feedback and lead them.
Speaker 1: And that's really the value of an NBA, especially for
Speaker 1: a lot of people who have been management consultants and
Speaker 1: bankers taking orders. So in between your first and second
Speaker 1: years of business school, during the summer, what do you do?
Speaker 1: I moved to New York City and I worked for
Speaker 1: Michael McDonald at a t O Records. Uh, Dave Gray's
Speaker 1: album has come out, and I have no official job,
Speaker 1: and I just show up and start building spreadsheets thanks
Speaker 1: to my UM Excel class that I took a Stanford
Speaker 1: in my first year, and start building spreadsheets to help
Speaker 1: them build a little bit of a predictive model around
Speaker 1: what each artists they're gonna sign, how well that artist's
Speaker 1: album is going to sell based on past history, and
Speaker 1: how much money we were investing in marketing and all
Speaker 1: these things. So I was kind of making it up
Speaker 1: as I went along. I'm really just interested in jumping
Speaker 1: in and figuring out how to help. And this is
Speaker 1: the turn of the century. To what degree are the
Speaker 1: people surrounding you at that time interested in data? Um, well,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of years later, I went to
Speaker 1: the Aspen conference and I met you there and I
Speaker 1: think I made a case that that we would be
Speaker 1: able to use data to to better predict the songs
Speaker 1: that people liked, and you blew me up in front
Speaker 1: of everybody. So at that point in time, I don't
Speaker 1: think there was a whole lot of interest in data.
Speaker 1: Obviously I made a big impact. I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 1: Moving right along, you graduate from Stanford and then what's
Speaker 1: your next step? So, uh well, I called the folks
Speaker 1: he used to manage me, and uh I called Corn.
Speaker 1: And Corn at the time was, you know, expanding his
Speaker 1: business is pretty rapidly. He was growing his management company
Speaker 1: from basically Dave and Us and a few others to
Speaker 1: you know, the behemoth that it is today. He had
Speaker 1: the record label, he had, you know, a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of business and festival business, and he had this little
Speaker 1: business called Music Today that was doing the online stores
Speaker 1: for just about every band you'd ever heard of. Who
Speaker 1: idea was that Corn's idea? Originally? Yes, it was. You know,
Speaker 1: Corn is a student of the Grateful Dead, and he
Speaker 1: watched how they ran their business and understood the internet
Speaker 1: and the power of the Internet and basically took the
Speaker 1: model that was not just hey, let's have the band
Speaker 1: tour every year. Um, but you know, he understands the
Speaker 1: fan experience and so he said, we can also take
Speaker 1: that amazing merchandising organization that that the Grateful Dead has
Speaker 1: and we can move that online and so um, he
Speaker 1: had a huge one going with Dave Matthews Band. And
Speaker 1: not unlike Amazon Web Service is he understood that he
Speaker 1: could build a business that basically scaled up his infrastructure
Speaker 1: that it took to support the Dave Matthews band and
Speaker 1: do online stores for just about every band. And that
Speaker 1: company at the time was not interesting to me in
Speaker 1: any way, shape or form. I moved to Charlottesville, Virginia
Speaker 1: to go work with Corn and and thought, well, I'll
Speaker 1: get to manage some bands and I'll get to, you know,
Speaker 1: work on the record label. And um, Corn of course,
Speaker 1: in his wisdom, had better ideas. And you know, the
Speaker 1: truth is, a month into me being down there, it
Speaker 1: was clear that music today was an amazing asset that
Speaker 1: just needed a little bit more focus and attention and
Speaker 1: and and maybe a little bit of um, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit of a bit of leadership and
Speaker 1: sort of full time, although there were some great people there,
Speaker 1: but um, but I went over to Music Today and
Speaker 1: I worked at A Corn's office, But I spent almost
Speaker 1: all my time looking at music today and figuring out
Speaker 1: how to take it from something that was it could
Speaker 1: be to a uh to a realize said, so, how
Speaker 1: long do you work at Music Today until it's ultimately
Speaker 1: sold to Live Nation? So I think I was there
Speaker 1: for about two two and a half years. And how
Speaker 1: what is the decision process to sell it to Live Nation? Well, um,
Speaker 1: you know, Michael had taken over Live Nation, you know,
Speaker 1: not not not yeah, not long there before, and I
Speaker 1: flew out to Los Angeles to watch him speak I
Speaker 1: think at the poll Star convention, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he gave a just super inspiring presentation on you know,
Speaker 1: how his vision was to connect artists and fans. And
Speaker 1: I walked out and called Corn said, I think Michael
Speaker 1: Repino is gonna buy music today, and and we sold
Speaker 1: it to him for the end of the year. Now,
Speaker 1: just jumping forward, Live Nation has now sold music today itself.
Speaker 1: So what's the status of music today? You know, I
Speaker 1: don't know the answer to that. Actually, um, I think
Speaker 1: Corn Corn, to my knowledge I think he brought it back,
Speaker 1: and um, you know he's I never I never doubt
Speaker 1: Korn's business decision. He's always got something up his sleeves. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know that asset, though, played a played a really
Speaker 1: important role through the course of a lot of things
Speaker 1: that we did at Live Nation, including launching the competitor
Speaker 1: to Ticketmaster that ultimately forced the merger with Live Nation
Speaker 1: or with the Ticketmaster. Okay, so you are there at
Speaker 1: Music Today, you sell it to Live Nation. You know
Speaker 1: that you're gonna go Live Nation as part of that deal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that was something that that we had spoken
Speaker 1: about with Michael and gotten Corn's blessing. Uh you know, again,
Speaker 1: to his credit, he was super supportive of me. And
Speaker 1: so moved from Charlottesville to to Los Angeles. And how
Speaker 1: did you end up running Ticketmaster? Well, you know, look, um,
Speaker 1: when I moved out, Michael understood that his contract with
Speaker 1: Ticketmaster was expiring in in a short you know, year
Speaker 1: and a half or something, and um, he knew that
Speaker 1: he wanted to control ticketing, and so he uh convinced
Speaker 1: me to go build that build a competitor and um,
Speaker 1: and so in a very very short period of time,
Speaker 1: we from scratch built up a competitor to Ticketmaster that
Speaker 1: was going to take over Live Nations tickets, and we
Speaker 1: ultimately signed a deal with SMG and others that that
Speaker 1: I think built up a real competitive threat. And um,
Speaker 1: I think that as much as anything, was a big
Speaker 1: forcing function for the merger. Now. But if we go
Speaker 1: back in history to that time proximately ten years ago,
Speaker 1: did it work? You know, well, I know it launched
Speaker 1: in the issues of sustainability, but did the ticket did
Speaker 1: the Live Nation competitor Ticketmaster actually work? Well? So the
Speaker 1: answer is yes, we did the Lamp theater season on it.
Speaker 1: If that's the if that's the metric. Uh. Did we
Speaker 1: get what we wanted from the company that we licensed
Speaker 1: software from, No, and that was proven out through arbitration
Speaker 1: everything else. So, UM, I think we did. The team
Speaker 1: that the team that was behind getting that thing off
Speaker 1: the ground. That was the hardest year of my life
Speaker 1: by a mile. Uh. We didn't sleep well, and you know,
Speaker 1: were all the physical burdens of stress that you hear
Speaker 1: about when you start up a company. It was the
Speaker 1: scariest thing because we knew on January first, two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine, that this thing was going to go live
Speaker 1: and either you know, a billion dollar plus business was
Speaker 1: going to go into the ground or it was going
Speaker 1: to take off and it was gonna work. And and
Speaker 1: it worked enough for us to uh, you know, to
Speaker 1: do the bare minimum and get get get those tickets sold. Now,
Speaker 1: the company that you're referencing, what assets did they not
Speaker 1: give you? So it didn't work. I don't even want
Speaker 1: to go go into that. What I can tell you
Speaker 1: is that, uh is that we had we had heroic
Speaker 1: work to do to to get the app theater season
Speaker 1: up and running and going. And it was it was
Speaker 1: by the by the amazing work of that team that
Speaker 1: we were able to keep the walls up and keep
Speaker 1: the business going. So the merger happens, how do you
Speaker 1: end up running Ticketmaster? Well, I think, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: Music Today had been doing a lot of fan club ticketing,
Speaker 1: uh and you know, we'd built up a competitor really
Speaker 1: thinking about the soft underbellies that we saw at Ticketmaster
Speaker 1: at the time, and so UM, it was pretty clear
Speaker 1: in the moment that um that you know, the Ticketmaster
Speaker 1: needed a new leadership. You know, I don't know the
Speaker 1: numbers totally right, but before the merger, you know, Ticketmaster
Speaker 1: lost maybe a third of its IBATA over just a
Speaker 1: short number of years, and so there was definitely a
Speaker 1: need for culture change and probably strategy change. And UM,
Speaker 1: I think we were you know, Michael and I were
Speaker 1: lined around around the way to to do that and uh,
Speaker 1: but it needed a leader and and so he asked
Speaker 1: me to go do that. He gave me that opportunity. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what was your biggest challenge once you actually were
Speaker 1: placed in that role? Well, UM, biggest challenge you had.
Speaker 1: You had a really big cultural challenge. You had you
Speaker 1: had a company that uh that probably didn't believe in
Speaker 1: itself um at the time. UM. And and you had
Speaker 1: a you had a client challenge, which is that you know,
Speaker 1: as has been well documented, I think UM, taking Master
Speaker 1: probably had underinvested in technology at the time. And you
Speaker 1: know that's changed dramatically since then. But at the time
Speaker 1: and UM, and those two things together meant that you know,
Speaker 1: you'd lost business over the last couple of years, you
Speaker 1: had probably demoralized staff, and you probably had some people
Speaker 1: who weren't right for the business there anymore. UM. And
Speaker 1: you know, you had obviously the people joke about the
Speaker 1: brand of taking Yes, at the time it was it
Speaker 1: was not thought highly of. But that was the least
Speaker 1: of the problems that the company had. I mean that
Speaker 1: on the company had was how do you continue to
Speaker 1: your in a lot of ways, your marketplace business. You've
Speaker 1: got consumers on one end and you've got supply on
Speaker 1: the other end. Well, this is a supply driven business,
Speaker 1: ticketing is, and uh, the question was how do we
Speaker 1: hang on to supply through that merger. A lot of
Speaker 1: people worried about what that meant for them, you know,
Speaker 1: Live Nation, Ticketmaster coming together, and so we had a
Speaker 1: whole lot of ballet dancing to do to reassure clients
Speaker 1: that this was going to be great for them, and
Speaker 1: and and most importantly show them a vision for where
Speaker 1: we're going to go forward. Hey it's Bob left Sets.
Speaker 1: I thank you for your time. Welcome to my new podcast,
Speaker 1: the Bob left Sets Podcast. Remember to subscribe I've tuned
Speaker 1: in iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we're
Speaker 1: back with Nathan Hubbard, the ticketing Expert. And there are
Speaker 1: a number of issues, number of challenges that are facing
Speaker 1: the concert business today. Let's stick into the weeds a
Speaker 1: little bit on ticketing because you're the big ex it
Speaker 1: on this. You stated earlier that Live Nation wanted to
Speaker 1: have its own ticketing business inside the business, it's concerned,
Speaker 1: it's considered this point the only money is in ticketing.
Speaker 1: Can you explain that to our listeners? Well, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I agree with that. Okay, start with what
Speaker 1: you mean. Look, let's let's just go back to to
Speaker 1: you know, on the Live Nation side. And I don't
Speaker 1: I don't need to comment on this, but but but
Speaker 1: you know, Michael had the vision which he understood the
Speaker 1: power of content, and he understands understood from the beginning
Speaker 1: if he could aggregate a bunch of content and pay
Speaker 1: the artist as much as possible, that he would find
Speaker 1: other ways to make up that money. And and and
Speaker 1: a lot of that was sponsorship from his background, and
Speaker 1: you know, turned out a lot of that was going
Speaker 1: to be ticketing too. And there's a lot of other
Speaker 1: ways that that that I'm sure that they're inventing. So
Speaker 1: so uh, you know that said that was also in
Speaker 1: a moment right when the merger happened, you know, in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. That's in a moment when the headlines
Speaker 1: about what's happening in the record of music industry are
Speaker 1: are as bad as they can be, right, And revenues
Speaker 1: have gone with and artists go from making their money
Speaker 1: from from from their albums, from from the road to
Speaker 1: you know the inverse at best um and so so
Speaker 1: there was a lot of money in touring. It just
Speaker 1: depended on what part of the value chain you were in. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: but let's explain, because Ticketmaster, generally speaking is hated. Explain
Speaker 1: what ticket masters function is and how the money is
Speaker 1: split up, how ticket Masters make steals with buildings, and
Speaker 1: how the the ticket fees, how that comes in, just
Speaker 1: in terms of explaining that because a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't understand it. Yeah, I mean, look, I take issue
Speaker 1: with your hated thing UH at this point in time,
Speaker 1: I'm proud of what they've done since then. But I
Speaker 1: will I will give you the basic layout, right. The
Speaker 1: basic layout is this. You know, Ticketmaster is is a
Speaker 1: software platform that UH signs venues and UH distributes the
Speaker 1: tickets to the fans. And what you're really asking me
Speaker 1: what that question is, what's up with the fees? I
Speaker 1: think and and I think that that's one of the
Speaker 1: most Look, I spent a lot of time when I
Speaker 1: was there and uh, you know, helping to try to
Speaker 1: educate the world about what those fees are about. And um,
Speaker 1: you know, through time they became you know, the economics
Speaker 1: of the business are such that the artist takes a
Speaker 1: really big percentage of the price of the ticket, the
Speaker 1: face value of the ticket, and the fee became away
Speaker 1: for other parties in the value chain to make money
Speaker 1: on the concert, whether that was the venue or the
Speaker 1: promoter or yes, the ticketing company. Also let's insert here
Speaker 1: that the artist had a percentage of the orall income
Speaker 1: but could not commission the fees. That was a big
Speaker 1: driver of the creation of the phase. Yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: there was kept outside of the deal, right, and so
Speaker 1: needless to say they got bigger through time. Um, but
Speaker 1: I think listen, you know, Ticketmaster has you know, even
Speaker 1: to this day, there's a ton of transparency behind their
Speaker 1: financials because their public company, so you can see what
Speaker 1: their margins look like, you can see how much money
Speaker 1: they make. And I think at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: what's massively misunderstood is most of that feed does not
Speaker 1: go to Ticketmaster. Most of that fee goes to other
Speaker 1: parties in the value chain. In a lot of cases
Speaker 1: of the venue um and they use that to make
Speaker 1: money because so much of the face value and sometimes
Speaker 1: more than the face value of the ticket, as you know,
Speaker 1: in the live business, is going to the artist. And
Speaker 1: what and how many cases does the artists participate in
Speaker 1: that fee? You know? Uh? I don't ye, I don't
Speaker 1: think the artist really directly is participating in that fee.
Speaker 1: But if you've got to deal you know, at a
Speaker 1: venue where the artist is making of the gross and
Speaker 1: then the artist business partners, how's that possible? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: artist business partners are in there too, So you know,
Speaker 1: you've got a whole bunch of other revenue streams, one
Speaker 1: of which is fees. There's beer and popcorn and parking
Speaker 1: and all these other things that that that that make
Speaker 1: up how that artist gets paid in that way. Okay,
Speaker 1: going on to a couple of other issues. Some people
Speaker 1: might say, Hey, I have a fee for these concert tickets,
Speaker 1: but there's no feet when I buy a Dodger ticket
Speaker 1: a sporting event. Why is that? That's one of the
Speaker 1: weird artifacts of the of the business. Right in the
Speaker 1: same arena you can go to to to to uh,
Speaker 1: you can be a season ticket holder and pay no fees,
Speaker 1: and if you go to another event, you're going to
Speaker 1: pay the fees. That um, as you referenced earlier, can
Speaker 1: sometimes frustrate people because they don't understand them to say
Speaker 1: the least um and and so the point there is
Speaker 1: just we're in a world where uh, concert fans are
Speaker 1: subsidizing sports fans. And while there is some overlap, but well,
Speaker 1: well it's not complete. Well go a little bit slower
Speaker 1: so my audience can understand in what way are they
Speaker 1: subsidizing them? Well, so the ticketing company has got to
Speaker 1: make their money, right, The ticketing company gets paid, as
Speaker 1: do a bunch of other players in the value chaine
Speaker 1: the venue. Okay, but but let's go back to the
Speaker 1: beginning here. Let's assume my own arena. I choose a
Speaker 1: ticketing partner and it's an exclusive deal. That's right in
Speaker 1: the u S. It is okay, and money is it
Speaker 1: changes hands when I signed that deal. No. Generally, the
Speaker 1: way that it works is that is that the ticketing
Speaker 1: company gets paid uh percentage of that service fee. It's
Speaker 1: a lot less. I'm not trying to say let's say, uh,
Speaker 1: I own arena X and I make a deal. Let's
Speaker 1: just say with ticket Master. When I sign up for
Speaker 1: three years, this ticket Master either write me a check
Speaker 1: or guarantee me income. Look not to speak generally. Let
Speaker 1: me speak generally about it and not specifically about Ticketmaster,
Speaker 1: because I'm aware of, you know, the practice of a
Speaker 1: bunch of businesses generally speaking. The way that it works
Speaker 1: is you do this is oversimplifying it, but we do
Speaker 1: a deal and uh, yeah, you sign up for some term.
Speaker 1: Pretend it's three to five years or something, and uh,
Speaker 1: I sell those tickets and there's a fee on those tickets,
Speaker 1: and we split that fee and I get as a ticketer,
Speaker 1: I get a small percentage of that. You, as the venue,
Speaker 1: get a larger percentage of that. And then the venue
Speaker 1: sometimes goes and splits that fee with his partner, whether
Speaker 1: that's promoter, artist or you know, whoever, sports team, whoever
Speaker 1: it is. Isn't that okay? But there are a number
Speaker 1: of ticketing options. How does the venue decide which one
Speaker 1: to go with? They'll put out an RFP and everybody
Speaker 1: will come and bid and do a dog and pony show,
Speaker 1: and they'll make decisions about what's best for them. But
Speaker 1: but the key there is that those contracts and this
Speaker 1: is again ticketing platform a stick. Generally charge fees on
Speaker 1: individual events and individual game tickets in sports, but don't
Speaker 1: charge fees on season tickets. Well, in a world where
Speaker 1: most of the tickets for a sporting event are sold
Speaker 1: as season tickets, that means that you make a heck
Speaker 1: of a lot less off fees then on a on
Speaker 1: a game than you do when the circus came to town,
Speaker 1: or a concert or you know, wrestling or whatever it
Speaker 1: is in the building. Which is to say that those
Speaker 1: fans who are going to those non sport events pay
Speaker 1: a fee that subsidizes a lot of the fans who
Speaker 1: come to see a sporting event. Well, as I say,
Speaker 1: that's an historic fact, just like uh, we talk about
Speaker 1: certain things with phone calls or services in our cars
Speaker 1: that don't exist anymore. Question is well that continue to
Speaker 1: be the case or do you foresee some reckoning down
Speaker 1: the road. Well, I think the sophistication level of owners
Speaker 1: of these of these venues is increasing. Right, You've got
Speaker 1: really smart people who are invested in the whole building,
Speaker 1: and so there they know that they're competing against you
Speaker 1: sitting at home on your couch and watching a game
Speaker 1: on TV or or you know, not coming out to
Speaker 1: the event. And so I think as they look holistically
Speaker 1: at their business, one of the things they will think
Speaker 1: about is how can we get somebody to convert more easily,
Speaker 1: just like again Amazon does as they think about a
Speaker 1: fan coming through their purchase funnel. So uh so as
Speaker 1: they look at that problem, if they look at the
Speaker 1: fees as a blocker, Um again, you know, the last
Speaker 1: thing that we wanted a ticketmaster, that I wanted, I'll
Speaker 1: just speak for myself, was you know, I hated the
Speaker 1: fees because because we got blamed for m and we
Speaker 1: didn't even make all of it. I wish I wish
Speaker 1: we were able to make pocket all you know, all
Speaker 1: that fee. And I'm sure every other ticketer feels that
Speaker 1: way too. Um. You know, So it's on the venue
Speaker 1: or the artist or the sports team to make decisions
Speaker 1: about changing that structure. And I think that as owners
Speaker 1: of those venues, who are generally now in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases, the owner of a sports team, big ones, right, um,
Speaker 1: might look across there, they're the entirety their business and say,
Speaker 1: let's think about how we present ourselves to the fans
Speaker 1: in a different way. And I guarantee you that the
Speaker 1: ticketer will happily fall in line very quickly behind that
Speaker 1: because it's better for their brand too. And one of
Speaker 1: the big complaints consumers have is that they see tickets
Speaker 1: for events online before the on sale date. What is
Speaker 1: going on there? Yeah, so that's in a lot of cases,
Speaker 1: that's speculative ticketing, and that UM. Frankly, we talked a
Speaker 1: lot about issues in the industry now that UM, some
Speaker 1: of which have been addressed, some of which are are
Speaker 1: sort of evolving. There's a lot of interesting solutions to them.
Speaker 1: One of which that the big issue, a big issue
Speaker 1: that has not been touched a speculative ticketing. And what
Speaker 1: that effectively is is a broker will post a ticket
Speaker 1: to a site that he does not have, and uh,
Speaker 1: it will not be communicated to you that that ticket,
Speaker 1: at least it won't be communicated to you in a
Speaker 1: in a clear way that that ticket doesn't exist. And
Speaker 1: the broker will say something like, hey, it's you know,
Speaker 1: for the National Championship Collegiate National Championship game that's in
Speaker 1: Atlanta this year. Um, you know, you can buy a
Speaker 1: ticket for five thousand dollars and two tickets in you know,
Speaker 1: row twenty and the broker will post that because he
Speaker 1: knows that he if you buy those two tickets um,
Speaker 1: even though he doesn't have them, he knows or he
Speaker 1: believes that he can go into the secondary market and
Speaker 1: find two tickets that are as good or better for
Speaker 1: less than that. So he arbitrages the difference. Maybe he
Speaker 1: can go find those tickets for two thousand dollars each um.
Speaker 1: And so what that really means is that they're fishing
Speaker 1: for suckers. They're trying to find people who are so
Speaker 1: anxious to go that they're willing to pay an exorbitant amount.
Speaker 1: And then the broker has the money in his pocket,
Speaker 1: he leaves he can go out and find those those
Speaker 1: tickets for less. Not not everybody does this. But there's
Speaker 1: a couple of problems here. Number one, there's not clear
Speaker 1: communication to the fan about about whether or not those
Speaker 1: tickets actually exist. That's not a problem, I guess. I
Speaker 1: mean it is a problem because the consumer should know.
Speaker 1: But in practice, if the broker goes and fulfills that
Speaker 1: request and you get your tickets for five thousand bucks,
Speaker 1: you know, did you get did you get? You know?
Speaker 1: Were you a sucker? Yeah? But at least you got
Speaker 1: your tickets. Now what happens, unfortunately, is brokers. This is
Speaker 1: like short selling a stock, and sometimes broke will get
Speaker 1: pinched and there's so much demand for an event that yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe you bought your ticket for five thousand dollars, but
Speaker 1: the broker can't actually buy those tickets for less than
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars. So he's in the hole now because
Speaker 1: tickets are being priced for seven thousand dollars for the
Speaker 1: National Championship game. And what happens in a lot of
Speaker 1: those cases is broker's close up shop and disappear the
Speaker 1: you know, uh, sort of bad acting brokers. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of good acting brokers on guys who run
Speaker 1: real businesses and have real relationships with with with customers
Speaker 1: and so forth. But in the speculative business, if they're
Speaker 1: getting pinched, they disappear. So none of these brokers ever
Speaker 1: say I charge five thousand, but I'm gonna go out
Speaker 1: and buy the ticket for There may be some who
Speaker 1: fill their orders in service of protecting their brand, but
Speaker 1: there are a lot who don't. And that's a problem
Speaker 1: for a game like a National Championship game, where somebody's
Speaker 1: traveled from miles away. They show up, their tickets don't exist,
Speaker 1: and they're stuck because there's so much demand that that
Speaker 1: they can't actually get access to those tickets. Now. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, I think there's been some governmental interest in
Speaker 1: that issue. Um, but that to me is one of
Speaker 1: the sort of hanging there's no reason why you can't
Speaker 1: have a a concierge service that says, Bob, I don't
Speaker 1: have the tickets right now, but tell me what you want,
Speaker 1: tell me what you're looking for, tell me how much
Speaker 1: you want to spend, and I'll go find it in
Speaker 1: the market. That seems like a totally reasonable service. But
Speaker 1: to offer that alongside in the same user experience as
Speaker 1: tickets that supposedly do exist feels pretty misleading to me.
Speaker 1: And so um, that's a practice that I expect will
Speaker 1: be cracked down on in in you know, in in
Speaker 1: the kind I know there was example was at last year,
Speaker 1: everybody went to some big football game, they traveled, maybe
Speaker 1: not Tre Dame or something, and their tickets didn't exist.
Speaker 1: But what I've viewed stuff like this, it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: we've talked earlier about spam email, and we talked about
Speaker 1: the no call list. Every day my phone rings with
Speaker 1: illegal phone calls, and the government seems to be powerless
Speaker 1: against that. So I think you could deter this, but
Speaker 1: I'm not sure you could eradicate. The solution is if
Speaker 1: you digitize every ticket, you know if it exists or not,
Speaker 1: so you can you know, you should have secondary market
Speaker 1: sites that can look the fan in the eye and say, yes,
Speaker 1: we have the ticket, will deliver to you right now,
Speaker 1: or no, this ticket does not exist. As long as
Speaker 1: tickets are pieces of paper divorced from identity and payment
Speaker 1: and geolocation, you have all sorts of scurl less like
Speaker 1: you know, um, bad actors and and bad behavior that
Speaker 1: can happen around that ticket. Because it's really just a
Speaker 1: piece of paper. It can be photocopied ten thousand times
Speaker 1: and sold and the first guy gets in the building
Speaker 1: and the rest are stuck. Right, it can be transferred
Speaker 1: around sort of without you know to to to again
Speaker 1: other bad actors. If you if you actually digitize the
Speaker 1: access credential, you can solve a ton of those problems
Speaker 1: around fraud, around the consumer experience, and and sort of
Speaker 1: massively make make the user experience better. Let's go to
Speaker 1: Broadway for a second. You have the Hambletons. They give
Speaker 1: a certain number of tickets away in a lottery, and
Speaker 1: they have a certain number of tickets that are sold
Speaker 1: close to a thousand dollars. Now, in this particular case,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about repeat business. The play will the
Speaker 1: music will be on Broadway for X number of years,
Speaker 1: maybe it'll be a revival ten or twenty years down
Speaker 1: the road. Most people don't go more than once. Why
Speaker 1: not just either charged with the ticket is worth. It's
Speaker 1: not like a band that going to continue to be
Speaker 1: on the road for two decades. Why in that case,
Speaker 1: just not make every seat in the house a fair price. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean you have to ask the produces that my
Speaker 1: senses that they believe that what they have is a
Speaker 1: very very important piece of content, and that they want
Speaker 1: to spread it far and wide, and that they feel
Speaker 1: like there's one part of their mission, which is to
Speaker 1: make a bunch of money, but that they've made a
Speaker 1: shipload of money, and that that from here they're also
Speaker 1: interested in in educating people and bringing them in. I
Speaker 1: love what they're doing, and I think I think from
Speaker 1: an artist's perspective, By the way, there's gonna be a
Speaker 1: Hamilton's movie. There's a ton of Hamilton's merch people are
Speaker 1: going to see that thing multiple times. God knows, I've
Speaker 1: taken my daughters twice. Uh, so you know they're they're uh.
Speaker 1: I think when you think about lifetime value of a fan,
Speaker 1: you start to think about distributing your inventory differently. We
Speaker 1: now have more interesting sets of data, more usable tools
Speaker 1: to flush that data through, to help you think about
Speaker 1: how to distribute the inventory in some way other than
Speaker 1: first come, first served. Everybody go, the gun goes off,
Speaker 1: there's a big stampede, a bunch of people get trampled,
Speaker 1: and whoever survives gets the tickets and comes into the show. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we understand from a business standpoint why the fees exist,
Speaker 1: but the public can't wrap their head around these fees
Speaker 1: the same way the public has had a hard time
Speaker 1: wrapping it set around streaming. I still get email people saying, hey,
Speaker 1: if I don't have a connection, I won't be able
Speaker 1: to stream, not knowing that you can sink files to
Speaker 1: your hand set with a streaming service, assuming you have
Speaker 1: the premium version. So is there any way to grant
Speaker 1: transparency or to clean this up so that the person
Speaker 1: at the end, the person buying the ticket, we'll understand
Speaker 1: what's going on. Yeah, I think I think the ticketing
Speaker 1: business has gotten better at this. We talked a lot
Speaker 1: about this when I was there, and and you know,
Speaker 1: the fee is an extension of the ticket price. What
Speaker 1: we've done in the live event business, and I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about ticket mester, I'm talking about just the ticketing
Speaker 1: business in general. What we've done in the live event
Speaker 1: business is, uh is we have sort of shipped our
Speaker 1: order chart, which is to say, we've exposed the inner
Speaker 1: workings of the deal structure. Right, why should the fan know?
Speaker 1: You know, all the fan cares about is how much
Speaker 1: of my hard earned money are you asking me to pay? Right,
Speaker 1: and you know, don't show me that it's forty bucks
Speaker 1: and then there's another twenty dollar fee on top of that.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that that we did and
Speaker 1: that continues to this day, is we started showing the
Speaker 1: all in upfront and you can see the breakout. But
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, trying to tell the fan,
Speaker 1: here's how much of your money that you've got to
Speaker 1: spend to go see artist X and um, And that
Speaker 1: has a remarkable impact on a fan's happiness with the processes.
Speaker 1: You can imagine now. You know, one of my big
Speaker 1: criticisms of the secondary market right now, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: we'll get into this, is, you know, the secondary market
Speaker 1: is way less transparent about what those fees are. You
Speaker 1: can get up to the very last about to buy
Speaker 1: it button and all of a sudden be slammed with
Speaker 1: fees that can increase the overall price by ten fifteen
Speaker 1: sometimes of what you thought you were actually paying. And
Speaker 1: you know, I'll leave it to I'll leave it to
Speaker 1: others to stop stop Hub go to an all in pricing.
Speaker 1: And then their sales went down. You know that's the
Speaker 1: sort of um, that's that's the lore. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: I also think that their growth has slowed in a
Speaker 1: significant way regardless because of a whole bunch of other
Speaker 1: dynamics in the business. So sure when you um, you know,
Speaker 1: that's in part I think because other companies in the
Speaker 1: secondary space continued the practice of what I think is
Speaker 1: effectively tricking fans and telling them, hey, come on in
Speaker 1: the prices X and then it ends up being X
Speaker 1: plus Y and lies a lot. SOUM. Did they suffer
Speaker 1: from that? Maybe? Um, but it still feels to me
Speaker 1: like an issue in the industry as a whole, which is,
Speaker 1: how can we be more forthright with the fan about
Speaker 1: how much of his or her harder money we're asking
Speaker 1: them to pay. Okay, let's start. Let's start in the
Speaker 1: concert business, because there's certainly sports and other events. Why
Speaker 1: does the secondary market exist? Well, it exists because historically
Speaker 1: with two reasons. One does it exists because we used
Speaker 1: to be really bad at pricing and and we still
Speaker 1: don't have as much data to price the inventory as
Speaker 1: most of the rest of retailers have. Um. And then
Speaker 1: I think, to a sec you know, to a lesser extent,
Speaker 1: I think the secondary market exists because, hey, being being
Speaker 1: a concert promoter, being a a sports team owner is
Speaker 1: a risky business in getting people out, and brokers have
Speaker 1: historically and to this day, um, you know, much more
Speaker 1: so in sports than concerts at this point. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know, brokers have been an insurance policy, basically, a
Speaker 1: way to offload risk in the event that people aren't
Speaker 1: going to come out. Let's let's speak English year for
Speaker 1: the person at home. What we're saying is that the
Speaker 1: promoter is paying so much money for talent that they
Speaker 1: are literally selling the tickets to brokers to make sure
Speaker 1: that they can help meet their number. I think that
Speaker 1: that happens way more in in sports than in concerts, right, UM,
Speaker 1: I think you know, just generally speaking, you know, brokers
Speaker 1: are now partnered with teams UH in a lot of
Speaker 1: cases to help take some of that risk off. But
Speaker 1: a but a sports season is way different than a concert, right,
Speaker 1: A sports season. You've got eighty one home games for
Speaker 1: the for the Yankees. UH. As a season ticket holder,
Speaker 1: you know, you may not come to all any one games.
Speaker 1: And by the way, the Yankees might be crappy in
Speaker 1: August and you're not gonna go sit in the upper
Speaker 1: decks to go watch the team play. UM. And so
Speaker 1: for teams, sometimes there's an opportunity to offload a little
Speaker 1: bit of risk that that happens, UM, and brokers are
Speaker 1: happy to do that because the upside is that if
Speaker 1: the Yankees are great, then as a season ticket holder,
Speaker 1: you get face value access to playoff in World Series tickets.
Speaker 1: And so that just happened with the Dodgers, right the Dodgers.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of brokers who through the Okay,
Speaker 1: since we're going into this, let's go a little bit slower.
Speaker 1: The Dodgers. Dodger Stadium is the largest baseball venue. But
Speaker 1: let's just say approximately forty tickets are on sale for
Speaker 1: any baseball team. Okay, how many of those season How
Speaker 1: many those tickets are sold as season tickets? How many
Speaker 1: to the public, how many to brokers? Obviously there's no
Speaker 1: rigid numbers, but your best estimates. Look, it's hard to
Speaker 1: generalize because these teams take super different strategies, right they
Speaker 1: they There's some teams that think, um, you know that
Speaker 1: think that have trouble selling season tickets in their market,
Speaker 1: and so they're happy to offload big chunks of their inventory,
Speaker 1: more than fifty of their season tickets, for example, to
Speaker 1: a broker or a series of brokers in that case. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there's others who say, no, you know what
Speaker 1: I want to UM, I want to try to sell
Speaker 1: directly to as many consumers as I possibly can, and
Speaker 1: I'm not going to use those brokers. And and so
Speaker 1: it really does run the gamut in the sports business
Speaker 1: right now. But there are teams who sell more than
Speaker 1: fifty percent of their seasons he gets to brokers. Now,
Speaker 1: it's important. It's important to point out any fans who
Speaker 1: come in and who want to buy a season ticket,
Speaker 1: it's there for them. It's not like you can't get
Speaker 1: access to that inventory. That's the problem we've had historically
Speaker 1: in the concert business, which is that, you know, the
Speaker 1: prevalence of bots has kept, uh, kept fans from being
Speaker 1: able to actually access the tickets that they want. In
Speaker 1: the sports business, if you want to show them buy
Speaker 1: a season ticket from a team, you're gonna be able
Speaker 1: to do that. It's just that, you know, in a
Speaker 1: market where uh, you know, there's eighty one home games
Speaker 1: or forty one home games for an NBA team, sometimes,
Speaker 1: uh you know, there's some markets where where there aren't
Speaker 1: twenty thousand people who want to go all in to
Speaker 1: spend the big money on that secondary market is accelerated
Speaker 1: that because as a fan, you know, now for a
Speaker 1: game tonight in any of your local NBA or NFL
Speaker 1: teams markets, you can go onto the secondary market and
Speaker 1: buy a ticket at a reasonable price for the for
Speaker 1: that game. So why am I investing in season tickets? Now?
Speaker 1: There are good answers to that, um that involved how
Speaker 1: the experience on site can be, you know, really great
Speaker 1: and fun, and teams have invested in these venues to
Speaker 1: make great physical space. Uh. So that there's clubs and
Speaker 1: you know, food options and all these things to make
Speaker 1: it worth getting off your couch. But but but that's
Speaker 1: why it happens. Okay, just to go back to your point,
Speaker 1: that you can in sports, you can buy a season
Speaker 1: ticket in sports. Is it like concerts where you can't
Speaker 1: get the good seats because they're taken already by inside
Speaker 1: relationships or brokers. Um that's true to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: except that that you know, there's people who have held
Speaker 1: their season seats for fifty years in their families. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's much less that they're being sort of handed
Speaker 1: out to v I p s more than it is
Speaker 1: people have control of those seats and they hang on
Speaker 1: to them because because the team plays, you know, forty
Speaker 1: one times this season and they're coming back next year. Right.
Speaker 1: It's it's a lot different than a concert, which is
Speaker 1: a one off event that you may not you may
Speaker 1: not be able to see that artist in your town
Speaker 1: for another three for five years, if ever. Right. So,
Speaker 1: um so wholly different dynamics, um Uh. In terms of
Speaker 1: how those season seats are are distributed, It's hard to
Speaker 1: get a courtside seat for the Knicks because nobody's given
Speaker 1: those up. Um, it's you know, you can get in
Speaker 1: there and get a decent season seat for the Knicks
Speaker 1: if you're willing to invest the money that takes to
Speaker 1: to do that. And for hot games like the Yankees
Speaker 1: come to Dodger stadiums. To what degree are brokers buying
Speaker 1: tickets from season ticket holders in order to resell? You know,
Speaker 1: in sports, that happens a little bit, and basically they'll
Speaker 1: they'll they'll search for suckers who are willing to were
Speaker 1: willing to to, you know, sell tickets for cheap. But
Speaker 1: mostly the dynamic in sports is brokers make decisions about
Speaker 1: how many season tickets they want to buy, they buy them,
Speaker 1: they try to basically break even through the course of
Speaker 1: the season, and then you know, regardless of sport, Um,
Speaker 1: maybe they can make a little more in football, maybe
Speaker 1: they're can be a little more in in in basketball.
Speaker 1: If you know your Warrior season ticket holder right now,
Speaker 1: you're probably doing pretty well. Um, but you know, uh,
Speaker 1: you're holding for the playoffs because that's when the games
Speaker 1: get tight and the competition gets gets awesome, and people
Speaker 1: want to go and they're willing to pay hundreds If
Speaker 1: not thousands of dollars, right, and so so they're really
Speaker 1: taking a bet that and it's not just a one
Speaker 1: year bet. Their betting you know, Dodgers season ticket Uh,
Speaker 1: Dodgers brokers who bought a bunch of season tickets for
Speaker 1: the Dodgers were in there for years. I mean, they
Speaker 1: were betting over the last five years that the new
Speaker 1: ownership group was going to build a team with the
Speaker 1: payroll that they were spending, that was going to make
Speaker 1: it to the playoffs. And um and you know that
Speaker 1: paid off for them this year with a seven game
Speaker 1: World Series. Now, so you're saying that one good year
Speaker 1: it can make up for five break even years if that,
Speaker 1: well sure, I mean, uh, if you're basically breaking even
Speaker 1: and then you get to the playoffs and you know
Speaker 1: you're clearing a thousand dollars a ticket, uh, and you
Speaker 1: control a significant number of tickets and there's four games,
Speaker 1: that math adds up pretty nicely. Uh, you know, over
Speaker 1: the course of just a World Series. Um, so yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. Okay, Let's assume you are a ticket season
Speaker 1: a season ticket holdering four sports. To what degree at
Speaker 1: this point are the teams controlling your ability to resell
Speaker 1: those tickets. Yeah, they're not right now. I mean it's
Speaker 1: in the team's interests for a fan who invests that
Speaker 1: much in the season ticket to have liquidity and be
Speaker 1: able to resell when they can't go. So I don't
Speaker 1: I don't see teams put in many constraints on on
Speaker 1: their fans in that regard. Um, I mean I think
Speaker 1: they you know, obviously, secondary market is come in and
Speaker 1: and has various deals with the leagues and and you
Speaker 1: know Stubbubs got deals and you know ticket Master's gut
Speaker 1: deals and Sea Geeks gut deals and but but for
Speaker 1: the most part, I think, uh, teams are happy to
Speaker 1: have this. The season ticket holders invested. You know, they're
Speaker 1: putting their money up front, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: reasons why you can't go to games. You know, my
Speaker 1: my dad was a Redskin season ticket older for thirty
Speaker 1: five years and uh, you know he um, at some
Speaker 1: point he just couldn't go to the night games anymore. Well, uh,
Speaker 1: he should be able to resell it. They still want
Speaker 1: him to have that ticket, And I just think down
Speaker 1: the road they want to know who that fan is
Speaker 1: who's actually walking in on Monday night. But okay, Um,
Speaker 1: but are they forcing new to use a specific reselling platform.
Speaker 1: I I don't see that. I don't see that much.
Speaker 1: I don't see that much. I mean, I think there's, um,
Speaker 1: there's some sort of official ones, but I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not really aware and I'm probably missing something, But I'm
Speaker 1: not really aware of a situation which you're forced to
Speaker 1: only use one platform to resell. There's some situations. I
Speaker 1: know in Cleveland, Uh, they've got a plat. In Houston,
Speaker 1: they get a platform called flash seats where sometimes they
Speaker 1: lock it down and they force you to only resell
Speaker 1: the ticket to that exchange. And I think in general,
Speaker 1: for the fan, being able to resell in a bunch
Speaker 1: of places is generally a good thing if that's what
Speaker 1: they want. Um. But yeah, okay, let's witch, let's witch
Speaker 1: the concerts. Yeah. I've been made aware of the fact
Speaker 1: that if you are buying tickets to resell it concerts,
Speaker 1: generally you will be It's a very difficult process because
Speaker 1: the broker's own tickets have their algorithms. Let's say that
Speaker 1: if you price the ticket fifty, they'll price it at
Speaker 1: so they will always scoop up that money. Can you
Speaker 1: talk about that? Well, I think what you're I think
Speaker 1: what you're referring to is that now brokers are sharks,
Speaker 1: and whether it's sports or concerts, And I mean I
Speaker 1: say that, I say that almost admiringly, and that in
Speaker 1: the in that they're getting really good at how they
Speaker 1: price and they're sophisticated. They've written software that is interacting
Speaker 1: with a bunch of the secondary site API s and
Speaker 1: scraping a bunch of data and figuring out what is
Speaker 1: the optimal price for each ticket right now. So if
Speaker 1: your question is if I'm a regular fan and I'm
Speaker 1: trying to sell my ticket, um, are there going to
Speaker 1: be you know, I'm competing with a lot of sellers
Speaker 1: who have access to they have asymmetric information, They have
Speaker 1: better data than I do as sort of the ordinary
Speaker 1: fan in terms of what you know, the clearing prices
Speaker 1: for this ticket. Um. And yes, there's a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of automated software that's making pricing changes on secondary markets
Speaker 1: to try to match supply with demand. That said, if
Speaker 1: you're a fan, you can't go and you want to
Speaker 1: put that ticket up and sell it. You know, as
Speaker 1: you said earlier, UM, certainly a a broker would be
Speaker 1: willing to buy a ticket at a certain price if
Speaker 1: they know they can get a higher one. And um,
Speaker 1: you know I I have shows or games that I
Speaker 1: go to all the time where I'm just trying to
Speaker 1: get my money back, and the secondary market super efficient
Speaker 1: for that. Okay, But as I say, I've got an
Speaker 1: email from certain people who say I had X number
Speaker 1: of tickets I wanted to unload them. It's, you know,
Speaker 1: below face value. As I said earlier, fifty bucks, I
Speaker 1: put them up as soon as I go at fifty bucks,
Speaker 1: there's a bot that will offer the ticket marginally cheaper. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it depends on the supply and demand dynamics
Speaker 1: in that moment. If no inventory is selling, then yeah,
Speaker 1: the bot will likely lower the price because they're just
Speaker 1: trying to liquidate it. Right. If you've got some demand
Speaker 1: coming in, then that broker definitely doesn't want to lower
Speaker 1: the price because he knows that he can make a
Speaker 1: lot more than you, and he might buy your ticket
Speaker 1: from you. Well, this begs the question of how many shows?
Speaker 1: What is the demand for certain shows? We all know
Speaker 1: that there are certain there's a thin layer of shows
Speaker 1: where there's unbelievable demand. Yeah, okay, then on these other
Speaker 1: shows when ticket because we know, if you go out
Speaker 1: like on jay Z is on tour right now, okay,
Speaker 1: you want to buy a ticket in anywhere in the building,
Speaker 1: there are tickets available. So one would say the people
Speaker 1: who own those tickets were speculators, correct, if they were
Speaker 1: on the secondary market. Some probably, some probably were. I
Speaker 1: don't know the specific dynamics, but yeah, if people are
Speaker 1: reselling tickets, then there's probably some speculators. It's also probably
Speaker 1: some people who just bought. Remember we're putting tickets on
Speaker 1: sale now, sometimes eleven months beforehand. I don't think that
Speaker 1: happened the case of jay Z, but you know, there
Speaker 1: are some people who buy tickets. They have no idea
Speaker 1: what they're doing on you know, October eighteen, and time
Speaker 1: comes and they got to resell the tickets. So there's
Speaker 1: some totally legit reasons why why tickets would be resold
Speaker 1: in the secondary market. Like I wouldn't I wouldn't touch
Speaker 1: the jay Z situation other than to say, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't touch it at all. Your question is about
Speaker 1: is about are there is there a lot of speculative
Speaker 1: buying that happens in concert business. Yes, And when you
Speaker 1: see a lot of tickets that are um at low
Speaker 1: dollar value in the secondary market. Does that generally indicate
Speaker 1: that maybe there isn't a ton of demand? Yes? Does
Speaker 1: that mean that the artist isn't making a ton of money? No, because, um,
Speaker 1: because you can optimally price a whole bunch of great seats,
Speaker 1: and you know, the marginal return on pricing a ticket
Speaker 1: at ten bucks versus six versus twenty in the upper
Speaker 1: deck is generally pretty low when somebody's paying hundreds, if
Speaker 1: not thousands of dollars in the front. Yes, but that's
Speaker 1: a very inside view in terms of the business the promoter,
Speaker 1: the agent, the act, etcetera. But peep, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of opacity, uh to the end buyer. And the question
Speaker 1: is as the what do we know? It's stub hub,
Speaker 1: which is the giants of secondary sites. People have learned
Speaker 1: rather than buy the ticket a year in advance, wait
Speaker 1: to find out if they can actually go, and they're
Speaker 1: willing to pay more to get a good seat. So
Speaker 1: the question is does this undermine the monolith that the
Speaker 1: promoter at a an act have built. I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I just think it changes the risk curve. I mean,
Speaker 1: then it becomes not unlike sports, right, well over fifty
Speaker 1: of secondary activity at this point is happening in the
Speaker 1: last forty hours, and so that's just that's just that's
Speaker 1: fans being conditioned. That's what happens over time when fans
Speaker 1: know there's tickets available, So inevitably, in the last forty
Speaker 1: eight hours before any event, there's a staring contest between
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of demand that wants to go and
Speaker 1: brokers who are going, Am I going to get my
Speaker 1: number or not? Right? And you can always see who blinks.
Speaker 1: If prices hold, it means that fans are blinking, they
Speaker 1: want to go. If prices don't hold, it means that
Speaker 1: brokers are blinking and they're just trying to get you know,
Speaker 1: they're just trying to get their their their tickets cleared.
Speaker 1: So I don't think. I think what's interesting is now,
Speaker 1: um it gives the artist and his business partners, whether
Speaker 1: that's the promoter or somebody else, it gives the artist
Speaker 1: an interesting decision to make. Um, do I want to
Speaker 1: just lock in money now and put tick it's up
Speaker 1: for sale and be a little bit less concerned about
Speaker 1: exactly who's buying them and whether they get resold but
Speaker 1: I get guaranteed money and I know it's in my pocket.
Speaker 1: Or do I want to start to think about, um,
Speaker 1: challenging what an on sale is. Do I need to
Speaker 1: put all my tickets up front for sale, you know,
Speaker 1: up front eleven months out? Do I want to wait
Speaker 1: until I have a better sense for what the market
Speaker 1: looks like. Do I want to control supply a little
Speaker 1: bit more and release those tickets in a different way?
Speaker 1: I think, you know, look, I think in broad strokes,
Speaker 1: we can probably all agree that um that uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the traditional first come, first serve on sale put everything
Speaker 1: on sale months and months before the event probably isn't
Speaker 1: the most efficient way to optimize pricing in the venue.
Speaker 1: It is probably the best way to defray risk. But
Speaker 1: artists and their partners and concert promoters are getting way
Speaker 1: smarter about how they price the show itself, and so
Speaker 1: that gives them a bunch of options to maybe hang
Speaker 1: in there longer and wait and and and be able
Speaker 1: to to make sure that the product that they're selling
Speaker 1: is being priced at the intersection of supply and demand,
Speaker 1: which is what this is about. Okay, So why are
Speaker 1: tickets being sold a year in advance? Well, I think
Speaker 1: in general, Uh, my observation is that, uh, you've got
Speaker 1: some artists who are like, we are hot right now,
Speaker 1: let's put these tickets on sale and let's capitalize while
Speaker 1: we can because you never know. And um, that is
Speaker 1: basically an artist making a decision to offload risk um
Speaker 1: or capitalize on on you know, the state of the brand.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's maximizing inventory because they think they're their brand
Speaker 1: is going to go down. Um. I think in general
Speaker 1: that's about hey, let's get this, let's get this this
Speaker 1: uh this revenue stream locked and loaded. And you know
Speaker 1: it's hard it's hard to blame an artist for that
Speaker 1: when now their money is coming from that tour. You
Speaker 1: can see how that artists would say, let's make sure
Speaker 1: that we are locking this in and and uh and
Speaker 1: and if that means that I, you know, I lose
Speaker 1: out on five what I could have made, That's okay,
Speaker 1: because I'm really happy to make this money and lock
Speaker 1: it in. What about the float that they have the
Speaker 1: uh customers money for a year. Well, you know, nobody's
Speaker 1: nobody's forcing a fan to buy that ticket, right, So
Speaker 1: I think if played right, um, you can give an
Speaker 1: advantage to those fans who are passionate enough to do that. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess they're saying in the promoter's mind, to what
Speaker 1: degree of the tickets going on sale a year in
Speaker 1: advance because they could hold onto the money. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: not a promoter psychas to that. But when you put
Speaker 1: money in the bank, does it generally appreciate over time
Speaker 1: and you know you earn interest on it. Yes, But
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, it's it's the consumer's decision.
Speaker 1: Is it worth it to me now in this moment
Speaker 1: to buy a ticket for a year from now? Yes?
Speaker 1: Or if not? Uh. Generally a fan gonna say yes
Speaker 1: if you're offering them a great seat at a great price. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you're not doing that now, fans are generally educated
Speaker 1: enough to know that I can wait until forty eight
Speaker 1: hours before the event and I'm going to get a ticket.
Speaker 1: That is you know, every fan, Look, every fan falls
Speaker 1: on a graph. Cost of seat on one, access quality
Speaker 1: of seat on another. Every fan is a point somewhere
Speaker 1: on that graph if you just go math on it,
Speaker 1: and so uh. You know, from a fan's perspective, the
Speaker 1: question is when's the best moment to get to find
Speaker 1: my point on that graph right, and increasingly it's becoming
Speaker 1: in those last forty eight hours. Now, the unique part
Speaker 1: of this industry is it's supply driven. There's only so
Speaker 1: much supply. It's not like we're going to go make
Speaker 1: another you know, uh, two thousand U two tickets or
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Um, there's only it's it's only this night,
Speaker 1: right and and so um. You know, with better data,
Speaker 1: incredibly smart tour promoters like you know are theur Vogel
Speaker 1: for you too, are gonna make really interesting decisions about
Speaker 1: how they release that supply and and and put it
Speaker 1: on sale. I think the gap historically has been we
Speaker 1: don't really have the information to price this ticket properly,
Speaker 1: and maybe we don't even have the distribution channels to
Speaker 1: reach the consumers in those in those right moments. And
Speaker 1: I think that's a big part of the progress that
Speaker 1: the industry has made over the last decade. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: just talk about an arena show, and I'll use the
Speaker 1: large arena. Let's call it twenty thousand tickets. When how
Speaker 1: do they actually do twenty thousand tickets? Are those available
Speaker 1: for sale? Well, you're asking the wrong guy, because I'm
Speaker 1: not a tour promoter. But but what I can uh,
Speaker 1: are they all available for sale? They need to sell Listen,
Speaker 1: there's I guess what I'm saying is just when you
Speaker 1: start with twenty thousand, you can chop off a couple
Speaker 1: of thousand for what are so called senate seat season
Speaker 1: ticket holders in the building, okay, and hold backs, So
Speaker 1: even when you go on sale, there's notts. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think like the State Attorney General in New York did
Speaker 1: a did a sort of reveal on this about a
Speaker 1: year and a half or maybe two years ago, where
Speaker 1: they looked at a bunch of data. They they you know,
Speaker 1: foyed a bunch of a bunch of seat manifests and
Speaker 1: so forth, and and there are some situations in which, yeah,
Speaker 1: for for an on sale, uh you know, half of
Speaker 1: the half of the arena wasn't going on sale. Um.
Speaker 1: And I don't at the court, I don't have a
Speaker 1: problem with that. In principle. I think the question is
Speaker 1: what do we communicate to the fan about their likelihood
Speaker 1: of getting tickets in this moment. So let's say there's
Speaker 1: a certain number of people who are locked into the
Speaker 1: building for every event. Then for tours, there's the fan club,
Speaker 1: and there's also a credit card company can explain those presetts.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, there there are a lot of pre
Speaker 1: sale lists that are out there, whether the building has
Speaker 1: a deal with American Express or you know, Chase car
Speaker 1: and anybody who owns one of those cards gets access
Speaker 1: to a select pool of inventory, so they're basically fishing
Speaker 1: in a smaller pond. Um. The venue sometimes has its
Speaker 1: own list, the artist fan club sometimes has its own list,
Speaker 1: and those uh, you know, not unlike an Amazon Prime
Speaker 1: member gets benefits. Um. There are people that venues and
Speaker 1: artists have that they take care of because because they've
Speaker 1: they've achieved some sort of status, right. Um, And again
Speaker 1: that seems like normal business to me. What doesn't seem
Speaker 1: normal is the way that historically it was communicated to
Speaker 1: the fan about what their odds were of getting a
Speaker 1: ticket in the moment. And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: that is starting to change. Uh is starting to change. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: as you know, I've talked to some of these promoters.
Speaker 1: They can have an arena where fewer than a thousand
Speaker 1: tickets are available at the traditional Saturday Saturday morning on sale.
Speaker 1: So what we hear from the average concert goers, I
Speaker 1: can't get a good seat at face value. Forget that
Speaker 1: a number of concert goes are delusional because everyone believes
Speaker 1: they should be able to sit in the front row
Speaker 1: for free price. Um, what is the best way to
Speaker 1: tackle the problem of getting the so called fan into
Speaker 1: the seat at whatever the price is? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you're right that. When there's two million people who want
Speaker 1: twenty thousand seats, and by the way, those two million
Speaker 1: people all want the first twenty rows, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: you know, one million, eighty thousand disappointed people, and then
Speaker 1: another you know, eighteen thousand disappointed people who did get
Speaker 1: exit tickets. So it's a tough business in that regard.
Speaker 1: There's two weights. Look, I think about solving the problem
Speaker 1: like the um like the animated uh lady in the
Speaker 1: Tramp movie where the two dogs are eating the piece
Speaker 1: of pasta all the way and they meet in the middle.
Speaker 1: There's two sides to it. One is, um, how do
Speaker 1: we price the inventory? Right? Let's stop pretending that the
Speaker 1: ticket isn't worth what it's worth, and either you're going
Speaker 1: to charge the fan what that ticket is worth, or
Speaker 1: a bunch of capitalist arbitragers are going to come in
Speaker 1: and figure out how to get ahold of that inventory
Speaker 1: and resell it. That's what happens um and the only
Speaker 1: there's only one way around that, and that is if
Speaker 1: you make a ticket absolutely locked, tied to identity, non transferable,
Speaker 1: and say, Bob, I'm going to sell you this ticket
Speaker 1: for twenty dollars that could be resold in the secondary
Speaker 1: market for two thousand, but the deal is for this ticket,
Speaker 1: you're gonna spend twenty bucks. That's the benefit to you.
Speaker 1: The metaphan to me is I know it's you, Bob,
Speaker 1: who walks through the door. And by the way, if
Speaker 1: you can't go, maybe I'll give you a refund up
Speaker 1: until a day or two before the event, because I
Speaker 1: got a line a mile long of people who want
Speaker 1: to pay only twenty bucks. But but that's one way
Speaker 1: you handle let's stop you price it. But let's start there.
Speaker 1: The so called paper lift ticket. Now, what do we know?
Speaker 1: Miley Cyrus went on and all these parents could get
Speaker 1: went out people, all these parents couldn't buy their kids tickets.
Speaker 1: Then they went out paperless and found out the man
Speaker 1: was not as strong as they expected. You know, there
Speaker 1: are some people say sell the good tickets paperless. What
Speaker 1: is holding back paperless. Is it the government, the fan
Speaker 1: or the act I don't know that anything is holding
Speaker 1: back paperless. It's an option for the it's a tool
Speaker 1: for the artist to use. I mean to forget about paperless.
Speaker 1: It just restricting transferability. Is a tool for the artist
Speaker 1: to use as a way of getting a ticket that
Speaker 1: is probably below face value into the hands of the
Speaker 1: fans that they want to have. Uh, get that ticket now,
Speaker 1: I think, you know again, one way to approach that
Speaker 1: problem is to price the ticket right. The other way
Speaker 1: is to try to do something about filtering out the
Speaker 1: bad actors who come in and snap up those tickets,
Speaker 1: you know, basically by cheating. And I think there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of documentation about the role that bots play
Speaker 1: and in buying up tickets today. But if you look
Speaker 1: at spam, you have the best minds on it, and
Speaker 1: for twenty five years we still have an email spam problem.
Speaker 1: As long as the tickets are priced below fair market value.
Speaker 1: Can you get rid of the so called box or
Speaker 1: whatever they invent to get the best inventory. I don't know,
Speaker 1: But um complaining about it and not taking a shot
Speaker 1: at trying to do something is probably the dumbest thing
Speaker 1: we can do. But my question is, is it is
Speaker 1: the best solution that the primary ticket seller like Ticketmaster,
Speaker 1: like Access price the ticket at what it's truly worth. Well,
Speaker 1: remember that those the primary ticketer is not setting the price.
Speaker 1: It's the artist in the promoter right the I was
Speaker 1: CEO Ticketmaster, I never sold, I never dictated what the
Speaker 1: ticket price was. We get told by the client. You know,
Speaker 1: in that moment, of course, what the ticket price is
Speaker 1: going to be. Yes. Number one, The best possible way
Speaker 1: to to eliminate that activity is to price the ticket
Speaker 1: at the intersection of supply demand. Yes, and I think
Speaker 1: there is um. Just think about it from a business perspective.
Speaker 1: You don't always try to shake as much money as
Speaker 1: possible out of a customer on a single transaction. Amazon
Speaker 1: thinks about the lifetime value of a customer, and so
Speaker 1: they think about how do I give you some value
Speaker 1: with every purchase so that instead of instead of spending uh,
Speaker 1: you know, two dollars with me today, which I could
Speaker 1: probably get you to spend, um, I'm going to have
Speaker 1: you only spend fifty dollars, and over the life cycle
Speaker 1: of your experience with me, you're gonna spend dollars right,
Speaker 1: that that's the idea, And so I think there is
Speaker 1: something um not just noble but smart business sense to
Speaker 1: building the lifetime value of a fan, especially in this
Speaker 1: day and age when live income is so important to artists. Right,
Speaker 1: So the idea is, can I get that sixteen year
Speaker 1: old kid who can't afford the two thousand dollar front
Speaker 1: row seat or first twenty row seed. Can I get
Speaker 1: that kid in the venue for a massively reduced fee
Speaker 1: because I know that she is going to grow up
Speaker 1: and make millions of dollars and over the course of
Speaker 1: her lifetime, she's going to spend a hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: or fifty thou dollars or twenty dollars with me. That
Speaker 1: to me is something that I feel like the artist
Speaker 1: has the right to be able to control. And the
Speaker 1: question is, is is their technology that we can give to
Speaker 1: the artist as a tool to help them give a
Speaker 1: ticket below face value to a fan. One way to
Speaker 1: do that is to restrict transferability. The other way to
Speaker 1: do that is to try to create a net that
Speaker 1: catches the bad actors. So what's the status of that
Speaker 1: net today. Well, there's a couple of companies that are
Speaker 1: that have tried to do that, you know, the the
Speaker 1: verified fan product that Ticketmaster has done them. You know,
Speaker 1: song Kick had had a product. I think there's some
Speaker 1: others who are working on that. And look, I'm biased. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, Adam Baine, the CEO Twitter, introduced me to
Speaker 1: the guy who's the chief data officer a ticket Master,
Speaker 1: and I hired him, and probably the first meeting, he
Speaker 1: walked in with a graph that showed probabilities of every
Speaker 1: request on the system being a broker or not and said,
Speaker 1: I think I can solve this problem. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's a whole bunch of people who have worked on
Speaker 1: that sense and long since I left, and they're doing
Speaker 1: you know, a whole lot with that product. Um, I'm biased,
Speaker 1: meaning like those are my like I I of course
Speaker 1: agree that that's a an approach. Um that is that
Speaker 1: is worth investing in and is it going to be
Speaker 1: you know, is that app And now I'm speaking just
Speaker 1: generally about about the approach And again there's a lot
Speaker 1: of companies that are thinking about this. Um is the
Speaker 1: approach going to be fail safe right out of the gate?
Speaker 1: I don't know, but boy, I really commend to anybody
Speaker 1: who's trying to do something to shake up the traditional
Speaker 1: way that we distribute tickets, Like think about it this way, Um,
Speaker 1: when two million people want twenty tho tickets, probably the
Speaker 1: least efficient way of distributing that inventory is first come,
Speaker 1: first served. Like that's a that's a very usable UM
Speaker 1: distribution vehicle. If you're selling TVs at Walmart on Black Friday,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, next week, Like, first come, first
Speaker 1: serve people can line up at Walmart and they trample
Speaker 1: each other trying to go get you know, cheap Samsung's.
Speaker 1: That's not the best way to create an online and
Speaker 1: mobile you know, distribution experience. So UM, if you can
Speaker 1: slow it down, if you can identify, get to know
Speaker 1: all of the people in line. Why do we only
Speaker 1: know the first people who show up in line. Let's
Speaker 1: get to know all two million people in line and
Speaker 1: then make some decisions based on a set of business
Speaker 1: rules around who gets access to that inventory. That feels
Speaker 1: like a and more fair, be a more enjoyable experience,
Speaker 1: um for everybody involved. And I think some of the
Speaker 1: products that you're seeing out there are just the first
Speaker 1: full ray into making that happen. So verified fan live
Speaker 1: Nation is going on with Live Nation and Ticketmaster how
Speaker 1: well it's working. Do you believe it's working as well
Speaker 1: as they say it's? It's not for me to say.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's really not for me to say.
Speaker 1: I again, I am biased in that I'm rooting for
Speaker 1: those guys, and it sure looks to me, um like,
Speaker 1: there weren't a whole lot of tickets. You know, there
Speaker 1: were obviously tickets on StubHub for the Springsteen show, but
Speaker 1: but it's sure you know, there wasn't have the house,
Speaker 1: so um uh, you know, I those are my guys
Speaker 1: over there, working hard and and I'm cheering for him.
Speaker 1: So as we march forward the best way to get
Speaker 1: the fans in the building. We have certain options we have.
Speaker 1: You can't transfer it. One, you can price it according
Speaker 1: to its value. Three you could have this net. Okay,
Speaker 1: Now this seems relatively complicated to me. Are those the
Speaker 1: paths we're going down? Or is there something in the
Speaker 1: future that's going to solve this problem? I mean, how
Speaker 1: do you solve supply and demand if you believe in capitalism?
Speaker 1: I mean, no, those are the options, and you know
Speaker 1: the hurdles in the way of that are you know,
Speaker 1: I think there's probably some some stakeholders in the industry
Speaker 1: who get nervous about restrictions on transferability. There's some stakeholders
Speaker 1: in the industry. Yeah, look, you know it is an
Speaker 1: arms race. And I guarantee you that you know when
Speaker 1: song Kick did their um you know, their equivalent product
Speaker 1: on the adel ship. There are people who have five
Speaker 1: burner phones in India and a bunch of social profiles
Speaker 1: and you know who are thinking about how do I
Speaker 1: basically create a fake identity? And it's gonna be you know,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be times when the when the defense is winning,
Speaker 1: and there's gonna be times when the offense is winning.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure that that that's how it will work
Speaker 1: in our industry. But if you look at it, Let
Speaker 1: if you look at like buying electronics, TVs, stereo equipment whatever,
Speaker 1: it used to be that you went to the store
Speaker 1: and it was kind of like buying a car, you
Speaker 1: haggled over the price. Now you go online and there
Speaker 1: is a price and you can possibly get a slightly
Speaker 1: cheaper price two percent or something if you're not willing
Speaker 1: to buy it from a traditional retailer i e. Walmart, Amazon, etcetera.
Speaker 1: How come we don't have the same thing in tickets,
Speaker 1: and I think it's coming. I think the problem historically
Speaker 1: has been data and and you know that was one
Speaker 1: of the most important things that I focused on a Ticketmaster.
Speaker 1: I know they have considered that. I mean I heard,
Speaker 1: you know, you asked me about that startup a guy
Speaker 1: that I worked with at that startup in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: I hired a ticketmaster to run live analytics, start live
Speaker 1: analytics and and run it, which was a business built
Speaker 1: on how do we capture a bunch of data and
Speaker 1: help teams and artists make better decisions about their fans
Speaker 1: and how they price their inventory. And it sure looks
Speaker 1: to me if you just take a step back, um
Speaker 1: and now again not talking about Ticketmaster, but just generally
Speaker 1: speaking in the industry, it looks to me like value
Speaker 1: is accruing to the people who put tickets on sale first,
Speaker 1: away from people who are trying to resell tickets, which
Speaker 1: is to say, I think we're getting smarter about pricing.
Speaker 1: And it takes time. You've got to build up a
Speaker 1: historical data set, and you've got to put in place
Speaker 1: the tools. But generally speaking, I think artists and teams
Speaker 1: have much much better information I mean, uh, than than
Speaker 1: than they did even even three years ago. And and
Speaker 1: you know, uh, the sports teams in particular have highly
Speaker 1: sophisticated teams of three to ten people who are in
Speaker 1: their offices all day long. They're just thinking about building
Speaker 1: the most sophisticated pricing models they possibly can. Right there's
Speaker 1: sixty five thousand seats in an NFL stadium. Each one
Speaker 1: of those seats ostensibly has its own value. It's kind
Speaker 1: of the same way at a concert. And even still
Speaker 1: in the music business today we basically put three different
Speaker 1: price levels of tickets on sale. At least in the
Speaker 1: sports business, we've gotten a little more sophisticated in that.
Speaker 1: I think the music business is ready for that. I
Speaker 1: think they're smart enough to do it. I think now
Speaker 1: they just have to condition the fan to get ready
Speaker 1: for that. And the secondary market helps in that capacity,
Speaker 1: because today, when so many people buying the secondary market,
Speaker 1: they don't show up and turn to the guy next
Speaker 1: to them and go, hey, how much did you pay?
Speaker 1: Oh you paid a hunter bucks less than me. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm angry. There's sort of condition to the fact that
Speaker 1: you sometimes get a good deal, sometimes you get a
Speaker 1: bad deal, And and so you know, that's sort of
Speaker 1: the natural progression and evolution of our industry. I think
Speaker 1: is is that as you acquire more data and build
Speaker 1: up a sophisticated internal sort of analytics function, you can
Speaker 1: start make better making better pricing decisions and maximizing the
Speaker 1: intersection of supply and demand. So getting back to the
Speaker 1: point you made earlier, Yeah, when there's six dollar seats
Speaker 1: on StubHub. You know, if if a tour is massively hot,
Speaker 1: would you expect that every seat would be sold? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But does that mean that the artist isn't hitting it
Speaker 1: out of the park and optimizing the revenue and making
Speaker 1: a bunch of money. Uh, it means the artist still
Speaker 1: probably is because those aren't mutually exclusive things. Okay, just
Speaker 1: going uh to slightly different matters the NFL. What's the
Speaker 1: future there? Don't get me? I mean, look, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't have an answer right now other than you know,
Speaker 1: I'll say this on the inside, UM, I have never
Speaker 1: seen as much UM I don't want to see distract
Speaker 1: focus on a series of problems and challenges, uh, and
Speaker 1: ideas and conversations about that are sort of core existential
Speaker 1: things to the league as as we have this fall
Speaker 1: which is to say between you know, I mean we
Speaker 1: we we live in Los Angeles. We've got a lot
Speaker 1: of people around us who cannot even believe that there's
Speaker 1: any issue with the anthem protests. Well, you know, regardless
Speaker 1: of where you fallen the issue. And to be clear,
Speaker 1: I fallen the issue supporting the players right to do
Speaker 1: this and understanding that it's a protest against a bunch
Speaker 1: of social injustice. But there are a lot of folks
Speaker 1: who have who have seen it another way or sort
Speaker 1: of believed propaganda that it that that it's geared towards
Speaker 1: something else, and and they're real business effects on the league, right,
Speaker 1: But the Wall Street Journal did a study and they
Speaker 1: said they found that there was no reduction in viewership
Speaker 1: as a result of the Yeah, but the Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal isn't answering phones from angry season ticket holders and
Speaker 1: sweet holders. And that's not to say that those people, right,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying it's a real issue. It's a real
Speaker 1: business issue, Okay, but that's a temporary issue. What about
Speaker 1: the ct E I E concussion, Luke Garregg's disease. What
Speaker 1: degree do you think that will have a negative effect
Speaker 1: on the league. I think I think, who the hell
Speaker 1: cares what I think. I'm not a doctor and I'm
Speaker 1: just an idiot. But but the the the answer is,
Speaker 1: I think there are a bunch of existential issues with
Speaker 1: the league right now, and so everything uh that you're
Speaker 1: seeing play out in the press, from health issues to
Speaker 1: the anthem stuff to you know, the breujaja over over
Speaker 1: the over the commissioner and so forth, I think are
Speaker 1: all symptomatic of a league that's really trying to chart
Speaker 1: a new course. Now, I will say this, there are
Speaker 1: really smart people who are involved in this who I
Speaker 1: think don't get enough credit. Um, whether it be the owners,
Speaker 1: some people work at the league, so and so forth
Speaker 1: for how they think about this. You know, the nuance
Speaker 1: of the challenges ahead and um, and so this is
Speaker 1: a whole lot of words for me to sort of duck.
Speaker 1: The answer is, I think the NFL has a whole
Speaker 1: series of challenges that um that we're inevitable and we'll
Speaker 1: see if a bunch of smart people who who understand
Speaker 1: the issues better than I can can weather the storm. Now,
Speaker 1: if we look at concerts, concert ticket prices have gone
Speaker 1: up dramatically since the Eagles health reeze is over, tour
Speaker 1: of the mid nineties, but we did see a reaction
Speaker 1: in the year when people didn't go the contract. Ticket
Speaker 1: sales going to continue to go up in a world
Speaker 1: wards focused on experiences or what are the challenges we
Speaker 1: face there? Well, I mean the music industry is doing
Speaker 1: right right now, isn't it. I mean it's hard to
Speaker 1: find a business that isn't doing well. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: you look at Universal. I'm not picking on Universal, but
Speaker 1: you look at a record label that says, hey, we're back,
Speaker 1: everything is going great. I don't was that the result
Speaker 1: of management decisions or is that the result of you know,
Speaker 1: Spotify right and inventing a solution for them? I don't
Speaker 1: know what I'll say in the live businesses, you know,
Speaker 1: I certainly by the by drink the kool aid and
Speaker 1: by the argument that in a world in which we
Speaker 1: are so focused on our devices and looking down, we
Speaker 1: have so many solitary experiences. Um. Just getting back to
Speaker 1: sort of me and what drives me. I believe that
Speaker 1: we are chemically wired to interact with each other, and
Speaker 1: that you know, so much of retail now is being
Speaker 1: converted to places where people can congregate, and so I
Speaker 1: think the idea that, um, we need, we need opportunities
Speaker 1: to come together and be in a moment. And that's
Speaker 1: fascinating to me that I've always been fascinated by the
Speaker 1: energy of the crowd and so, um, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: always going to be probably overly optimistic on on the
Speaker 1: opportunity there. Well, thank you Nathan for illuminating all these
Speaker 1: issues about ticketing in concerts. So you've been listening to
Speaker 1: Nathan Hubbard opine on the state of ticketing and State
Speaker 1: of America. It's been a very edifying experience. We have
Speaker 1: much more to cover, but we'll do that in a
Speaker 1: subsequent podcast. Thanks again for attending the Bob left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. Hi, this is Bob left Sets.
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for being a fan of
Speaker 1: my podcast. You can email me at Bob at left
Speaker 1: sets dot com and let us know what you think
Speaker 1: and suggestions. We're open to alle ideas. Be sure to
Speaker 1: subscribe and tune in iTunes or your podcast player of choice.
Speaker 1: Can think of in reason and don't know reason