Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is the one and only Mr Ticketmaster
Speaker 1: Fred Rosen. Fred, how did you first get involved with Ticketmaster? Serendipity,
Speaker 1: which is always something that people forget about. Um. I
Speaker 1: was practicing law and in the mid seventies I had
Speaker 1: represented somebody who was in the ticket business or trying
Speaker 1: to get in the ticket business and got nowhere. And
Speaker 1: there was an attorney. We were in a suite of
Speaker 1: My firm was us. We had a small firm, and
Speaker 1: we were in a suite of attorneys, and a lawyer
Speaker 1: called me who was on the other end of the floor,
Speaker 1: and he said, there's a guy who wants to go
Speaker 1: into ticketing. Why don't you come talk him out of it?
Speaker 1: And I went and met him. Oh, I met We
Speaker 1: we met on the phone and he said, gee, you
Speaker 1: know more about this than I do. Are you open
Speaker 1: to coming to Chicago? And that gentleman's name was Bert Canner.
Speaker 1: And as a result of that, I became special counsel
Speaker 1: to Ticketmaster and six or seven or eight other companies
Speaker 1: because he would make investments between three and five million
Speaker 1: dollars in these various companies. And this was early night.
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell you the month, whether it was February
Speaker 1: or March. And then in the spring of eight two,
Speaker 1: company was running out of money A little bit slower,
Speaker 1: A little bit slower. So you were based in New
Speaker 1: York and then you moved to Chicago. No, I never
Speaker 1: moved to Chicago. I was I lived in New York
Speaker 1: and I had clients all over the country and Bert
Speaker 1: was a client in Chicago. Okay, where did Burke get
Speaker 1: his money? Bert was a very successful attorney who represented
Speaker 1: a lot of people, um wealthy people, and invented tax shelters,
Speaker 1: and he was a pretty smart guy, was a tax attorney.
Speaker 1: So he put together a group who invested probably in
Speaker 1: at least ten companies more than I represented. And he
Speaker 1: would put in seed money or venture capital money in
Speaker 1: the late seventies and early eighties. And how many of
Speaker 1: these companies other than Ticketmaster were in the entertainment sphere. None. Okay,
Speaker 1: So now it's the spring of eighty two, he's running
Speaker 1: out of money. Pick up the narrative. He says he's
Speaker 1: going to close it and he doesn't want to fund
Speaker 1: it anymore. And I said to him, um, I don't
Speaker 1: think you should do that. Let me see if I
Speaker 1: can go raise the money UH and buy it UM
Speaker 1: and put together a group to buy it UM. And
Speaker 1: subsequently we talked to a bunch of venture capital people
Speaker 1: and we were going to raise four million dollars and
Speaker 1: we had commitments for three and we had met j
Speaker 1: Pritzker who said, if you can raise the other three,
Speaker 1: I'll put in the last million. And then at I
Speaker 1: Double AM in Milwaukee and two, which was July, I
Speaker 1: believe I was in Milwaukee, and he said to me, UM,
Speaker 1: why don't you come down and spend the afternoon with me?
Speaker 1: He lived in Winnetka, Okay. For those who were not savvy,
Speaker 1: the I double a F Is that a union? I presume? No? No,
Speaker 1: The I double AM was the industry where you'd have UM.
Speaker 1: It was a convention, sorry about that, where UM people
Speaker 1: who did seating, food service, ticketing. It was basically the
Speaker 1: industry around arenas and stadiums. Okay, just one step before
Speaker 1: we go there, we'll continue. What was the status of
Speaker 1: ticket Master when it was seemed to be running out
Speaker 1: of money. UM it owns losing a couple of million
Speaker 1: a year. It owned UM small pieces of different operating systems,
Speaker 1: and in March or April of that year, I signed
Speaker 1: a letter of intent with the Chicago White Sox that
Speaker 1: basically required three things Bob, One that we'd have a
Speaker 1: data center up in Chicago by the fall of eighty two.
Speaker 1: Two as we tell him who the outlets would be,
Speaker 1: and three as we get the company financed. So let's
Speaker 1: go back to Milwaukee. You're trying to raise the three
Speaker 1: to get the one from Pritsker. Continue, I have commitments
Speaker 1: for the three, and Pritsker says, come see me. So
Speaker 1: I go see him, and we spend four hours together
Speaker 1: and he says to me, why don't I just do
Speaker 1: this myself? And that's how it stored it. Okay, So
Speaker 1: the other people who assembled the three, they were fine
Speaker 1: to walk away because it was a long shot in
Speaker 1: their minds. We paid him a fee, as I recall,
Speaker 1: we paid them a walk away fee. No papers were signed.
Speaker 1: These were all verbal commitments. Okay. So when does he
Speaker 1: invest is for? And what ownership position do you get
Speaker 1: when he invests for? Um, we've never discussed that publicly,
Speaker 1: and I'm not gonna do that now what the ownership
Speaker 1: position was, but um, he invested it, I believe in
Speaker 1: September of eighty two. And you did get an ownership piece, Yes,
Speaker 1: I did. There were only two owners of the company,
Speaker 1: he and I. Okay, so now you're running again. Tell
Speaker 1: me what happens. That'll take two hours. Um. We right
Speaker 1: a business plan that's gonna be Chicago in New York,
Speaker 1: and we opened in Chicago in the fall of that year.
Speaker 1: We have outlets. Said, of course, for those of you
Speaker 1: who don't remember, there were outlets before the internet. Those
Speaker 1: stores physical locations and a phone room. And the outlets
Speaker 1: were in sports Mark, which was a sporting goods store,
Speaker 1: Rose Records, and Carson Perry Scott. And we had both
Speaker 1: baseball teams, the White Sox and Cubs. And we had
Speaker 1: a deal with the big concert promoter, which was jam Um.
Speaker 1: And we were talking to everybody, okay, just before that,
Speaker 1: who were they using previously, Well, everybody was using ticket Tron. Okay.
Speaker 1: Ticket Tron was was the you know, main player at
Speaker 1: the time. And our business plan was to open in
Speaker 1: New York and there was six major clients in New York.
Speaker 1: There was Madison Square Garden, the Meadowlands, Nassau Coliseum, one
Speaker 1: of the theater group's legitimate theater, and then both baseball teams, uh,
Speaker 1: the Yankees and the Mets. And and to open you
Speaker 1: would need four of the six if you had any
Speaker 1: chance of making money. And interestingly enough, although we never
Speaker 1: got them as a client, then we could have gotten
Speaker 1: the Mets. We did have NASA Coliseum, Uh, but we
Speaker 1: didn't weren't making much headway in the fall of a
Speaker 1: D two and into the winter of a D two.
Speaker 1: So um I would say at that time we had
Speaker 1: a foothold in Chicago, difficult to get arrested in New York,
Speaker 1: and we just kept knocking on doors. Okay, just to
Speaker 1: be clear for the other many people who were not
Speaker 1: alive unlike you and me in that era, what was
Speaker 1: your pitch to these companies? What differentiated Ticketmaster from ticket
Speaker 1: toront or any other service you'll find the shocking. My
Speaker 1: basic theory for going into this was ticket Mester had
Speaker 1: an operating system that was basically an inventory control system.
Speaker 1: It was season tickets, group tickets, single tickets on one
Speaker 1: integrated system ticketsry and had two boxes one boxers the
Speaker 1: season tickets, one box was for single tickets, and as
Speaker 1: hard as that is to believe Bob, the boxes didn't
Speaker 1: talk to each other, so you end up having to
Speaker 1: manually put stuff together for the teams. And what started
Speaker 1: all this is when I was talking to this gentleman
Speaker 1: at the Chicago White Sox. I said, how many tickets
Speaker 1: did you sell last night? And he said, well, we
Speaker 1: can give you an estimate, he said, because he said,
Speaker 1: because it doesn't always tie out, and you know, not
Speaker 1: being computer literate and not being sophisticated in terms of
Speaker 1: how things work, I assumed that people would say, Wow,
Speaker 1: I have this computer system that can now do this
Speaker 1: integration of all everything under one roof, and that would
Speaker 1: be meaningful. And I was only wrong. That was not
Speaker 1: That was not exactly what happened. It was okay for
Speaker 1: the baseball teams, but not necessarily for the arenas. So okay,
Speaker 1: you're talking. We're still in eighty two, and you're telling
Speaker 1: me what happens right now, we're losing money. And I
Speaker 1: get a call in December um from I can't remember
Speaker 1: exactly who called me, but they said Steve Wozniak. As
Speaker 1: you may recall who was Steve Jobs partner when they
Speaker 1: started Apple. This was this is pretty close to the conversation. Um, Steve,
Speaker 1: Steve Wozniak hates tike Atron because there were a lot
Speaker 1: of counterfeits last year at a thing called the US Festival.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure you even remember that. Believe me, I
Speaker 1: remember it, do you? It was San Bernardino in that
Speaker 1: Glenn Helen and Helen Reginald Park, right, okay, And so
Speaker 1: there was gonna be three days at Glenn Helen Regional
Speaker 1: Park and then the following weekend was gonna be like
Speaker 1: Country and so it's sort of like the fore runner
Speaker 1: coach for for Coachella, but it had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with coach, not not even the slightest. So they called
Speaker 1: me up in New York and they go, um, Wasniak
Speaker 1: hates ticketron. They want you to do the ticketing. And
Speaker 1: then I talking to a guy named John Ruby, who
Speaker 1: you may remember work for Barry Faye, and Barry Faye
Speaker 1: was getting the acts, uh, none of which I knew. Um,
Speaker 1: and they said you gotta come to California and I went, uh,
Speaker 1: that would be a no. Um. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: know anybody in California. I don't even know what California
Speaker 1: is all about. And um, they said, no, you gotta come.
Speaker 1: So they kept calling and then Jerry Seltzer, who you
Speaker 1: may remember from Bass, was somebody who we had started
Speaker 1: talking to. And Jerry said, look, we could go to California.
Speaker 1: We could we could open in l A. I can
Speaker 1: send some people down from UM northern California. And there
Speaker 1: was a phone room in New York called charge It,
Speaker 1: which we initially took out the California and then throughout UM.
Speaker 1: But you know, they kept pushing me to come, and
Speaker 1: so I flew out to California in January of and
Speaker 1: knew nobody, and I'm meeting these different people and I'm
Speaker 1: totally confused, and I'm showing up in three piece suits
Speaker 1: and smoking, so you know, it's the New York thing,
Speaker 1: New York cigars, you know, cigars and the whole silliness
Speaker 1: of that. And they say to me, look, will you
Speaker 1: guarantee the drop count if we give you the tickets, And,
Speaker 1: not knowing what the drop count was, I said sure
Speaker 1: because I had no idea what that meant. But the
Speaker 1: drop count was basically, if the tickets at the floor,
Speaker 1: you pay for them, okay. And then they kept pushing
Speaker 1: on me to come, and I met Um Terry Bassett
Speaker 1: and Bob Gettys and um you know some other people.
Speaker 1: But I was gonna basically outsource the whole thing. I
Speaker 1: personally was not going to come to California. Uh. We
Speaker 1: were gonna bring people down from northern California and from
Speaker 1: New York. And what I figured is this UM wasn
Speaker 1: was gonna spend a million dollars advertising on this. It
Speaker 1: was a free play. And they said, can you set
Speaker 1: up fifty hard ticket outlets? So this is what happened.
Speaker 1: In the months of January and February. We found a
Speaker 1: space in Korea Town in a company that a company
Speaker 1: named Rexon went out of business. It's amazing how I
Speaker 1: remember all this stuff. And they had a data center
Speaker 1: and we signed two leases, one for six months and
Speaker 1: one for five years because we didn't know if it
Speaker 1: would work. And I put up fifty grand for six months,
Speaker 1: and I could have walked if it didn't work. And
Speaker 1: I figured, if they spend a million dollars advertising, maybe
Speaker 1: we can get a foothold. I wouldn't know one client
Speaker 1: from another at all. In in uh in l A.
Speaker 1: Now middle of February, I meet Terry Bassett and Getty's
Speaker 1: and Dad that people run an avalon which you well know.
Speaker 1: And and this was even before I met Brian Murphy,
Speaker 1: and basically, um, I tell him what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: And we we had a meeting at the Old Holiday
Speaker 1: Inn on the four oh five. We had breakfast, and
Speaker 1: I go back to New York and I've got everybody
Speaker 1: coming to l A. And Terry Bassett, who should rest
Speaker 1: in peace. I met him once. This is what I
Speaker 1: mean about serendipity in life. And Terry calls me. I've
Speaker 1: got lud dick Stein coming from Dallas. I've got Jerry
Speaker 1: and his people coming from Northern California. I've got guys
Speaker 1: coming from New York. We're gonna have it had to
Speaker 1: go on sale April one. The guys at sport Mark
Speaker 1: agreed to do this from Chicago to l A. And
Speaker 1: then the guys from sport Mart introduced me to Music Plus,
Speaker 1: and Lou Fogelman at Music Plus said, okay, I'll become
Speaker 1: hard at ticket outlets for you. And I set up
Speaker 1: fifty hard ticket outlets, which, when you think about that,
Speaker 1: is semi insane. And Terry Bastard calls me up and says, listen,
Speaker 1: this will not work unless you come to California. Now
Speaker 1: I'm a New York I I go, what are you
Speaker 1: talking about? He said, you need to come to California.
Speaker 1: I go, Terry, I met you once I got all
Speaker 1: these people coming. He said, Fred, if you don't come,
Speaker 1: this will fail. I'm getting killed everywhere else. I'm losing
Speaker 1: money in Chicago. I can't get arrested in New York.
Speaker 1: And I figured what the hell? And I rent the
Speaker 1: house for six months and bring my family out to
Speaker 1: California in late March of eighty three and walk into
Speaker 1: the office April one and sit down with some of
Speaker 1: the people who were there and promptly fire them and
Speaker 1: say you'll be leaving. And um, that was the beginning.
Speaker 1: So how did it play out with US Festival? Well,
Speaker 1: the U S Festival plays out as follows. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of advertisement going on. You've got Avalon. I proceed
Speaker 1: to sign contracts with Irvy Meadows, Avalon, Long Beach Arena,
Speaker 1: a couple of small venues, and then this is what happens.
Speaker 1: That's totally strange. Oh, we also put Return of the
Speaker 1: Jedi on sale um in advance and wind up selling
Speaker 1: fifty tickets. That was a Jerry Seltzer idea, and I said,
Speaker 1: who's gonna buy movie tickets? I mean, I'm from New York.
Speaker 1: I never thought of any of that as real as real.
Speaker 1: And we wind up and and Fox gets man at
Speaker 1: us because we announced were selling movie tickets. You know,
Speaker 1: they have their home market. And anyway, it was sort
Speaker 1: of a camp. It was a mess on some level,
Speaker 1: but interesting. And so the Forum, UM, the l A
Speaker 1: Forum has a contract with Tigatron, which was an exclusive contract,
Speaker 1: and that's gonna come up UM in September one of
Speaker 1: and I meet Lou Bamister, who was the president of
Speaker 1: the Forum UM, and we start to negotiate, and candidly, Bob,
Speaker 1: I thought we were a stalking horse. So when you
Speaker 1: think you're not, you have no shot. And I've said
Speaker 1: this before, when you think you have no shot to win,
Speaker 1: you kind of negotiate a certain way. And you know,
Speaker 1: my view was they had a long term relationship. UM.
Speaker 1: At that time, I did not have Claire Claire Rothman,
Speaker 1: who was really a brilliant woman and the first really
Speaker 1: strong woman who ran in arena in America, UM, who
Speaker 1: was not too anxious to see us, And UM, I
Speaker 1: never thought we had a shot and one of the
Speaker 1: things I said to lou was, look, you need to
Speaker 1: let me know by June whether or not, um we
Speaker 1: can do this now. Part of what you want to
Speaker 1: know is where did the economics come from. Early on,
Speaker 1: I learned that people were not gonna switch just on
Speaker 1: the basis you had a better system. But they all
Speaker 1: wanted to charge your dollar, and I said, I'm not
Speaker 1: doing that. All you do is complain that you don't
Speaker 1: have new equipment. You complain the equipment doesn't work, You
Speaker 1: complain you don't have the software you need. It has
Speaker 1: to be that I can make a profit. And then
Speaker 1: they go, well, if you do that, then I should
Speaker 1: get this. And then finally it came to me where
Speaker 1: I staid, look, I need this to make money. If
Speaker 1: you want a quarter of fifty cents that gets added
Speaker 1: to what I make. And that was the negotiation. And
Speaker 1: then on June Louke called me and I take bad
Speaker 1: news better standing up. So I had just come back
Speaker 1: from a meeting and my assistant says Mr Bammis is
Speaker 1: on the phone, and I pick up the phone and
Speaker 1: I'm standing and lu says, we're close, but we're not there.
Speaker 1: And I went, you need to hold on because now
Speaker 1: like my heart is coming. I mean, you can't see
Speaker 1: this in terms of how you knew me when we
Speaker 1: got bigger. This was the beginning. This was something where
Speaker 1: you knew if this happened, this was going to change
Speaker 1: the world. And I don't say that lightly. I meant
Speaker 1: it seriously. Because the Forum was one of the two
Speaker 1: or three what I call even though it was local building,
Speaker 1: had a national presence. So Lou says to me, look,
Speaker 1: we're close, but we're not there. I need a sweetener.
Speaker 1: And and we were both going to a charity event
Speaker 1: that night, and I was going back to New York
Speaker 1: the next day, and I said, I tell you what,
Speaker 1: why don't you think about what you want and if
Speaker 1: that makes sense, will make a deal. Because I'm out
Speaker 1: of ideas. My my brain is gone. I don't have
Speaker 1: anything I can tell you. And while I'm driving home
Speaker 1: to change that for that night, it throwns on me,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty stupid way to handle that. You better
Speaker 1: come up with this solution, because this solution could be
Speaker 1: he'd like the whole company. So I um came up
Speaker 1: with a solution and we I got to the charity
Speaker 1: event and I take him up on the side and
Speaker 1: we're having a cocktail and I say to him, what
Speaker 1: do you think about this? And he says, well, that
Speaker 1: sounds interesting. Let me think about it. Now. Picture this
Speaker 1: the next morning. This will tell you more about Lou bound,
Speaker 1: this gentleman, than anything I could say. I get on
Speaker 1: a plane in the morning, I fly to New York.
Speaker 1: I have a car picked me up and take me
Speaker 1: out to a home in West Hampton. I'm not in
Speaker 1: the house. Ten minutes in the phone rings. It's Lou fred.
Speaker 1: I just want you to know you got the deal.
Speaker 1: Have a great July fourth weekend. I wanted to make
Speaker 1: you feel good about this. That was Lou. Now. A
Speaker 1: couple of days later after the holiday, wait wait wait
Speaker 1: wait wait wait wait, you left out a couple of things. Hey,
Speaker 1: what was Ticketran's deal? Be what was the sweetener? Money?
Speaker 1: Money in the money in the form of what it
Speaker 1: was rebates. But then also I agreed to do a
Speaker 1: lot of software programming to him for no money. I
Speaker 1: would just do all the software programming. And then what
Speaker 1: what what? What? What was Ticketron's usual deal? You want
Speaker 1: to know the truth. Ticketron was so stupid. I looked
Speaker 1: at some of their contracts. They would give a rebate
Speaker 1: of a penny or two pennies after you reach a
Speaker 1: certain him. They saw themselves as a utility, not as
Speaker 1: a marketing company. All the checks came out of New York.
Speaker 1: There was no regional banking um. They they they saw
Speaker 1: themselves basically as a utility. And I saw us I
Speaker 1: as a marketing company. Because if you go back to
Speaker 1: some of the history, which you probably remember, ticket Tron
Speaker 1: would get allocations. They didn't get the whole house now
Speaker 1: for him. They had the whole house, but there so
Speaker 1: you'd go to a baseball game and there'd be empty
Speaker 1: sections and then a ticket Trons section. And I remember
Speaker 1: walking into one baseball team with with the new owners,
Speaker 1: and the ticket manager said to me, oh, you're with
Speaker 1: the ticket company. I'm working on ticket trans allocation. They
Speaker 1: pissed me off, so I'm gonna give them bad seats.
Speaker 1: I didn't say a word, and I walked out of
Speaker 1: the room with the two guys, and I go I
Speaker 1: thought the object was to sell tickets to the fans,
Speaker 1: not whether or not you pissed them off. Right, say said,
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. Were firing him, and they did.
Speaker 1: The end of the year. But the point was that
Speaker 1: ticket tron never saw themselves as a business. It was
Speaker 1: owned by Control Data UM. The people who owned it
Speaker 1: didn't understand the business they were in UM. And I
Speaker 1: remember when I'd be in a meeting in Houston where
Speaker 1: we owned like seven or eight percent of the company,
Speaker 1: and it was a partnership of the Summit, the Astrodome Pace,
Speaker 1: Angelo Dross who owned the Spurs, and Ticketmaster, five partners,
Speaker 1: all of whom at that time hated each other and
Speaker 1: required unanimous consent to do anything, which means, of course
Speaker 1: nothing got done. So I'm sitting in the room and
Speaker 1: they had a dent in the inventory, and within a
Speaker 1: year they had six because they started giving ticket try
Speaker 1: on allocations because they everybody was mad at Ticketmaster for
Speaker 1: whatever the reason. I had nothing to do with that.
Speaker 1: I didn't run it. And this was the thing that
Speaker 1: was really interesting to me. I said to them, why
Speaker 1: is there a dollar service charge on afforded dollar ticket?
Speaker 1: And they said, because we have five dollar tickets And
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, but a afforded dollar ticket could have
Speaker 1: a two dollar service charge and a five dollar ticket
Speaker 1: could have a dollar And they said, you can't do that,
Speaker 1: and that was my famous line was that like one
Speaker 1: of the tablets, Moses dropped. And some of them found
Speaker 1: it funny and some of them didn't. But the point was,
Speaker 1: as I subsequently learned, the way the system was written,
Speaker 1: you could only have one service charge on an event,
Speaker 1: couldn't have multiple service charges. You couldn't have multiple service
Speaker 1: charges in the marketplace. And in a world of self deprecation,
Speaker 1: this was common sense to me. I didn't understand why
Speaker 1: this thing happened. And then on top of everything else,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at their numbers. They've lost the inventory in
Speaker 1: those His prime was so they borrowed the money at
Speaker 1: twenty two and they're cash flowing money and they're complaining,
Speaker 1: and I'm sitting there thinking, you know, there's a business here.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants to look at this as a business, but
Speaker 1: there's a business. And the thing it needs follows is One,
Speaker 1: you need multiple service charges to you need to have
Speaker 1: multiple service charges on the same event. Three, it's not
Speaker 1: a democracy. You have to make this where you have
Speaker 1: total control of sitting in a room, and you've got
Speaker 1: to be an All good negotiations are driven by if
Speaker 1: you can't leave the table, don't sit at the table. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you make the deal with the Forum. Pick up there.
Speaker 1: Here's what happens the following week. I get a call
Speaker 1: on Monday. This is the week after he's told me
Speaker 1: we're going to do the deal, and a guy calls
Speaker 1: me from our office and says, we have a problem.
Speaker 1: And I said, what's a problem. He said, Lou wants
Speaker 1: to talk to you. That could mean anything. So I
Speaker 1: call up Blue and Lu says, Tikatron is not giving
Speaker 1: us the sixty day cancelation provision. They're gonna be out
Speaker 1: of here in ten days. They're not gonna honor it.
Speaker 1: Can you put me up in ten days? And being
Speaker 1: the moron I am, and went, of course, without truly
Speaker 1: understanding what that means. And um, he said, Look, and
Speaker 1: I'll never forget what he said. He said, if I
Speaker 1: had any doubt before, I have no doubt. Now, no
Speaker 1: one's gonna muscle me and tell me what to do.
Speaker 1: Take a tron did a real New York in your
Speaker 1: face move. Nobody knows this, Bob, I've never told this
Speaker 1: story publicly. That's really true. So now I called my
Speaker 1: guys and go, okay, we need a phone line into
Speaker 1: the Forum. So they called me back and say, okay,
Speaker 1: they're gonna put him in on Thursday. On on Tuesday
Speaker 1: afternoon or Wednesday morning, I get a call going they
Speaker 1: said they can't put it in for two months now.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know I've occasionally raised my voice and
Speaker 1: let's just say I blew a fit at peg Bell
Speaker 1: and they agreed to put in one line on Friday.
Speaker 1: And I had a guy who was really smart who
Speaker 1: built a black box and we ran the whole Forum
Speaker 1: box office of one line, one telephone line. And I
Speaker 1: said to Lou, look, I'm coming back this week, and
Speaker 1: Luke said, no, you're not. You have you a vacation.
Speaker 1: You need to come back Monday, which is like the
Speaker 1: tenth of the eleven And on the sevent the Journey
Speaker 1: sale was going on sale. A Journey concert was going
Speaker 1: on sale. And so I fly back on Monday. On Tuesday,
Speaker 1: I mean, we send them the contract. On on Wednesday,
Speaker 1: I mean the offices of the Forum, which is down stairs. Upstairs,
Speaker 1: they're moving in equipment and training people and Lou and I,
Speaker 1: because we don't have time, I'm marking up the contract
Speaker 1: I gave them. And that's the contract we signed and
Speaker 1: then here's the best part. Because they were all chicken
Speaker 1: scratches and we didn't know what they meant. Louis this,
Speaker 1: lou is a total gentleman. So Louid called me up
Speaker 1: and go what does this mean? I go, I don't know.
Speaker 1: He says, what what do you think it means? I said,
Speaker 1: it means whatever you wanted to meet. He said, well
Speaker 1: that might be fair, and I go, Loo, listen to me.
Speaker 1: Whatever you needed to mean. It means let's not waste
Speaker 1: time with contracts. Just tell me what you need, will
Speaker 1: take care of it. And then, of course I never
Speaker 1: lost the Forum as a client, obviously, because if you've
Speaker 1: you've built those kinds of relationships. So the concert goes
Speaker 1: on sale on Monday, and then the whole country finds
Speaker 1: out that Tikatron pulled out, you know, in ten days,
Speaker 1: you know, and didn't give them on at the sixty
Speaker 1: day notice, and obviously that became a marketing um benefit um.
Speaker 1: And then about two months later, there was a regional
Speaker 1: convention on the West coast, like the I Double Lamb
Speaker 1: and which was national that I went to. This was local,
Speaker 1: This was the whole West coast, and I figured take
Speaker 1: a tron would get up and they would apologize for
Speaker 1: their behavior and say, the industry is important. We're not
Speaker 1: going anywhere. We made a mistake because they bet. We
Speaker 1: couldn't put them up, and they didn't say a word.
Speaker 1: And I said to my guys, we own this industry.
Speaker 1: Or when I say we own it, we will. We
Speaker 1: will put them out of business. They're too stupid for words.
Speaker 1: And I said it will take time. But what they
Speaker 1: should have stood up with this group of people is
Speaker 1: we're sorry, we care about you. We did the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: We should have stepped up, and they didn't do that.
Speaker 1: And it went around the country. And then what it
Speaker 1: also did is it gave me name recognition for people
Speaker 1: to talk to me. And that's the beginning. That was
Speaker 1: really the beginning. Okay, so from the very big the
Speaker 1: big differentiator from the consumer end was the Ticketmaster. You
Speaker 1: could choose your seat. Was that a feature from day one? Yes?
Speaker 1: Best available seat. I mean one of the things we
Speaker 1: said is we have ticket centers, not remote outlets. And
Speaker 1: a remote outlet men a remote seat. Listen. We made
Speaker 1: all this stuff up as we went along, but the
Speaker 1: point was you had the whole inventory of what went
Speaker 1: on sale, whatever, the building gave you. So an exclusive
Speaker 1: is not what everybody thinks. And exclusive is the buildings
Speaker 1: decide what they're gonna put on sale. Ticketmaster doesn't decide that.
Speaker 1: The buildings decide that. So in the forum, where it
Speaker 1: was twenty seats US Senate Terrorists, senate Terrorists was equivalent
Speaker 1: to season tickets because they didn't have suites. So you'd
Speaker 1: get anyway from ten to twelve thousand tickets on a concert,
Speaker 1: not twenty. And when people would talk about exclusives, and
Speaker 1: it was one of the things that I think, um
Speaker 1: as people learned, it was not what it meant. Exclusive
Speaker 1: in the world meant wow, you got every ticket, Well
Speaker 1: you don't. And the truth is that everything in an
Speaker 1: arena is exclusive, whether it's food service, whether it's parking,
Speaker 1: whether it's you're a concessionaire in the building. And the
Speaker 1: way I saw the business was it was no different
Speaker 1: than a food concession. The public paid for that. If
Speaker 1: you're going to create outlets and phones that make it
Speaker 1: easy for the public not to go, you're entitled to
Speaker 1: get paid. And to me, that's why we called it
Speaker 1: a convenience charge. And what people never understood is the
Speaker 1: public was never our client, our client with the arenas
Speaker 1: and theaters and stadiums, and you serve the public because
Speaker 1: underneath it was this, because this is something you need
Speaker 1: to know in the sense of the way you you've
Speaker 1: written over the list forty years. Every arena manage is
Speaker 1: concerned about the team. Every arena manager is concerned about
Speaker 1: family shows. You know what. Arena managers were never concerned
Speaker 1: about rock and roll orphans. People would come in and
Speaker 1: trash the buildings or they would come in and it
Speaker 1: wasn't a business the way it was. And here's the part.
Speaker 1: When I got into business, sev of all tickets for
Speaker 1: shows was sold at the box office. And my bet was,
Speaker 1: if I can create an outlet system that you can
Speaker 1: put in logo slicks with a with a phone number,
Speaker 1: that nobody would go to the box office. That in
Speaker 1: the end, because no box office is near where anybody
Speaker 1: else is, and who the hell wants to camp out.
Speaker 1: So the perspective was that was the bet I made.
Speaker 1: I could have been wrong. I mean, there was no
Speaker 1: guarantee I was right. Was that. Look, if you create
Speaker 1: an outlets system where everybody has access to the same
Speaker 1: inventory when it goes on sale, including what's at the
Speaker 1: box office because take Atron in some instances would all
Speaker 1: their outlets weren't open, all their alice weren't open store hours,
Speaker 1: all their outlets weren't open on the day's shows, one
Speaker 1: on sale. I can take you through ten things take
Speaker 1: Atron didn't do, and I wasn't gonna do any of them.
Speaker 1: And at the beginning, when we were losing money, and
Speaker 1: people said, well, we'll give you an allocation, and I went, no, No,
Speaker 1: it has to be best available seat, because if I
Speaker 1: can't sell best available seat, I'm another version of them,
Speaker 1: and I'd rather go down with the ship than than
Speaker 1: build a business on the wrong level. They failed at this,
Speaker 1: and I can't tell you how many times I sat
Speaker 1: it at at in a in a negotiation where people said,
Speaker 1: we'll give you an allocation and I go find it. Well,
Speaker 1: that's very nice, We're not taking it. We're just not
Speaker 1: gonna take it. Okay. At this point in time, is
Speaker 1: Ticketmaster your full time job? Are you still practicing law
Speaker 1: in other areas with other clients? No? No, No. In
Speaker 1: two in September, when he funded, I left my practice
Speaker 1: and became CEO of the company. That's what I did, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So you get the Forum. That's the first turning point,
Speaker 1: and that of course is mostly concerts. Whatever did you
Speaker 1: get the sports teams at the everything? Everything? Okay? So
Speaker 1: how did you ultimately gain market share? Well, you started
Speaker 1: talking to people. So we started talking to Universal, we
Speaker 1: started talking to the Hollywood Bawl, we started talking to
Speaker 1: I have to tell you, to be fair, a lot
Speaker 1: of those brain cells died. But we started talking to everybody.
Speaker 1: And Jerry Seltza had a theory because I only wanted
Speaker 1: to deal with the big venues, and he said, no,
Speaker 1: you gotta deal with the clubs too. So we dealt
Speaker 1: with the small clubs, we dealt with the medium sized clubs,
Speaker 1: and we dealt with and Be and he was right.
Speaker 1: And then we dealt with the arenas, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: Universal came, the Hollywood Bowl came, Irvine Meadows was already
Speaker 1: along for the ride. And then you have to understand something.
Speaker 1: I didn't know anything. I'm a lawyer, what do I
Speaker 1: know about running a business. So you wake up one
Speaker 1: morning and you took yourself into this, right, I mean
Speaker 1: you're there. And to be clear, because you asked the
Speaker 1: question about Jay Jay was j Prisker was both a
Speaker 1: mentor and like a second day to me, it's important
Speaker 1: that I say that. So when we when when he
Speaker 1: was gonna put up the money, I served up the
Speaker 1: employment contract that UM I was gonna do with these
Speaker 1: um UM venture capitalists. And then his lawyers get involved,
Speaker 1: and I called him up because they, you know, they
Speaker 1: looked it tough and I don't want to deal with that.
Speaker 1: And I called J up and I said, you know
Speaker 1: what I feel like. I'm sitting in a closet with
Speaker 1: no windows. The fact that you think I could use
Speaker 1: an employment contract against you when I'm sitting here trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to make money UM and make
Speaker 1: this company work. I can't wrap my head around. So
Speaker 1: I'll make you the following deal. You know what it says.
Speaker 1: I know what it says. And we lived on a
Speaker 1: handshake for twelve years. There was never a piece of paper. Wow,
Speaker 1: So so you know, so the dynamic was that we
Speaker 1: were we became very close. He wouldn't fire me, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't quit. We had some interesting moments, but the truth
Speaker 1: was it was a handshake. And if Jay was not
Speaker 1: my partner and he owned more than I did. To
Speaker 1: be clear, UM the company would have failed because private
Speaker 1: equity guys worried too much. Jay only cared about one thing.
Speaker 1: As long as you were honest. He didn't care. And
Speaker 1: you know, people would call him up and go, you know,
Speaker 1: Frit's pissing me off, and go, well, you have to
Speaker 1: talk to Fred. That was the kind of owner he was,
Speaker 1: and that was the kind of partner he was. It's
Speaker 1: even better way to put it. And so in eight three,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm, you know, doing stuff you know, and I
Speaker 1: don't know anything. So I think, you know, I got
Speaker 1: an interesting idea. I'm gonna have a meeting every day
Speaker 1: at eight o'clock and everybody's gonna tell me what they
Speaker 1: did the day before. And people would come in at
Speaker 1: eight o'clock and I would tell everybody, look, even if
Speaker 1: you're installing machines, you're in marketing. Because they don't meet me,
Speaker 1: they meet you. You have to think about who what
Speaker 1: you are and then come back and tell me what
Speaker 1: they say. And during that year I learned everything that
Speaker 1: was to learn. Well, let's put it like this, the
Speaker 1: basis of the business, where the money was, how everything
Speaker 1: I did, every job, how everything worked, what I was
Speaker 1: asking people to do, what counted what didn't count. And
Speaker 1: you'll find the shocking because I never wrote anything. Everybody
Speaker 1: knows that was a big joke with me. Every morning
Speaker 1: I woke up, took out a yellow pad, wrote fifty
Speaker 1: forty to fifty things I wanted to do, and ripped
Speaker 1: up the sheet, and then in my mind during the
Speaker 1: day I crossed things off and the next day I
Speaker 1: would start again. I worked from the time I woke
Speaker 1: up until I couldn't see anymore. But I'm useless after
Speaker 1: eight thirty or nine o'clock at night. So it was
Speaker 1: like you had to have dinner, but I was. I
Speaker 1: knew every place way to get breakfast at five thirty
Speaker 1: in the morning. That's what I learned. And look, you
Speaker 1: pay a price for that. And you know, Bob, because
Speaker 1: in the early years, as we started to grow, we
Speaker 1: took a lot of criticism, and a lot of it
Speaker 1: was directed at me. But it was okay for the
Speaker 1: following reason. Nobody cares about a computerized ticketing company. Why
Speaker 1: would you care? And I made a real decision at
Speaker 1: the beginning that I would take the heat for everybody
Speaker 1: and make it personal because then if you put a
Speaker 1: face to it, right, what it does is people start
Speaker 1: to pay attention. And you know in the end there
Speaker 1: were acquisitions. UM. You know, UM. I'll answer the questions
Speaker 1: you want to ask. But the point was it was
Speaker 1: all strategic and if I had not learned to do
Speaker 1: every job in the company, we would have failed because
Speaker 1: you can't scale, you can't grow, you can't evolve unless
Speaker 1: you understand when you're taking a start up. And I
Speaker 1: knew changing the rules, changing the economics was different. And
Speaker 1: the other thing that everybody wanted to do is this.
Speaker 1: These are two things I did in contracts that nobody
Speaker 1: pays any attention to. One is, UM, I wouldn't sign
Speaker 1: a one year deal. I had no interest in signing
Speaker 1: a one year deal. Waste of time because then you're
Speaker 1: always under the gun. The second thing is on three
Speaker 1: and five year contracts, I mostly wanted five, and I
Speaker 1: took three. In some cases, raisors were built into the
Speaker 1: contract see Tickettron in their contracts said raises are mutual.
Speaker 1: And in talking to a lot of the building managers,
Speaker 1: they would go about a month before we would have
Speaker 1: to have this discussion. I would pick a fight and
Speaker 1: then tell them they couldn't raise it, and they'd laugh.
Speaker 1: They thought it was funny, and I went, that's stupid.
Speaker 1: So when when I started to build in raises, they said, well,
Speaker 1: you can't have a raise every year. I said, what
Speaker 1: if you're sharing it? Well, that's different. And so so
Speaker 1: all the stuff that you used to rail about or
Speaker 1: that people would write about, it was all organized and
Speaker 1: so they have well Ticketmaster can do what they want. No,
Speaker 1: we can't. Everything was in a contract. The thing is
Speaker 1: what I took out of it was that we don't
Speaker 1: have to go back and negotiate every year. And because
Speaker 1: it was automatic, there was no discussion. It was just easy.
Speaker 1: You got it done and people were like wow. And
Speaker 1: then they go, well it's not my fault, it's his,
Speaker 1: and they call you over, well how do you feel
Speaker 1: about that? And you're going, okay, fine, next you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, at the height of all these controversies, they
Speaker 1: had me setting the price of every ticket in the country.
Speaker 1: Damn me setting the price of every service. Everything was
Speaker 1: in a contract, Everything was negotiated. Everything was there in
Speaker 1: black and white, and I went, why are we different
Speaker 1: than a food service? And then I realized one thing
Speaker 1: really early on. No arena is open three sixty five
Speaker 1: days a year. No stadium is open three sixty five
Speaker 1: days a year. Do you know the only vendor that
Speaker 1: operates three and sixty five days a year the ticket company.
Speaker 1: When you're home at Christmas watching a show or a
Speaker 1: sporting event, there's someone in the box office. That means
Speaker 1: someone's in the data center. So the whole dynamic of
Speaker 1: how you were looking at this business, and I will
Speaker 1: tell you this, the systems didn't work. This was the
Speaker 1: Forum's definition of default. You need to be down for
Speaker 1: more than an hour, and then you needed to be
Speaker 1: down for more than an hour twice, and that counted
Speaker 1: one event of default. And yet to have four events
Speaker 1: of default in a quarter to be in default, so
Speaker 1: that was eight hours. So they go, well, you're only
Speaker 1: down for fifteen minutes. That doesn't count. By the end
Speaker 1: of the third year, if we went down twenty minutes
Speaker 1: in a year, people were nuts. And part of the reason,
Speaker 1: and I'll say this later, you know when you ask
Speaker 1: in the last you know, um Taylor Swift, mess Siki
Speaker 1: had five shows at the Brooklyn Arena and they blew
Speaker 1: up and you know that they lost that contract. Here's
Speaker 1: the reason why Ticketmaster continues to be dominant more than
Speaker 1: any other reason and why no one can scale, no
Speaker 1: one will give them the ability to make the mistakes
Speaker 1: we did. In the first three years, people compared us
Speaker 1: to ticket Tron and ticket Trunk was terrible, outages, couldn't
Speaker 1: find them, difficult, difficult, systems slow, not connected. During that period,
Speaker 1: we made a lot of mistakes, make no bones about it.
Speaker 1: We blew up. I can't tell you how many times.
Speaker 1: But here's the difference. When people left ticket Tron to
Speaker 1: go to ticket Master was walking off a curb. For
Speaker 1: people to leave Ticketmaster today, you gotta jump out of
Speaker 1: a third of what stirring window because no system can
Speaker 1: scale and no one will give them the opportunity to
Speaker 1: make the mistakes Ticketmaster hat. In other words, we we
Speaker 1: had that freedom because the competition was awful. It was terrible.
Speaker 1: And then what happened is we got bigger and you
Speaker 1: kept evolving your system. And I'm talking about the sixteen
Speaker 1: years I was there, not I can't talk about what
Speaker 1: came afterwards. Every time we made major system up grades,
Speaker 1: we'd go to a C market or a B market
Speaker 1: and say, listen, we've got these new um improvements, but
Speaker 1: we you know, we gotta debug it, and so we
Speaker 1: debug it in some region, and we'd pay the buildings,
Speaker 1: or we'd give them certain benefits that other buildings wouldn't have. Well,
Speaker 1: we had a chance to test it. So when people
Speaker 1: sit in the room and go, I don't understand why
Speaker 1: I take a master's dominant the dominant because it works
Speaker 1: better than anybody else. And nobody's got the freedom to
Speaker 1: scale because nobody, nobody's willing to take the mistakes that
Speaker 1: we made that we had between eighty two and eight
Speaker 1: five and eighties six. You follow what I'm saying, Let
Speaker 1: me just ask you a question. The modern ney Uh
Speaker 1: paradigm of giving of paying the arena or venue for
Speaker 1: an exclusive contract, how did that come about? At the beginning,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't do it unless I could take an exclusive
Speaker 1: that That was the first contract I own. No, the
Speaker 1: reverse where the ticket company pays the venue. From the beginning,
Speaker 1: it came from me. It came because I watched the
Speaker 1: food concession has pay the building. I watched the parking
Speaker 1: concession has pay the building. I watched everybody paying the building. Well,
Speaker 1: just because I know, so if the food concession or
Speaker 1: wants to the food concession, they pay X amount of
Speaker 1: dollars right up front. Well, they do two things. They
Speaker 1: put in all the equipment right and and they either well,
Speaker 1: we didn't pay anybody up front for five or six years.
Speaker 1: That that's a misnomer. That may have been even longer
Speaker 1: than that. People got revenue streams from day one. But
Speaker 1: but but advances we didn't make. But the food companies
Speaker 1: started making advances. And you're a concessionaire in the building.
Speaker 1: So I didn't invent that. I just took it from
Speaker 1: another pot and said, okay, we can do that. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the things that we did it was, um,
Speaker 1: people always came to us for money because we were
Speaker 1: the bank. I mean fundamentally were the bank. We had
Speaker 1: the ticket money. But but before I go there, let
Speaker 1: me let me add the follow it. Of all the
Speaker 1: criticisms you've heard of Ticketmaster and anybody more wired than
Speaker 1: you are, I don't know they hear anybody ever say
Speaker 1: they didn't get an order that was honest. Anybody say
Speaker 1: they didn't get all their money. See, nobody wants to talk.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants to talk about that. They had a real
Speaker 1: manifest I had one broke. One promoter in Europe said
Speaker 1: I'll never use your system. It's too accurate actually said that.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we cleaned up an industry that
Speaker 1: nobody wants to pay attention to rose, that that didn't
Speaker 1: exist on manifests, orders, that that people didn't get paid on.
Speaker 1: We would never There are two things to know of
Speaker 1: how I looked at the business. One two things people
Speaker 1: have sense of humor about. One is money. The second
Speaker 1: is systems. You can't be a day later a dollar
Speaker 1: short and you're some better work. Everything else is marketing.
Speaker 1: Everything everything else is marketing. And so the impact of
Speaker 1: what what we did was we would give people money
Speaker 1: and you know, and pay them weekly. And then somewhere
Speaker 1: along the line, I can't I don't even remember the
Speaker 1: building we did it with, somebody said I need money.
Speaker 1: What else was new? And by the way, the music business,
Speaker 1: you well know is what's mine is mine and what
Speaker 1: yours was we're going to negotiate for. And one of
Speaker 1: the early negotiations was, well, if you charge three dollars
Speaker 1: on my twenty dollar ticket, then I should charge twenty three.
Speaker 1: And I go, well, in charge twenty three, and they go,
Speaker 1: what are you going to charge? I said three. I said.
Speaker 1: What you need to understand is this The system works
Speaker 1: you don't complain about getting paid, you don't complain about
Speaker 1: the audience, you don't complain. You're looking for the money.
Speaker 1: You're not getting the money from New Jersey because I
Speaker 1: had regional banks in five or six places. And here's
Speaker 1: what nobody pays attention to, which will get too later
Speaker 1: with Tikotron. From day one being a lawyer, there were
Speaker 1: two kinds of accounts I had. So if I took
Speaker 1: in a hundred and ten dollars that went into a
Speaker 1: client account, ten dollars went into my account and the
Speaker 1: hundred dollars stayed in the client account. And as we
Speaker 1: got bigger and became a borrowing company, the banks could
Speaker 1: not have access to our client accounts. But every company
Speaker 1: I bought, including ticket Tron, was in the client accounts.
Speaker 1: And on closing on Tikatron, they wrote us a check,
Speaker 1: not the other way around, because they were using everybody's
Speaker 1: money to operate. We didn't do that, and I didn't
Speaker 1: do that from day one, even when I was losing money.
Speaker 1: So in the in the world of people not knowing
Speaker 1: and paying attention, that was real. We we ran our
Speaker 1: business clean. And the reason that over the years under
Speaker 1: my watch, why the government never did anything. And I
Speaker 1: always respect the fact that government could do anything they want.
Speaker 1: Is no company. It was like going to the practologists.
Speaker 1: Everyone looked at us and they went through the company
Speaker 1: and they went through how we did our business. And
Speaker 1: you know what, you're not a clean business, a totally clean, absolute,
Speaker 1: you know, honest business, where the money was, how the
Speaker 1: money was handled, who got paid. There isn't one promoter
Speaker 1: who can sit in the room and go, oh, I
Speaker 1: didn't get my money, or Fred took my We didn't
Speaker 1: do any of that. And nobody wants to pay any
Speaker 1: attention to that when they write it. And you think
Speaker 1: of all those little ticket companies that weren't broke, and
Speaker 1: the reason we bought Tickettron is they were in the
Speaker 1: client accounts to the tune of north to fourteen million dollars.
Speaker 1: And the reason I bought them was if they went broke,
Speaker 1: every single governmental agency would talk about how you're gonna
Speaker 1: handle the money, and I didn't want that. It was
Speaker 1: cheaper to buy it and just you know, let them
Speaker 1: pay it and make everything right. And here's the thing
Speaker 1: that was interesting. We paid the little guys because right
Speaker 1: away because live hand to mouth. But the big arenas.
Speaker 1: The numbers were so screwed up. I didn't pay anybody
Speaker 1: in America for four weeks on the big arenas. And
Speaker 1: they called me up and said, Fred, are we good?
Speaker 1: Are you good for the money? I said, I give
Speaker 1: you my word, we're good for the money. You cannot
Speaker 1: comprehend how screwed up these books are. And when we
Speaker 1: make the settlement, if you think there's any discrepancy, you
Speaker 1: know how to find me, pick up the phone and
Speaker 1: we'll solve anything. No one's gonna take one dollar from
Speaker 1: you or one penny from you that doesn't belong. And
Speaker 1: everybody waited four weeks until we could put the numbers together.
Speaker 1: Nobody screamed and yelled. Nobody went. I would get calls.
Speaker 1: Do I have your word? I you got my word?
Speaker 1: And you know none of that got written. But the
Speaker 1: point is that's what having integrity and honesty and being
Speaker 1: open about with the industry. And you know, okay, just
Speaker 1: to be very clear, you took four weeks to pay.
Speaker 1: As years went by, it wasn't four weeks. No, you
Speaker 1: got paid every week. Okay, next thing, because the public
Speaker 1: is always concerned about this, especially today when gigs are
Speaker 1: put on sale, a year in advance. You take the
Speaker 1: money and you pay the buildings once a week. You
Speaker 1: don't hold the money. Money goes to the money goes
Speaker 1: to the arenas once a week. And we had a rule.
Speaker 1: We had I had a rule. So when I didn't
Speaker 1: pay the buildings for four weeks, it was because I
Speaker 1: couldn't put the numbers together. And then they went back
Speaker 1: to being paid on a weekly basis. The point is this,
Speaker 1: even ticket trans clients knew how screwed up they were.
Speaker 1: It wasn't only us. They knew how screwed up they were.
Speaker 1: And the way we would do our business is this.
Speaker 1: You'd get paid for Monday through Sunday, you get a
Speaker 1: wire transfer on Wednesday at Thursday of the following week,
Speaker 1: and buildings like the Forum in the meadow Lands and
Speaker 1: United States, all those buildings got paid. And today you know,
Speaker 1: Live Nation puts stuff on sale a year in advance,
Speaker 1: they get paid. I mean it's you're not you're not
Speaker 1: holding on to that money. The day of holding on
Speaker 1: money for float is gone. But that was gone under
Speaker 1: my watch. Okay. And a little bit slower, why exactly
Speaker 1: did you buy ticket tron Because if they if they
Speaker 1: closed and filed bankruptcy. The public would have been stuck
Speaker 1: for eighteen million dollars, and that meant that would have
Speaker 1: been investigations that would have meant, how do you hold
Speaker 1: the money? How do you do this? And I chose
Speaker 1: to say, better we buy them and make everybody right,
Speaker 1: then spend time in forty states explaining to people what's
Speaker 1: going on. I did it to protect the industry. I
Speaker 1: really did it to protect the industry and protect myself,
Speaker 1: totally clear. Let's jump forward to Pearl Jam in nineties.
Speaker 1: I knew you were going to do that. Wait wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: give me your side of the story. There is no side.
Speaker 1: What happened was this? The Pearl Jam's story started with
Speaker 1: a guy whose name you know, but I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: do that. Who the Sting called me up and said,
Speaker 1: Sting is gonna do one show at the will Turn Theater.
Speaker 1: Do you remember that? Does that even doing? And okay,
Speaker 1: so how are we going to do that? I said, Well,
Speaker 1: the fairest way to do it is to do phones only. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I forget what he was going to charge
Speaker 1: a ticket? Will do three dollars and we'll do We'll
Speaker 1: make sure no one gets two tickets. It will be
Speaker 1: two tickets. I'll make sure that we cross reference credit cards,
Speaker 1: addresses and all the stuff that goes with that, and
Speaker 1: we'll do it that way. Because the demand was twenty
Speaker 1: of those, you know, the will turn was eighteen hundred seats.
Speaker 1: I can't even remember whatever, and so so we agreed
Speaker 1: and that's how it worked. And then the same person
Speaker 1: called me on Pearl Jam he was gonna do the
Speaker 1: show at the Orpheum Theater in Boston. I said, well,
Speaker 1: we can't do the show with the outlets. That's gonna
Speaker 1: be a war. I mean, you could sell ten of those.
Speaker 1: I said, are you open to doing the same thing
Speaker 1: we did? Was sting, and he said yes, And so
Speaker 1: it was like an eighteen dollar ticket and three dollars
Speaker 1: on the phone and the next thing I know, and
Speaker 1: I know you'll find the shocking as I was blindsided.
Speaker 1: No one talked to me, no one said a word
Speaker 1: to me, and then this whole ship storm started and
Speaker 1: I was caught unaware, and I was amazed that the
Speaker 1: band got involved. I mean, I didn't even know three
Speaker 1: quarters of the stuff that subsequently came out later for real,
Speaker 1: and I mean, it's none of it made any sense.
Speaker 1: And I found out that the guy who was behind
Speaker 1: all that I was trying to get himself into the
Speaker 1: ticket business and he had a willing group of guys
Speaker 1: who look I think Pearl Jam's a really great band,
Speaker 1: and I think they walked into a controversy they didn't understand.
Speaker 1: And I would say for six months we got our
Speaker 1: head handed to us. They were uh. And it led
Speaker 1: to a Department of Justice investigation and twenty eight attorney generals.
Speaker 1: And the only thing I've ever said about that is
Speaker 1: I was glad the system work because everybody left we
Speaker 1: signed nothing. The more facts they found, um, the more
Speaker 1: they understood that what they were told with two different things.
Speaker 1: And then um, um, Sherry Washerman and maybe it was
Speaker 1: pearl Off, I can't remember, asked us, asked me to
Speaker 1: have a meeting with um Kelly Curtis at the old
Speaker 1: Nico Hotel in Los Angeles, you know the one on
Speaker 1: less Jennaga. Of course that's a manager of Pearl Jam
Speaker 1: for those who don't know. Yeah, And and I meet Kelly,
Speaker 1: and Kelly was the Pearl Jam was was in in
Speaker 1: of Washington, d C. The month before doing a benefit
Speaker 1: concert for Gloria steinhum and she gets on stage and says,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm all full lower tickets. I called her
Speaker 1: because I've given her money. And I go, Gloria, before
Speaker 1: you walk into this, why don't you know the facts.
Speaker 1: And I said, you know what you're being told is
Speaker 1: not true. And I sat with Kelly and I said, look,
Speaker 1: I give myself a D minus vow. I handled it
Speaker 1: last year. This was a I was blindsided. I was defensive,
Speaker 1: and I didn't understand a lot. I couldn't understand where
Speaker 1: it came from. I mean, I was shocked. And I said,
Speaker 1: but look, it's time to move on. Do a benefit concert.
Speaker 1: What you want to do is going to be a
Speaker 1: nightmare and a disaster. I will give a hunt represented
Speaker 1: the service charge to any charity you want, but this
Speaker 1: ends now. And he said to me, we're gonna change
Speaker 1: the whole concert business. And I said to him, let
Speaker 1: me explain the reality. I'm a lot smarter this year
Speaker 1: than I was last year. You've got four kids who
Speaker 1: are millionaires. I got five thousand people who worked for
Speaker 1: me phone rooms, who are minorities, who welfare mothers, who
Speaker 1: you know, need the gig. And we do a lot
Speaker 1: of work in the inner cities and we take care
Speaker 1: of a lot of different people. You're not gonna win.
Speaker 1: I know what the game is now, You're not gonna win.
Speaker 1: Go your tour is going to be a disaster. Don't
Speaker 1: do it. He's no, We're gonna change the world. It
Speaker 1: blew up. I've read pieces that I helped blow it up.
Speaker 1: I had as much to blowing to. I had as
Speaker 1: much to do blowing it up as you did. We
Speaker 1: stayed away from it intentionally because it would fall back
Speaker 1: on us. And you know, in the end, they never
Speaker 1: should have done what they did. And here's the part
Speaker 1: that was crazy, because you will appreciate this. No other
Speaker 1: group joined them. And it wasn't because we had power.
Speaker 1: It was because people talk to us. So you know
Speaker 1: Ian McKellan and Fugazi. Fugazi had five dollar tickets. A
Speaker 1: year before the Pearl Jam thing. He placed some building
Speaker 1: in Chicago and they put a three dollar service charge
Speaker 1: on it, and he blew a fit. And I read
Speaker 1: it about it one of the trade magazines and I said,
Speaker 1: he's right. So I said to one of the guys
Speaker 1: that golden voice, can you connect me with him? I
Speaker 1: spoke to him and I said First of all, let
Speaker 1: me apologize, because if you're doing five dollar tickets, you
Speaker 1: care about your craft and you care about your fans.
Speaker 1: So you tell me what's a fast service charge? He said,
Speaker 1: A dollar? I said, line, you got it on all
Speaker 1: your shows. I'll let everybody know. And what about the phones?
Speaker 1: He says, I don't care about that. You can judge
Speaker 1: two or three dollars because nobody buys my phone. Fine.
Speaker 1: Three months later he blows another fit because you know buildings,
Speaker 1: you know if it's five dollars in advance and seven
Speaker 1: dollars at the door. And he blames us for the
Speaker 1: two dollars. And I call him up and I go
Speaker 1: I he said, I know it wasn't you. It wasn't you.
Speaker 1: You've been a really straight up guy. It will not
Speaker 1: happen again. Fine, stunt Temple pilots, I made a deal
Speaker 1: um rage against the machine. I mean deals with everybody
Speaker 1: who talked to me. You know when they when they
Speaker 1: when they talk to us about stunt temble polish, is
Speaker 1: I got an I've got an elevator of of of prices.
Speaker 1: Can you move some of the stuff to the higher
Speaker 1: prices and reduced the lower prices of course, common sense
Speaker 1: did it for all these acts, which is why no
Speaker 1: one joined them, and they're sitting there by themselves. And
Speaker 1: there's one I want to get in. Tim Collins, as
Speaker 1: you know, testified at the hearings, manager VERYL. Smith, Manager
Speaker 1: Arrass Smith. And a year later he comes to see
Speaker 1: me and he apologizes because he won't admit it. He said,
Speaker 1: I was just trying to be cool. I know you
Speaker 1: won't hold it against me, and I go, life moves on. Look,
Speaker 1: no one showed up for this except them, and I
Speaker 1: think they would take an advantage of I think they
Speaker 1: didn't quite understand what they were walking into, and they
Speaker 1: self destructed on their own. It's nothing I'm particularly feel
Speaker 1: good about or bad about, um. But in the end
Speaker 1: everybody left, the government left, the Attorney General's left, and
Speaker 1: the class action lossuits a roll bullshit anyway. So the
Speaker 1: dynamic for all of that is that's the truth. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: let's move on from there. How does Prince tur decide
Speaker 1: to get out? No, he didn't decide. I decided. We
Speaker 1: were sitting in a room it was and I said, Jay,
Speaker 1: we're doing really great, and you know I love you.
Speaker 1: But there are two choices you know, I want to
Speaker 1: put some money away and or go public. And Jay
Speaker 1: didn't want to go public. And he said, what do
Speaker 1: you think the company's worth? And I told him and
Speaker 1: he said, you'll never get that. And in the space
Speaker 1: of thirty days we had five bids for more than
Speaker 1: I said. And then it took a year, and then
Speaker 1: Paul Allen ultimately bought the company for the company forty
Speaker 1: million dollars. But it was really Jay would never have
Speaker 1: sold it, Bob, But you know, Jay, it was a
Speaker 1: billionaire before they were billionaires. And I had always worked
Speaker 1: since I was sixteen, and I wanted to put away
Speaker 1: a chunk of money, which I think is fair. I'm
Speaker 1: entitled to it. I did it. And and when when
Speaker 1: Paul bought the company, he said and and and j
Speaker 1: said to me, look, I don't want you to negotiate
Speaker 1: you a deal until I have our deal, which is
Speaker 1: basically the price of the company. So they agree on
Speaker 1: a price, and then Paul comes to me and I
Speaker 1: tell him what I want and he basically says, you're
Speaker 1: out of your mind. And I go, fine, then I'll
Speaker 1: give you a one year deal and I'll leave. I
Speaker 1: was happy to go. I mean I've been working since
Speaker 1: I was a kid. My dad died at fifty two.
Speaker 1: That always sits in the back of your mind. Um,
Speaker 1: I was sixty years old. And I said, I'll give
Speaker 1: you a one year transition, okay, um, whatever you want.
Speaker 1: You can fill in a number. I don't care. And
Speaker 1: he came back to me and said, no, I want
Speaker 1: to I want you to stay. And then he went
Speaker 1: to Jay and said, I understand you're the only person
Speaker 1: who has moral suasion on Fred. And Jay said that's true.
Speaker 1: I do. Went very close, and he said I need
Speaker 1: your help, and Jay said, Paul, let me explain this.
Speaker 1: I can't help you. Fred said he'd stay out of
Speaker 1: the deal for us, and I told him I'd stay
Speaker 1: out of the deal for him, So I can't help
Speaker 1: you with that. You're gonna have to figure it out.
Speaker 1: And Paul did call me a couple of days later
Speaker 1: and he and he goes like this, Okay, you can
Speaker 1: have your deal, and I said, and he was not
Speaker 1: happy about it, and I said, well, I gotta think
Speaker 1: about it now because I didn't think you were going
Speaker 1: to do it. But I'll call you back in a
Speaker 1: couple of days. And he said, well, I'm not giving
Speaker 1: you more. I said, I didn't ask for more. I
Speaker 1: actually thought I was getting out those are you know,
Speaker 1: those are stories that aren't written anywhere, Bob Okay. So
Speaker 1: what was it like working for Paul Allen? Paul was
Speaker 1: a strange guy. Um, I didn't understand client relationships. Um.
Speaker 1: For the most part, he did not engage. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: we had the controversies with Microsoft at the time. He
Speaker 1: left me alone to a great extent. Um. But when
Speaker 1: we were when we were going from information on the
Speaker 1: internet to doing transactions, my level of concerning with some
Speaker 1: kid in Peoria, We've got seven thousand tickets for you too,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to make sure we had all the
Speaker 1: firewalls appropriate. And I think he took it as a
Speaker 1: level of disobedience, like, you know, you need to do
Speaker 1: what I want. And I go, well, I can't do
Speaker 1: what you want if I put clients in jeopardy. These
Speaker 1: these are people I have relationships with, These are people
Speaker 1: that I have obligations too. He didn't understand any of that.
Speaker 1: He just thought I was being difficult. And I acknowledge
Speaker 1: I'm difficult, but it wasn't difficult without a reason. And
Speaker 1: then I said finally, Okay, we'll do it in the Northwest.
Speaker 1: And the first guy who used the service was a
Speaker 1: guy from Tumwa to Washington. I still remember this. So
Speaker 1: somebody comes, somebody O and go. Somebody brought one ticket
Speaker 1: for a baseball game. I said, we'll call him up
Speaker 1: and ask him why they did it. And the guy said,
Speaker 1: I don't like talking to people and I don't like
Speaker 1: talking to you. I should have put that up on
Speaker 1: the wall. I mean, because that was the beginning. And
Speaker 1: then we took it across the country. And you know,
Speaker 1: when we we were probably the first company to make
Speaker 1: money on the internet for real. Okay, how does uh
Speaker 1: it transfer to Barry Diller? When Barry came? Uh? Barry,
Speaker 1: it's very smart. Barry is a really smart financial engineer.
Speaker 1: And my contract had a year left. Well, let's talk
Speaker 1: about the sale first. How I went from Paul Allen
Speaker 1: to Barry Diller. He he did that deal and he
Speaker 1: didn't consult me truth just because you know the numbers
Speaker 1: did did Was it a good investment for Paul Allen? Um?
Speaker 1: It was close. I think Paul was frustrated on some
Speaker 1: levels on this UM and so when he sold it
Speaker 1: to Diller, you know, a lot of people try to
Speaker 1: get me to say you can stay, and I really,
Speaker 1: Barry's the guy wants total control and he's entitled to it. Um.
Speaker 1: And I never worked for anybody, so I knew at
Speaker 1: some point I was going to leave. And then once
Speaker 1: um he came to the rest of the company, I
Speaker 1: basically left. Um. You know, we had a what I
Speaker 1: would call a purely professional, at times strained relationship, but
Speaker 1: he never interfered with what I was doing. But look,
Speaker 1: it's his company, and when it was his company, it
Speaker 1: wasn't my company anymore. And UM, you know, where I
Speaker 1: had had ultimate freedom to do what I want, I
Speaker 1: didn't have that any you know, even though he said,
Speaker 1: you know, he said, we're being very careful about your contract.
Speaker 1: We want to make sure we don't because we know
Speaker 1: you have total control. But in the end, Barry's Barry
Speaker 1: is a brilliant financial engineer. Aaron looked, the guys made
Speaker 1: a billion dollars. You gotta give him credit. And he
Speaker 1: he knows how to buy these companies. And I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna say anything negative about him, even though you know,
Speaker 1: he's not somebody that he and I became friends. UM,
Speaker 1: and the I have great respect for him, and you
Speaker 1: gotta make your It was my journey, and I figured
Speaker 1: the journey ended. So just to be clear, how long
Speaker 1: did you work with Barry? Maybe a year, maybe less? Okay,
Speaker 1: Now I realize you leave there in the nineties and
Speaker 1: there's been evolution since then. But you are certainly a
Speaker 1: student of the game. So we have fees, whatever we
Speaker 1: label them, forget it. When you were involved, how were
Speaker 1: the fees created in terms of the amount and how
Speaker 1: were they divvied up. That's a question with no answer
Speaker 1: because it was a case by a spasis. Okay, then
Speaker 1: let me ask you this. So you're getting fees. Some
Speaker 1: goes to the building, some goes to ticket master. How
Speaker 1: long was it before someone to the promoter on at
Speaker 1: the beginning, See here's how it worked. The promoters often
Speaker 1: took you into the building, no matter where you are
Speaker 1: in the country, So you'd make you deal with the building,
Speaker 1: and then they'd say, listen, we got to take care
Speaker 1: of the promoter, and we'd add that on. And then
Speaker 1: one of the things that changing the phones. This is
Speaker 1: really interesting. None of the acts wanted to pay the
Speaker 1: credit card charge, so that got added to the phone
Speaker 1: to start with, which everybody got confused about. Okay, just
Speaker 1: to be very interesting, you're doing incredible volume. What percentage
Speaker 1: you paying for the credit card MX was in the threes.
Speaker 1: The the into into bank rate was really less than two.
Speaker 1: You know, you could figure out the margins between point
Speaker 1: and a half and a point eight. But you also
Speaker 1: had to recognize that you also ate all the chargebacks.
Speaker 1: And there was one of your growth volume was fraud um,
Speaker 1: which you ate the buildings didn't need it. You ate
Speaker 1: it um for expensive tickets um, the ones that were
Speaker 1: over a thousand dollars. And there were some events that
Speaker 1: were I made people signed stuff before I send it
Speaker 1: to him. We had a form that we would fax
Speaker 1: to them and they would sign it because it made
Speaker 1: it harder to charge it back. Um. You know, that's
Speaker 1: just the course of doing business. You just build that
Speaker 1: into the dynamic. Okay, I interrupted you. You were talking
Speaker 1: about the accident. Want to eat the charge? Keep going?
Speaker 1: And then and then there was another thing I had separate.
Speaker 1: This changed after I left. The outlet was less than
Speaker 1: the phones because you've built all that into the phone charge.
Speaker 1: And then when I left, they decided to just yank
Speaker 1: make the service charge the same as the outlets and
Speaker 1: the phones, and so they started to take credit cards
Speaker 1: at the outlets. Um, it's just the course of doing business.
Speaker 1: And you know the outlets, the the acts would call
Speaker 1: you up with the manager would call you up and go, look,
Speaker 1: I know you've got this three percent charge for credit card.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about moving it to the public
Speaker 1: And I went, okay, you know, the level of innocence
Speaker 1: in all this is nonsense. So the promoters often took
Speaker 1: you in the building and you'd make the deal with
Speaker 1: the building. And sometimes the buildings let the promoter and
Speaker 1: on a fee, and sometimes they didn't. Most of the
Speaker 1: time they did. Um and I. And you know, you
Speaker 1: became the bank. You were the accounting system for everybody.
Speaker 1: And one of my favorite stories is I was talking
Speaker 1: to some building in the South and I'm talking to
Speaker 1: the guy and and it sounds like, you know, it
Speaker 1: sounds like a dog died. He said, ah, you know,
Speaker 1: this was when there were more municipal buildings than private buildings.
Speaker 1: And he goes, I gotta go tell the mayor I
Speaker 1: gave up the rent. I go, how much was I go?
Speaker 1: How much is the rent? He's just fifteen grand? I said,
Speaker 1: I'll give it to you. He said, how are you
Speaker 1: going to give it to me? He said, I said,
Speaker 1: I'm just there had three dollars to the service. George,
Speaker 1: I know what's going on. I'll give you your money.
Speaker 1: Whether it was fifteen or twenty grand I can't remember,
Speaker 1: and I'll keep the rest. He's a great idea. Then
Speaker 1: what would happen is the music writer would call him
Speaker 1: up after the show went on sound and go, how
Speaker 1: come the service chargers will hire it for this event?
Speaker 1: And the building manager go, gotta keep an eye on
Speaker 1: those people in Los Angeles. So you know it was
Speaker 1: Kabuki Theater, and Bob, you were around, you saw that.
Speaker 1: You know the criticism we got from new music writers.
Speaker 1: You know what the building managers said. But not one
Speaker 1: building did we lose. And no one connected the fact
Speaker 1: of saying, wait a minute, if they're doing all these
Speaker 1: things without all these people knowing, and they're complaining about it,
Speaker 1: why aren't they throwing them out or suing them? But
Speaker 1: everybody was part of the process, and I took the
Speaker 1: heat for everybody because look, the fact is, this is
Speaker 1: what I really believed, and it's my mantra from day one.
Speaker 1: No one pays more for a ticket than they want.
Speaker 1: And I want you to think about something that's different.
Speaker 1: I sometimes walk into arenas and I'd look up in
Speaker 1: the in the nosebleed sections less ten rows. Or you
Speaker 1: go into a stadium it's cold, people sitting there without shirts,
Speaker 1: it's raining. Why do people do that? Because it's emotion.
Speaker 1: You cannot regulate emotion. So think of this the Bolstead Act,
Speaker 1: which was for those of you who don't remember when
Speaker 1: prohibition that failed the war on drugs. In my mind,
Speaker 1: there's a failure gambling. You know now that you've got
Speaker 1: all these draft kings and everything else. That's side of
Speaker 1: leaves some of the balloon app But people will play
Speaker 1: numbers in the fifties because you can't stop people from
Speaker 1: doing emotional things. And he has the problem. Tickets are emotional.
Speaker 1: I need to be in the building. It has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with logic. And you can't regulate emotion. So
Speaker 1: here's what really happened and what destroyed the business market.
Speaker 1: I leave StubHub comes along the guys that wait, wait
Speaker 1: before you go to StubHub. When did the acts start
Speaker 1: getting pieces of the fees? Not while I was there? Okay, okay, stubbub.
Speaker 1: There was one that did that was the Rolling Stones.
Speaker 1: Michael Michael Cole and I made that deal, which is
Speaker 1: really funny because we make the deal was sitting at
Speaker 1: a restaurant. We don't have paper or a pen. I
Speaker 1: got a white napkin. We put a cross on the napkin,
Speaker 1: did service charges for the whole country, and settled a
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars on a napkin. None of that would
Speaker 1: happen today. There'd be four lawyers involved in every we
Speaker 1: shook hands. That was the relationship we had. So when
Speaker 1: I left, you know, we did all in ticketing in
Speaker 1: ninety four with a couple of acts and everything. We're
Speaker 1: hiding the service charges now All in Ticketing is the
Speaker 1: Flavord jure. It's hysterical to me because nothing changes. Let's
Speaker 1: be clearer though, for people that don't know the number
Speaker 1: one people who don't want all in Ticketing mean, it's
Speaker 1: not the ticketing company, it's the acts, correct, because they
Speaker 1: today everybody's got a piece of everybody, right, And the
Speaker 1: truth is that when you look at some of these
Speaker 1: crazy numbers, the acts ticketmasters, probably I would think this,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure, but I would guess Ticketmaster getting
Speaker 1: a flat fee plus the credit card. Everything else above
Speaker 1: that flat fee is going somewhere else. And basically Ticketmasters
Speaker 1: a collection agency. That's what they are. So when the President,
Speaker 1: God bless them, says, you know, we're gonna look at
Speaker 1: ticketing and we're the airlines the hotels, well, every airline
Speaker 1: gets the ticketing fee. Every hotel gets a hundred percent
Speaker 1: of their ticketing fee. And by the way, when I
Speaker 1: did my um my appearance in front of Congress, John
Speaker 1: Conyor said, I went to Pine Knob and I paid
Speaker 1: a two dollars ticketing fee. And I don't know why
Speaker 1: I would pay a service charge if I go to
Speaker 1: the box office, So I send one of my people
Speaker 1: to find out what that's about. That was a facility fee,
Speaker 1: and the facility fee ticket mess that doesn't get but
Speaker 1: a facility fee was created to the act one share
Speaker 1: in that money, which you will know right. So the dynamic,
Speaker 1: the dynamic for all of this was some level of
Speaker 1: kabuki theater and some level of saying, listen, you need
Speaker 1: to understand because I remember when Bruce Springsteen paid five
Speaker 1: shows at the Sports Arena. The front rows, okay, the
Speaker 1: front rows eighteen dollars the least rows eighteen dollars, And
Speaker 1: they go, how come they're scalping? Going on? You go, hello,
Speaker 1: so so wait, we scrambled the rows out. There are
Speaker 1: things I never forget. We scrambled the rows. Did'd be
Speaker 1: these scalpers standing outside Music Plus and they you know,
Speaker 1: this young lady walks out and he says, where you're sitting?
Speaker 1: She's his second row, third night. He's just too how
Speaker 1: many tickets you haves for whatever? It was two or
Speaker 1: fifty dollars a ticket No. Five of ticket No. Seven, fifty,
Speaker 1: last and final offer. She took the money, then got
Speaker 1: back online and probably complained about my service charge. The
Speaker 1: point the point is you can't regulate this, and what
Speaker 1: StubHub came along, you had scalping laws. So I'll give
Speaker 1: you a couple of anecdotes, because I know you're like anecdotes.
Speaker 1: When I left, the Grateful Dead always had their tickets,
Speaker 1: and they had their fan club and so on. But
Speaker 1: the acts generally couldn't take their tickets, and when I left,
Speaker 1: they got threatened, and so they gave every act ten
Speaker 1: percent of their tickets for their fan club. Now Mary
Speaker 1: Jane or Jim Jones in any part of this country.
Speaker 1: Now have four tickets in the first ten rows, and
Speaker 1: stuff up comes along, peer to peer. They sell two
Speaker 1: tickets and pay for and pay for for. Then they go, wait,
Speaker 1: I can sell forth tickets and pay the rent. Now,
Speaker 1: who is the government gonna sue Mary Jane Jim John.
Speaker 1: They're not gonna do any of that. So all the
Speaker 1: scalping laws get eviscerated. And what happens is everybody says,
Speaker 1: I don't understand why tickets cost so much, because the
Speaker 1: public decides what they want. And here is the thing
Speaker 1: that's really important. And I use this as an example.
Speaker 1: A week before the Taylor Swift of situation, the Phillies
Speaker 1: are a month the Phillies were in the playoffs, and
Speaker 1: the Philadelphia papers are talking about the fact of isn't
Speaker 1: it wonderful that that the secondary market now is it's
Speaker 1: such a hot game. It's a thousand dollars a ticket,
Speaker 1: batch of honor, badge of honor. Is the Taylor Swift.
Speaker 1: The world is coming to an end. And by the way, also,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get into what the government can do
Speaker 1: and can't do. But they're not interested in sports tickets
Speaker 1: they're not interested in any other tickets but concert tickets.
Speaker 1: And from the days that I was doing this stuff,
Speaker 1: the concert ticket market is not a market that fits
Speaker 1: in the antitrust loss because in the end, what percentage
Speaker 1: of the concert market is of all the tickets sold
Speaker 1: in America very small. When you add up all the
Speaker 1: league's and everything else, you go, we're only doing music tickets,
Speaker 1: and only doing music tickets before acts. Hello, Garth Brooks
Speaker 1: took the took the wind out of the sales by
Speaker 1: playing more dates, and he and he released it. She
Speaker 1: knew what she was doing. It was a no lose situation.
Speaker 1: Anybody with a brain would not have put all that
Speaker 1: stuff on sale at one time. And and her view
Speaker 1: of the world was, look, if it blows up, I'll
Speaker 1: take credit and you'll will throw you under the US.
Speaker 1: And if it doesn't blow up, it comes out great.
Speaker 1: So when when I did a sing in an interview,
Speaker 1: I go, I don't understand. Ticketmaster took in five hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars in one day. How many companies can take
Speaker 1: in five million? Amazon, brokerage firms, banks, most companies, airlines can't,
Speaker 1: hotels can't, I said, And she's gonna make more than
Speaker 1: three hundred million dollars and everybody's walking around going it's
Speaker 1: a failure. The failure is they should have had circuit
Speaker 1: breakers that when you got that many calls or attempts,
Speaker 1: so that you just shut it off. The Martin Stock
Speaker 1: Market does it. Bank? You can't do a run on banks.
Speaker 1: But ticketing lives in this magical world where everybody thinks
Speaker 1: you're entitled to go to a concert. And by the way,
Speaker 1: which which is not a joke, this is not the
Speaker 1: first time this happened. When when the Spice Girls were
Speaker 1: at the height of their power, they did one show
Speaker 1: in Madison Square Garden. I old various government officials and said,
Speaker 1: please come down and watch the sale. Because of the
Speaker 1: twelve thousand tickets that we're gonna be made available, I
Speaker 1: think we had eight. So you got to try and
Speaker 1: not do a four minute sale because the world's gonna
Speaker 1: come to an end. So I go, can you come
Speaker 1: down and watch the sales so you can see what
Speaker 1: we do and make it a end. They go, when
Speaker 1: is this sale? They go Saturday? They go, I don't
Speaker 1: work on Saturday. So needless to say, on Tuesday, there's
Speaker 1: a big press conference, right of we're gonna find that
Speaker 1: way the tickets are because the kids are crying. Then
Speaker 1: there was a situation in eighty nine. I can't remember, well,
Speaker 1: the first Cubs night game is gonna go on sale,
Speaker 1: and we agree it will be phones only, two tickets
Speaker 1: of person. So I take my kids out for I scream,
Speaker 1: I live in California. I come back. Phone rings, guys
Speaker 1: on the phone high, this is somebody from Station one.
Speaker 1: I Q, how does it feel to take down the
Speaker 1: whole phone system in Chicago? I go, what are you
Speaker 1: talking about? Well, there's no one with thirty five million
Speaker 1: attempts in the first two minutes, and it blew up
Speaker 1: the phone system. You know, you gotta get smarter. You
Speaker 1: gotta get smarter about this stuff. But it feeds into
Speaker 1: the emotion instead of the logic, and we're in the
Speaker 1: we're in the emotion part, not the logic part. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just saw the government threatened Ticketmaster that if they
Speaker 1: screw up the Beyonce sale, hey go back and do
Speaker 1: mail order. You know, I mean, you you want to,
Speaker 1: It's crazy. Okay, let's go a little bit slower though.
Speaker 1: You're out, and then you get back in without box.
Speaker 1: Tell me that experience. Well, it was short mistake I
Speaker 1: made with that was I thought people would be more
Speaker 1: receptive doing white labels, and I was wrong. And ultimately,
Speaker 1: I mean I owned a piece which I sold back
Speaker 1: to a g um. It was an interesting dynamic. Uh,
Speaker 1: but I was wrong about that, and it's hard to
Speaker 1: go back home again. Um. The people, Well, what Ticketmaster
Speaker 1: was allowing people to do is they could put their
Speaker 1: name and they could do the things they needed. And
Speaker 1: I misread the situation. So that lasted about a year
Speaker 1: and then we all agreed that there was a smart
Speaker 1: thing to do and just stop it. And basically, since
Speaker 1: a g has carried such a big weight, um, it's
Speaker 1: really the deal never should have been done. It was
Speaker 1: my fault on a certain level. And and basically they're
Speaker 1: in control of their own ticketing now, which works for them,
Speaker 1: and they're doing fairly well. Okay, let's talk about Ticketmaster today.
Speaker 1: You haven't involved for the neccess of twenty years. What
Speaker 1: is different to your knowledge about the system today from
Speaker 1: when you ran it. Well, I think the system works,
Speaker 1: It's evolved pretty well. I think part of the problem
Speaker 1: is that the company on some levels become the phone company.
Speaker 1: I don't think they've done a good job explaining what
Speaker 1: they do and how they do it. And I think
Speaker 1: some of the combination. You know, you can read it
Speaker 1: any way you want. I think it's pretty efficient. I
Speaker 1: think most clients are pretty happy with it. Um it's thankless.
Speaker 1: Every arena manager knows that ticketing is thankless. So the
Speaker 1: thing I find most humorous today is there are five
Speaker 1: or six people involved in the solar system. You have
Speaker 1: the active managers, their agents. You have the arena, right,
Speaker 1: so that's four or five people, or the stadium and
Speaker 1: the promoter. And somehow, no matter what happens when all
Speaker 1: this stuff gets rid, it's only Ticketmaster's fault. Like you
Speaker 1: know this, this big overarching company controls everything, which is absurd,
Speaker 1: and and I think they've done a good job taking it.
Speaker 1: I think you know what's what's amazing to me is
Speaker 1: I've been gone twenty five years and people still come back.
Speaker 1: And you said, Mr Ticketmaster, it's spent faceless for years,
Speaker 1: and so people go back to the people who found it.
Speaker 1: And I would tell you this. A lot of people
Speaker 1: told me at the beginning that ticketing wasn't in business,
Speaker 1: and I thought they were crazy. I thought there was
Speaker 1: stone cold crazy. So the way that ticket masters run today,
Speaker 1: and to the degree you study it, do you believe
Speaker 1: that the fees, although they're negotiated, forget the fact that
Speaker 1: they're not included, do you find them more exorbitant than
Speaker 1: when you were involved? That's natural evolution. Everything close more. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk specifically about what went down. So we know
Speaker 1: that Live Nation was it was allowed to merge with
Speaker 1: ticket Masters. That's in the rear view mirror. You're an attorney,
Speaker 1: so you understand these issues. The issue reformed. Okay, so
Speaker 1: so am I? Uh? But do you believe this is
Speaker 1: just us talking? You know, because it doesn't hold any weight.
Speaker 1: Do you believe the ticket Master is a monopoly? No,
Speaker 1: so just explain why. Look if Ticketmaster didn't exist and
Speaker 1: we called it Bob lefts, it's tickets they hey, you too?
Speaker 1: After a year, the solar system is you're set up
Speaker 1: to be the strong man. It's the way the word
Speaker 1: the world works. And what people can't get through their
Speaker 1: head is this. It doesn't make a difference how many
Speaker 1: ticket companies are. It makes a difference how many tickets
Speaker 1: you have and what the demand is. It's a supply
Speaker 1: and demand curve, and so if you had forty ticket companies,
Speaker 1: none of these prices would be any different at the
Speaker 1: beginning because it's the demand. And ultimately, look, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to appine on whether because I don't know what
Speaker 1: Live Nation it's done for the last ten years, that
Speaker 1: would make them different when both companies, when when that
Speaker 1: merger was allowed, both companies stocks were in the crapper.
Speaker 1: They were both about a buck or two bucks. Nobody
Speaker 1: saw them as a goliath, and the world evolved, you know,
Speaker 1: so you gotta put on the glasses to see it
Speaker 1: the way it is today. But having said that, which
Speaker 1: is not a joke, I don't know exactly. I don't
Speaker 1: know whether you can call him. I mean they used
Speaker 1: to call Ticketmaster monopoly by itself without Live Nation. I mean,
Speaker 1: how many times did I hear that? I, Bob, as
Speaker 1: I recall it. Maybe in the nineties you might have
Speaker 1: said that too about us. So you know, the truth
Speaker 1: is that I don't know the answer to that question
Speaker 1: from a legal perspective, because part of the problem that
Speaker 1: you have is let's talk about let me talk about
Speaker 1: Ticketmaster and monopolies, because that I can talk about you
Speaker 1: have an exclusive. The problem is there's no guarantee from
Speaker 1: the venue how many tickets you get, No guarantee in
Speaker 1: the number of shows, no guarantee of the number of tickets,
Speaker 1: no guarantee about anything. But everybody was shocked about that.
Speaker 1: So they go, well, how do you know you're gonna
Speaker 1: get tickets? You go because they got death service. Okay,
Speaker 1: so they gotta pay. We think they're gonna have shows.
Speaker 1: But there isn't one contract that I wrote. And I
Speaker 1: can't tell you whether that's changed, but there wasn't one
Speaker 1: contract that I wrote that anywhere was there a guarantee
Speaker 1: of the number of shows, number of tickets, um, number
Speaker 1: of events. What you did is you took a statistical
Speaker 1: analysis of the building the last five years and kind
Speaker 1: of plugged it in and came up with a model.
Speaker 1: And I remember one of the great funny lines of life,
Speaker 1: which is sort of a digression, but it's sets the point.
Speaker 1: There was a big stadium show and the Attorney General
Speaker 1: of that subpoena in US and they said, we want
Speaker 1: a list of all the people who bought the tickets.
Speaker 1: So I go to that we I went to that meeting,
Speaker 1: and we had given them the number of the people
Speaker 1: who bought tickets by phone, but not at the outlets.
Speaker 1: And the woman says, why don't we have the names
Speaker 1: of the people bought tickets and at the outlets? And
Speaker 1: I went, because we don't live in Russia. But but
Speaker 1: but here's my question, why are you calling me? Why
Speaker 1: don't you call the broker's And she went, we don't
Speaker 1: know how to find them. I said, you have an assistant,
Speaker 1: Go yeah, I said, bring me the Yellow Pages, forty
Speaker 1: pages of brokers. I go, Look, I'm tired of always
Speaker 1: been the whipping boy for this business. Here's my private
Speaker 1: phone number in the office. Here's the name of my assistant.
Speaker 1: You have any questions, you call us. I am not
Speaker 1: responsible for where these tickets go. I try as much
Speaker 1: as I can. And we went through crossing out same address,
Speaker 1: credit card numbers that you multiple events. We did about
Speaker 1: ten things that we could do. But if, but if
Speaker 1: a broker has got forty different credit cards with forty
Speaker 1: different addresses, how the hell are we gonna know what
Speaker 1: that is? And to me, at the way, the way
Speaker 1: I see it is, nobody wants to know the truth
Speaker 1: because the narrative doesn't the truth doesn't fit the narrative
Speaker 1: well articulated, but just speculating. Because you have more background
Speaker 1: in this than almost anybody. Some people say, by virtue
Speaker 1: of their market share, ticket Masters inherently a monopoly. Now
Speaker 1: what I tell these people is there are antitrust laws.
Speaker 1: We presently have an FTC that is very aggressive. But
Speaker 1: if we determine that it is a monopoly, what is
Speaker 1: the sou They has to have a remedy, and the
Speaker 1: remedy is going to be worse. I haven't to agree
Speaker 1: with you. The reality is this, if they split it up,
Speaker 1: which I don't think they can't. I mean they have
Speaker 1: that they can do whatever they want. Whoever replaced this
Speaker 1: ticket mask is gonna have the same issue after two years.
Speaker 1: You know when when I'm very circumspect about my meeting
Speaker 1: with the government, and if you and I know you
Speaker 1: know this, You've never seen anything written by those meetings
Speaker 1: because I just say the system worked, but there are
Speaker 1: a few things I can share. And then and one
Speaker 1: of the questions is why can't they be multiple ticket
Speaker 1: companies in the building? And I said, how many operating
Speaker 1: systems do you have in your computer? And they said one?
Speaker 1: And I go, how many inventory control systems? Are there
Speaker 1: in a supermarket one and I go, why is this
Speaker 1: different than an inventory control system? That's all it is.
Speaker 1: And the thing you'll eLearn is this Ticketmaster is no
Speaker 1: different than Time Life, the eight number, except if you
Speaker 1: touch entertainment, you are entertainment. And the truth of the
Speaker 1: matter is if people didn't pay and there you well
Speaker 1: you was, you was know as much as anybody more.
Speaker 1: Events don't sell out. There's always tickets available. There are
Speaker 1: always tickets that show up twenty four or forty eight
Speaker 1: hours because nobody knows the configuration of the stage. It's
Speaker 1: just that, because all of this is controlled by emotion
Speaker 1: instead of logic. Right, A suite at the Super Bowl
Speaker 1: last year in l A went for two million dollars.
Speaker 1: I didn't hear anybody complaining, right, I don't understand. Garth
Speaker 1: Brooks played more shows Broadway. This is interesting because of
Speaker 1: friends of mine. I still go to Broadway shows. And
Speaker 1: you know, you know enough of the stories about me
Speaker 1: that I really went of concerts. And when I helped
Speaker 1: my wife get tickets, I told her I will help
Speaker 1: me get tickets. But I don't go. You know, It's
Speaker 1: like that's not my jones, it's not what I you know,
Speaker 1: But the reality is people sit in the last ten
Speaker 1: rows because of the need to be in the building
Speaker 1: service charges. There is a reflection of what people think
Speaker 1: a fair market is. No more, no less. You don't
Speaker 1: want to go, don't pay it. And here's the thing
Speaker 1: that was shocking to me. About ten years ago, when
Speaker 1: the Rolling Stones were at the Hollywood Bowl, I got
Speaker 1: a call. I still get calls some people who still
Speaker 1: think I have something to do with the company, which
Speaker 1: I find frightening. Um they said, did you see what
Speaker 1: the Rolling Stone? This is the Wilshire Journal. Did you
Speaker 1: see what the Rolling what the Rolling Stones charged at
Speaker 1: the Hollywood Ball? I went, yeahs the ticket? Well didn't
Speaker 1: you think that was excessive? I said, well we went.
Speaker 1: I mean I bought two tickets. It was what it
Speaker 1: cost and my wife wanted to go, so we went.
Speaker 1: But here's my question. Assume that you're not a trust
Speaker 1: fund baby and assumed that working for the journal provides
Speaker 1: your income. When you go by a Lamborghini showroom, do
Speaker 1: you have the need to throw a brick through a
Speaker 1: window because you can't afford it? What's the difference? Where
Speaker 1: is it written that popular music requires everybody have a
Speaker 1: right to go see it. Now, I know that's heresy.
Speaker 1: Go to the clubs, go go to the small venues.
Speaker 1: Guess what. Why is an artist not a brand? Why
Speaker 1: is an artist not worth the same thing as a
Speaker 1: floor seat at a Laker or a Nick or Chicago
Speaker 1: Bulls game. If they choose, that's what they're worth. That's
Speaker 1: what the cost is. But people lose their mind because
Speaker 1: it's it's it's music. No one loses their mind in sports.
Speaker 1: No one loses their mind in boxing. By the way,
Speaker 1: I heard a story the two front row seats for boxing,
Speaker 1: one for half a million dollars each for some fight.
Speaker 1: No one's forcing anybody to pay these prices, right, And
Speaker 1: and the great thing is you don't have to go.
Speaker 1: And and if if you don't go, and you're not selling,
Speaker 1: I mean, no one's gonna pay two dollars to hear
Speaker 1: you and I sing you go Bob and Fred the
Speaker 1: Great duet when you pay two dollars to see it, No,
Speaker 1: probably not so so the dynamic. Look. I don't want
Speaker 1: to say it's all bullshit because that will only make
Speaker 1: everybody crazier. But the truth is, wake up in the morning.
Speaker 1: No one pays more for a ticket than they want.
Speaker 1: If an artist is like Garth Brooks, they're gonna do
Speaker 1: everything they can to play as many shows as they
Speaker 1: can to take care of their people. How come that works?
Speaker 1: Pearl Jam did this whole thing with with certain into
Speaker 1: seats you know where your name is on it, and
Speaker 1: and people did that. You know what. My view of
Speaker 1: all this is, this is where I get in trouble.
Speaker 1: You know, you sell it, it's gone, Stop worrying about it, right,
Speaker 1: price it the way you want. And the answer is
Speaker 1: I remember we were doing golden circles and I pushed
Speaker 1: for that and someone said to me, well, how do
Speaker 1: you know when the golden circle ends? And I said, look,
Speaker 1: roe A is a hundred dollars, Rosie is fifty. So
Speaker 1: they said, well, where does the golden circle end? I said,
Speaker 1: when you right out of people buying. If it goes
Speaker 1: to Rosie, that's the golden circle. Here go. What if
Speaker 1: it stops at roe M I said, then you move
Speaker 1: Rosie up and moved them back until they meet, and
Speaker 1: they go, can you do that? And I went, it's
Speaker 1: a computer. I mean. The point is, if I did anything,
Speaker 1: I made this a business, and it was always a
Speaker 1: business because the scalpers knew it was a business. What's
Speaker 1: your view on scalpers? Some provide a service, some don't.
Speaker 1: They exist because there are always people with too much
Speaker 1: money who don't pay attention to when tickets go on sale,
Speaker 1: and we'll pay whatever the market will bear. UM. I
Speaker 1: think stuff Hub is fine. I think the secondary market
Speaker 1: is fine because in the end, no one's forced to
Speaker 1: pay that. Um. It's driven by emotion. It's clearly better
Speaker 1: than it used to be because I think the acts.
Speaker 1: Let's put it like this, there was some acts that
Speaker 1: I knew in the nineties where you could get pneumonia
Speaker 1: from the from the draft created by the tickets going
Speaker 1: out the side. Now you know, it's it's more of
Speaker 1: a business, and I don't judge the morality of it.
Speaker 1: I never made money from it. And Ticketmaster when I
Speaker 1: ran it was against scalping and we did what was
Speaker 1: necessary to protect it. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you know, going a restaurant today, everything course more. What
Speaker 1: used to be X is now X plus Y. Go
Speaker 1: to a hotel over Chris, you know makes me crazy.
Speaker 1: People go out to dinner, it's a hundred dollars, but
Speaker 1: the ticket should only be seventy. Well, but here's the point.
Speaker 1: I used to have this argument. Why is Bruce Springsteen
Speaker 1: less than the four seats of the Lakers. He puts
Speaker 1: on a three hour show. He leaves himself out there
Speaker 1: for the fans. When he did Broadway at seven fifty
Speaker 1: dollars a ticket, you know, that was very limited, but
Speaker 1: he did it. I know the deal he had, but
Speaker 1: good for him. And you know, in the last show
Speaker 1: he talked about the fact that he charged more and
Speaker 1: everybody went nuts, but there was still half the tickets
Speaker 1: at popular prices. They just moved the seats to where
Speaker 1: they were. And here's the problem. You know this, you
Speaker 1: can't argue with a lack of logic because it's all
Speaker 1: driven by emotion. When emotion is involved, people kill people
Speaker 1: over love, people kill people over you know, over stupid things.
Speaker 1: Where emotion gets involved. This is just tickets. It's just tickets.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I know that that artist is
Speaker 1: a good my homies, Hey ticketmaster, Well, really that's the
Speaker 1: best song you can write for real. I'm sure I'll
Speaker 1: get a lot of ugly mail like that. Let me
Speaker 1: let me share this with you, because this is a
Speaker 1: great story. I was living in Beverly Hills in those days,
Speaker 1: and a woman writes me a four page single space letter.
Speaker 1: She lives in San Diego. She bought foot tickets to
Speaker 1: the Forum. She cannot understand why she paid sixteen dollars
Speaker 1: four dollars a ticket when all it did was come
Speaker 1: out of the machine. Now, one of the things I
Speaker 1: used to do was called the ten worth letters I
Speaker 1: get every month. And since she wrote me at home,
Speaker 1: I thought I could call her on Sunday. What the
Speaker 1: hell you know? Like, why not? Right? So I got
Speaker 1: Mrs Jones, I got your letter. You really should not
Speaker 1: be this upset. I really feel badly. What I would
Speaker 1: like you to do. What I'm gonna do tomorrow when
Speaker 1: I go in the office is I'm going to send
Speaker 1: you your sixteen dollars back. She says, that's really nice
Speaker 1: of you. That's four page single space. I didn't kill
Speaker 1: little Lindbergh, baby, I didn't blow up to Hindenburg, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure I didn't think the Titanic. But I said,
Speaker 1: I need you to do one thing for me. She says,
Speaker 1: what's that? I said, never use my service again. And
Speaker 1: if you drive to the Forum, there's no service charge,
Speaker 1: and she went, but that's not convenient and they'll take
Speaker 1: a lot of time. And I went, uh huh, and
Speaker 1: it was like the epiphany hitter, and she went, never mind, Sorry,
Speaker 1: I sorry, I wrote, sorry to forget it. Don't give
Speaker 1: me back my money. I'm really sorry. I never thought
Speaker 1: of it like that. Well, nobody thinks a bit like that.
Speaker 1: They go, it just comes out of the machine. Well,
Speaker 1: who does the money, who does the audits, who does
Speaker 1: the season tickets, the single tickets, who provides the equipment,
Speaker 1: who does the software program? There's like a hundred things
Speaker 1: that the public NEBI sees. But you know what they
Speaker 1: do see They see the name on it. And and
Speaker 1: I know this for a fact. Um near the end
Speaker 1: of running Ticketmaster, I wound up having a meeting with
Speaker 1: the l A. Times, and I wound up with the publisher,
Speaker 1: the editor and the head of calendar. There's a guy
Speaker 1: named John Lindsay. I don't know if you ever came
Speaker 1: across him, and you know, okay, he was the head
Speaker 1: of Callen. So basically, I said, you guys have had
Speaker 1: a heart on from us from the beginning, and I
Speaker 1: don't get it. And I said, John, you won't even
Speaker 1: sit in a room with me and meet tell me
Speaker 1: why you hate my company. I just want to know.
Speaker 1: And you know, the publishers said, is he is he
Speaker 1: making this up in one of the vice Uh ed,
Speaker 1: it is, no read the stuff we wrote. It's true.
Speaker 1: And Lindsey looked at me and he said, you charge
Speaker 1: a service charge. I said, that's the reason for all
Speaker 1: the negative you charge for ads. Tell me how I
Speaker 1: make money if I don't charge a service charge? Where
Speaker 1: is my revenue? How do I do the things I
Speaker 1: do without that? And he sat there like a bear,
Speaker 1: you know, like wrapped in like a figure eight. That's
Speaker 1: why he handed the company because we charge a service charge,
Speaker 1: and no company that charges a service charge in America
Speaker 1: is ever gonna be perceived as a decent or. I
Speaker 1: use a friendly company. So if you if you buy
Speaker 1: a coach ticket, hopefully you land. If you're in the
Speaker 1: last row coach and not the first row, you land
Speaker 1: the same time as everybody. Nobody thinks about that. But
Speaker 1: if you go to a stadium in arena and you
Speaker 1: it in a bad seat, it's never the band, it's
Speaker 1: never the promoter, it's never the building. It's only the
Speaker 1: ticket company. Like you live in this vacuum where you're
Speaker 1: responsible for all this. Do you know how you deal
Speaker 1: with it? You shut it out, you turn off you're
Speaker 1: hearing it, You walk away and you go listen. You
Speaker 1: have the right not to go. And it's that simple.
Speaker 1: And the answer is the reason the prices have gotten
Speaker 1: where they are is because that's what they're worth. If
Speaker 1: you analyze that and analyze those tickets next to sports tickets,
Speaker 1: no different, it's no different. Let's just talk, as I say,
Speaker 1: you haven't been in the business for a while, but
Speaker 1: do you think there needs to be any changes of
Speaker 1: any type? You know, not only with a government, etcetera.
Speaker 1: If we I stop my fingers, you're running any running
Speaker 1: ticket master or another ticket company today, do you think
Speaker 1: they're doing something that you could improve upon? They could
Speaker 1: they could make it more transparent in terms of letting
Speaker 1: people know what they do. In other words, I don't
Speaker 1: think they do a good job. They do a lot
Speaker 1: of things well, but I don't think they that that
Speaker 1: they like the Bill of Rights. You don't set the
Speaker 1: ticket prices, you don't determine how many tickets go on sale.
Speaker 1: There's a whole host of things that need to get
Speaker 1: burned into people's consciousness that isn't there. And and the
Speaker 1: thing is that if one building manager told me about
Speaker 1: right before I left, he said, you know, if you
Speaker 1: didn't if you didn't exist, we have to invent you.
Speaker 1: Because what what ticket Tron did. Ticket Tron was terrible
Speaker 1: and didn't understand the role they played um and and
Speaker 1: by being charging a dollar, they fundamentally gave up um
Speaker 1: how do I put it, They gave up their right
Speaker 1: to have a role in the business. You operate in
Speaker 1: a solar system, so one of the things you know
Speaker 1: you for you would forget this. But you know, you
Speaker 1: have various promoters in the towns in a city who
Speaker 1: weach hated each other, and go, we're putting these three
Speaker 1: events on sale on Saturday. No you're not. That is
Speaker 1: not happening. You're the traffic cop. Okay. I think where
Speaker 1: Live Nation got in trouble is because they were a
Speaker 1: promoter and they want to protect the act. They didn't
Speaker 1: put their foot down and say we're not putting all
Speaker 1: the shows on sale. I think that's where they had
Speaker 1: a conflict. I would have stopped it. I said, there's
Speaker 1: not a goddamn way I'm gonna do that, and I
Speaker 1: would have put in circuit breakers. Where will you get
Speaker 1: that many attempts shut the system down? Shut it down.
Speaker 1: Say listen, we're not gonna sit here all day. We're
Speaker 1: gonna spoon feed this. What I would have done differently,
Speaker 1: not that anybody cares, is I would have said, Okay,
Speaker 1: for five days, we're gonna open this up to everybody.
Speaker 1: Send in your name, you can buy two tickets, and
Speaker 1: then you spin it out so you get rid of
Speaker 1: all the duplicates, the ones that aren't in the whatever,
Speaker 1: verified fan program, and all that other stuff, and then
Speaker 1: create a random program and then notified people. Two days later,
Speaker 1: you have two tickets, you have three tickets, you have
Speaker 1: four tickets. You do that. I would have done that.
Speaker 1: I mean, basically, it's okay to be the whipping boy
Speaker 1: for some stuff. It's not okay to be the whipping
Speaker 1: boy for other stuff. You know, where you basically sit
Speaker 1: in the room and say, listen, it has to be orderly.
Speaker 1: We cannot allow Yeah, I'll give you a perfect example.
Speaker 1: And I know you heard some of these stories. We
Speaker 1: got into it with a grateful debt. I always allowed
Speaker 1: them two um, because of the relationships with everybody would
Speaker 1: they would take a number of tickets for their fan club,
Speaker 1: whether it be arenas or stadiums or emphatheute of all places.
Speaker 1: All been in New York the Knickerbocker Arena. They took
Speaker 1: the ticket some idiotic amount. People line up and there
Speaker 1: was a riot because there was no tickets. So who
Speaker 1: gets blamed? Me? All right, So I tell everybody the
Speaker 1: grateful dead can no longer have any tickets, period. Shut
Speaker 1: it off. Now, those idiots Bud Nick and that group
Speaker 1: who wrote ticket Masses, which is a nice fictionalized account
Speaker 1: of that meeting. Um John Prisker who's Jay's soon sets
Speaker 1: up a meeting with me and some of their people,
Speaker 1: and we're in this meeting in San Francisco, and of
Speaker 1: course the initial meeting is we're gonna sue your for
Speaker 1: anti trust. Look at some point my eyes glaze over,
Speaker 1: because after you've been suited enough, it's like, okay, great,
Speaker 1: can we talk about something else? And I go, let
Speaker 1: me ask you a question. I have nothing but respect
Speaker 1: for who you guys are and who the band is.
Speaker 1: You put on a great show. Remember, we're also living
Speaker 1: at the time of guns and refunds, where you know
Speaker 1: whether they show up, whether they refined. I mean, you
Speaker 1: guys really care about the fans. But here's what I
Speaker 1: cannot do. I cannot let you trash my outlets for
Speaker 1: one day. For the other three sixty four can't do it.
Speaker 1: The people who are standing online mean as much as
Speaker 1: your people and your you know, in your fan club,
Speaker 1: and we've got to find an effective way that enables
Speaker 1: both to be satisfied, because if you trash my outlets,
Speaker 1: then I don't have a business the other three and
Speaker 1: no band can do that. That's not allowed. And the
Speaker 1: rest of the meeting after they went through death threats
Speaker 1: and I went, okay, great, you know, like I haven't
Speaker 1: seen them before. Let's figure it out. And we figured
Speaker 1: out numbers for amphitheaters, arenas and stadiums. And they said,
Speaker 1: if we don't sell them, can we give them back?
Speaker 1: And I said, of course you can, and you know what,
Speaker 1: we shook hands and we lived like that until Jerry
Speaker 1: Garcia died and no one complained. But I stood up
Speaker 1: for the people who stand online, and I stood up
Speaker 1: for having a business. And in the end it gets
Speaker 1: written that I'm an asshole because I said, you can't
Speaker 1: have the ticket in other words, nobody wants to understand
Speaker 1: what's underneath it. Nobody wants to understand the granularity of
Speaker 1: how you run these things. And I think what's important
Speaker 1: to understand is this. I knew what I was walking
Speaker 1: into over the first five It took me a while,
Speaker 1: but once I understood what it was, I never thought
Speaker 1: it was thankless. I thought it was really funny. And
Speaker 1: what was shocking to me is that the height of
Speaker 1: the Pearl Jam thing, which I must tell you probably
Speaker 1: took ten years of my life. Our sales went up,
Speaker 1: not down. It wasn't like Thailan at all. When people
Speaker 1: went away, most people didn't even understand what this is
Speaker 1: all about, because it was insane. And in the end,
Speaker 1: my view of that, and I don't mind saying, is
Speaker 1: I feel badly it happened. I wish I could have
Speaker 1: sat with other with people who weren't told lies, who
Speaker 1: represented the band, and and I think um um stump.
Speaker 1: Pilot's manager Steve wrote something on one of you, on
Speaker 1: one of your blocks, saying, I, I what's what's his
Speaker 1: last name? You know, Steve Simon, No, I don't remember.
Speaker 1: You caught me off guard, Okay, he said, Look, I
Speaker 1: I went and so forred and we solved everything in
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes. And he said, nobody else came to look
Speaker 1: if anybody talk to me. Common sense was eight percent
Speaker 1: of all this stuff. It's not rocket science, it's common sense.
Speaker 1: And then you gotta put in the emotion which leaves
Speaker 1: the planet, because then it's like the world is coming
Speaker 1: to an end and you can get congressional hearings. This
Speaker 1: is this is true Gary Condor who ran the pro
Speaker 1: Jam hearings. Steve Stewart, the Garry Condent ran the Projam hearings,
Speaker 1: and you may remember him from the Chandra Levy best right.
Speaker 1: So I went to see him a year after the
Speaker 1: hearings and about two months before the government left, and
Speaker 1: this is what he said to me, you're ready. This
Speaker 1: worked that great. I got a lot of good publicity.
Speaker 1: Everybody found no way minute, it gets better. Every everyone
Speaker 1: found that you're a good company. And I'm having a
Speaker 1: fundraising next week. Can you give me five hundred dollars?
Speaker 1: And I gave him five hundred dollars because I wanted
Speaker 1: my name to be there that I took the five dollars.
Speaker 1: If you live in the Maelstrom, you know there's partly
Speaker 1: a bunker mentality. And then there's also this absurdity that says,
Speaker 1: what is it that people don't get? You can't build
Speaker 1: an arena at seven miles long and ten ten rows
Speaker 1: can't do that. And when it comes to concert take
Speaker 1: it's for very few shows the world loses their mind.
Speaker 1: Nobody complains about clubs. Nobody complains about the two and
Speaker 1: three and five thousands, you know, cedars, Nobody complains about
Speaker 1: a lot of this arena acts that don't sell out.
Speaker 1: But you've got a few of these mega stars that
Speaker 1: are quite remarkable, that are amazingly talented, that lift the
Speaker 1: spirits of people, and and and I'm fascinated by that
Speaker 1: and appreciative of that um. And when it comes to
Speaker 1: ticket pricing, I don't get why there's a difference. The
Speaker 1: hippie hippies are over. I mean, you charge more for
Speaker 1: Christmas than you do the rest of the year. You know,
Speaker 1: I I I can't, I don't I say it The
Speaker 1: following in a reel, This is Fred rosen Line. The
Speaker 1: people who stolen music found out they couldn't steal the
Speaker 1: concert ticket, and since then life has not been the same.
Speaker 1: Let's switch gears a little bit. So what's your life
Speaker 1: about now? Hey, I'm seventy nine. Man, I'm having a
Speaker 1: good time. You know, we travel. I just took my
Speaker 1: son to askpen for five days. Um, we'll travel in
Speaker 1: the summer. We're going to Caribbean in a couple of weeks. UM.
Speaker 1: I do some community stuff to help people. I got
Speaker 1: on a plane to chase deal. Um, not in ticketing.
Speaker 1: I don't think it will happen. Um, And I keep
Speaker 1: myself occupied. Look, we're blessed. We have amazing lives. When
Speaker 1: you see what goes on in the world, we worked
Speaker 1: really hard. I'm shocked. I'm shocked by a couple of things,
Speaker 1: Bob that you'll find interesting. I'm shocked at the model
Speaker 1: I created forty years ago. It is still the model.
Speaker 1: The numbers are different, but it's still the model. I'm
Speaker 1: shocked that people remember my name live in l a
Speaker 1: name who was on a comedy, who was on a
Speaker 1: sitcom ten years ago. If you can't remember any of
Speaker 1: that or fifteen years ago, no matter what happens, people
Speaker 1: still identify me with the company, even though I have
Speaker 1: nothing to do with it. Um. What's remarkable. I always
Speaker 1: described myself as this I'm an idiot savant about tickets.
Speaker 1: I can't explain this whole business came out of my head.
Speaker 1: I do not understand why. I have sometimes thought about it,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm going to write something for my family,
Speaker 1: basically the beginning, not not a book. I won't write
Speaker 1: a book because there are too many stories where you
Speaker 1: would hurt people, and I don't want to hurt people.
Speaker 1: That's not what this is about. But I want to
Speaker 1: write something, a memoir from my family, about how all this.
Speaker 1: You know, I told you you you got bis and
Speaker 1: pieces of it because we only have two hours. But
Speaker 1: but how it all happened, all of its serendipity, serendipity
Speaker 1: that I was in the office that night where that
Speaker 1: lawyer would not have called me if I wasn't in
Speaker 1: the office, serendipity that Steve Wozniak didn't want to use
Speaker 1: ticket Tron and said, listen, you come out to l A.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna spend a million dollars to do this. Who
Speaker 1: would think that serendipity, that ticket Tron would be so
Speaker 1: stupid as to walk away from the forum and not
Speaker 1: honor an agreement. And then the thing that killed Tickettron
Speaker 1: more than anything else. This was the knife in the coffin.
Speaker 1: They were doing four shows at the coliseum. Do you
Speaker 1: remember that, Yeah, okay, So for whatever reason, they went
Speaker 1: to Tickettron, who had an exclusive contract at the building,
Speaker 1: and they said, we don't we don't think you can
Speaker 1: sell the four shows. You gotta give two shows to Ticketmaster.
Speaker 1: So I go down to the meeting and and they go,
Speaker 1: we're gonna flip a coin. Who does one, two and
Speaker 1: four and one and one and three? And I go,
Speaker 1: it's their building, give them whatever they want. So they
Speaker 1: do one in three, we do two and four. By
Speaker 1: two o'clock in the afternoon, all the tickets we have
Speaker 1: are gone and ticket Tron still has basically fifty of
Speaker 1: each show. So with turning people away, So the following week,
Speaker 1: I go, we can't do this. So I call the
Speaker 1: colliseum and said, go to ticket Tron and tell them
Speaker 1: the following tell them to give us an allocation. I
Speaker 1: will give them a hundred other than two dollars a ticket,
Speaker 1: I'll give him a hundred percent of the money above that,
Speaker 1: and at the outlet they gotta pay the outlet was
Speaker 1: sent or a dollar, and then they can have the
Speaker 1: rest I won't make any money, but we shouldn't turn
Speaker 1: anybody away. Well, guess what happens. Ticket tron couldn't sell it.
Speaker 1: I mean, in the world of being smart, it turned
Speaker 1: out even better than I thought. It went across the country.
Speaker 1: The Ticketmaster has so little their tickets. And that was
Speaker 1: the end. It was the beginning of the end. And
Speaker 1: then when Ogden and a poland who's you know and
Speaker 1: what the company? They had a guy go around the
Speaker 1: country and he went like this, I'm much nicer than Fred. Well,
Speaker 1: apparently everybody was much nicer than me in the eighties
Speaker 1: and nineties. And they said, I'm much nicer than Fred.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna lower the service charge. And they said, okay, great,
Speaker 1: how much do we get. They go, well, if Fred's
Speaker 1: giving you a half a million, we'll have to give
Speaker 1: you a two hundred thousand, you know, or less. And
Speaker 1: they would go, a son, we have death service to
Speaker 1: pay Fred's fine. So if you'd like that, Um, that
Speaker 1: ain't gonna work. And when we sat with the government,
Speaker 1: we said to them, look, if you own a building
Speaker 1: to beat Ticketmaster, you have to pay more. So if
Speaker 1: TM is paying five dred, you gotta pay seven fifty.
Speaker 1: Now what happens to the price to the public, and
Speaker 1: the room looked around. When it goes up and go right,
Speaker 1: competition forces prices up, not down, because no one's taken less.
Speaker 1: And that was like this amazing epiphany which you can't
Speaker 1: find in any other business. But when food services take over,
Speaker 1: the food goes up, the hot dogs go up, the
Speaker 1: beer goes up. You know, you can't walk away from
Speaker 1: all that. And I can't tell you that when I
Speaker 1: created this model that was in my head, but the
Speaker 1: Bible it was clearly a byproduct of the model because
Speaker 1: I made it early on that I would take the
Speaker 1: heat for the buildings, and every building manager who would
Speaker 1: throw me under a bus would call me up the
Speaker 1: next thing go you don't mind, do you No, that's fine,
Speaker 1: not a problem, and they go, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: Because to me, if I could make those guys heroes,
Speaker 1: I had a business. And that's why in sixteen years
Speaker 1: that I ran the company, I never lost the client.
Speaker 1: And and I think it was it was a you know, look,
Speaker 1: you know enough to know that guys like me create issues.
Speaker 1: I had great friends and I had great enemies. It's
Speaker 1: kind of the way it works. And there were people
Speaker 1: who thought I was too tough, and then people thought
Speaker 1: I was too mean, and then were other people thought
Speaker 1: I was a pretty good guy, and and set them
Speaker 1: up and I made a lot of people a lot
Speaker 1: of money. I cleaned up the ticket distribution business. I
Speaker 1: made it so that people could trust audits. I made
Speaker 1: it so that acts got their money. I made it
Speaker 1: so that that at the end of the day, you
Speaker 1: got a ticket, it was a legitimate ticket. It wasn't
Speaker 1: a counterfeit ticket. It was a real ticket, whether it
Speaker 1: was you know now it's on your phone whatever. But
Speaker 1: the point is, we made a real business out of
Speaker 1: this when there was none and no one thought it was.
Speaker 1: And I'm proud of that. I'm proud that. I'm serious
Speaker 1: that I'm proud that anybody remembers my name. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting legacy, um because nobody wants to learn.
Speaker 1: Nobody is happy with the truth. So when you're not
Speaker 1: happy with the truth, you keep finding things that kind
Speaker 1: of shade the truth. But there's nothing, there's none of that.
Speaker 1: I mean, someone wrote some s whole article about Bert
Speaker 1: can Are being involved and some of the people Bert
Speaker 1: was involved with, and Bert was going from I mean nobody.
Speaker 1: You you know the article I'm talking about, it's not
Speaker 1: they made They made that crap up. We cleaned up
Speaker 1: the business. Okay, do you miss the action? I missed
Speaker 1: the peak. Let's put it like this. You know I
Speaker 1: was dormant for a long time and I missed the
Speaker 1: peat when I saw that I missed the people. At
Speaker 1: some point, Um, you get tired of the same fight,
Speaker 1: if you know what I mean. And I think when
Speaker 1: I left I had enough. All Right, this is kind
Speaker 1: of fascinating to me because I go to sleep I
Speaker 1: almost any sleepover. This is kind of it's kind of
Speaker 1: funny for me. And you get it's like a reset
Speaker 1: that everybody remembers you did this right, you know where
Speaker 1: you know? People now want to make a documentary. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm gonna let him do it. But
Speaker 1: the point is, Um, there's an energy that I had
Speaker 1: in this business that I never had in any other business.
Speaker 1: And the people I some night when we're not recording,
Speaker 1: I'll get you salters and eye and I'll tell you
Speaker 1: stories that even you would laugh at because I knew
Speaker 1: all these guys and and the real you know, everything
Speaker 1: I told you on this is true. But you know,
Speaker 1: before the Internet, i'd get a hundred hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: calls a day. I took care of everybody. I made
Speaker 1: sure that everybody was taken care of. And when people
Speaker 1: would say, you know what, why are they so strong relationships?
Speaker 1: You build relationships and sometimes you'd fall on your sword
Speaker 1: or sometimes you help somebody out, I would tell you this,
Speaker 1: this is this is no joke. Paul to Let and
Speaker 1: his partner, the guy who died I forget his name,
Speaker 1: two young kids, and they were always what I always remember,
Speaker 1: those little ads in the l A times for social distortion.
Speaker 1: That was what I remember, because they would do all
Speaker 1: those other times and we would pay them after the acts.
Speaker 1: And then the only two kids, they came to me,
Speaker 1: this is way before. I mean, these kids have done
Speaker 1: you know, post done brilliantly. And they came and sat
Speaker 1: in my office and said, it's really hard for us
Speaker 1: because we live hand to mouth, and we were wondering
Speaker 1: if we could get a line with you. And I
Speaker 1: liked them. They worked hard, they did their shows. We'd
Speaker 1: always pay them, you know, so they could do it.
Speaker 1: And I said, how much of the line do you need?
Speaker 1: I think there was fifty or a hundred grand. Then
Speaker 1: I gave him a line. Only people I ever did
Speaker 1: that too, and it was me. I mean I did
Speaker 1: so many things for people that nobody begins to know,
Speaker 1: because if people knew that, you know, part of the
Speaker 1: reputation I had kept people away and made you in
Speaker 1: a place where you couldn't be every place. And I
Speaker 1: would tell my people, look, I'm the toughest person you're
Speaker 1: gonna live within a day. So if you sit in
Speaker 1: the room and somebody's giving you a hard time to say,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get me on the phone, nobody's gonn want
Speaker 1: to talk to and look, I'm telling you the truth.
Speaker 1: This is how how else can you build a company
Speaker 1: I started with When I left there with five thousand,
Speaker 1: I had people everywhere. And the thing is this, you
Speaker 1: had a reputation that your word was your bond. You
Speaker 1: ran a clean company, You didn't screw around. And by
Speaker 1: the way, you know this, I didn't hang out. You know,
Speaker 1: I was never backstage, you know I was That was
Speaker 1: not who I was. I mean, I fell asleep when
Speaker 1: the tenth of the joke was how many times I
Speaker 1: fell asleep when I did go to events, But That's
Speaker 1: how I conducted myself. Where where I found this out
Speaker 1: later about the government. One of my lawyers was who
Speaker 1: was a great lawyer, was in Washington, And you know,
Speaker 1: I started with nothing. You know, when we were losing
Speaker 1: two million dollars, I didn't go screaming to the government
Speaker 1: the ticket transcot monopolies. Everybody told me I was wrong.
Speaker 1: I was gonna lose. And this is what they said.
Speaker 1: We didn't think he was that smart. Oh, that's what
Speaker 1: they said. We didn't think he was that smart. You see,
Speaker 1: because if you're a wise ass and you saw those
Speaker 1: idiot comments I make, if I don't sell every ticket
Speaker 1: in America, I can't sleep. I mean, I would just
Speaker 1: say stupid, outrageous stuff. But I cared about what I did.
Speaker 1: I really did care about what I did, and I
Speaker 1: cared about taking care of the people who worked for
Speaker 1: me and taking care of um my clients. And I'm
Speaker 1: gonna tell you two stories that that I think are
Speaker 1: really important that nobody will ever talk about Ticketmaster. I
Speaker 1: promoted a guy in three from thirty two to thirty
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars make him head of operations, not that
Speaker 1: I knew what an operation was. At that time, I
Speaker 1: was trying to figure it out, and he came in
Speaker 1: my office and he said, I don't think I can
Speaker 1: take the job because you're gonna find out I'm gay
Speaker 1: and I want to make a hundred thousand dollars a
Speaker 1: year and I'll never get it here, although I do
Speaker 1: think you're gonna build a big company. And I looked
Speaker 1: at him and said, what has any of that got
Speaker 1: to do with your ability? He said, well, nothing. I said,
Speaker 1: to get the funk out of my office. I don't
Speaker 1: need to hear I don't need to hear this. You'll
Speaker 1: be judged on who you are anyway. Fast forward. Because
Speaker 1: I didn't care about that, and I built a really
Speaker 1: diverse company. And Larry will tell you that we had
Speaker 1: everybody in the company. About a third of my senior
Speaker 1: workforce was gay. And in ninety two, when Calendar actually
Speaker 1: meant something m c A. It was a big story
Speaker 1: in Calendar about domestic partner insurance. And because I felt
Speaker 1: that human capital was the most important capital that you
Speaker 1: can have, and that I would tell people look in
Speaker 1: the mirror, because everything you get from life is looking
Speaker 1: in the mirror. Good, better, and different. I read this story,
Speaker 1: I call my the people. I know what m c A,
Speaker 1: and I go, would you share that information with my people?
Speaker 1: And they went yes. And I called this gentleman in
Speaker 1: my office two and said, this is a really great idea.
Speaker 1: We should do this for all people on two conditions.
Speaker 1: He said, what are they? I said one, I've spent
Speaker 1: as much time as I'm going to spend on this.
Speaker 1: This is now in your bailiwick. All I want to
Speaker 1: know is what it costs, and I'll do it, and
Speaker 1: the cost will not I just want to know what
Speaker 1: it's gonna cost me, and I'll do it. And we
Speaker 1: put it in ninety two because you can you follow
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Yes, but let me ask you why
Speaker 1: to switch it to one thing? What about anti Semitism today? Awful?
Speaker 1: But I was the only Jewish guy in my company
Speaker 1: for ten years for real. Um, Well, you talked about
Speaker 1: the government and you said they didn't take you seriously.
Speaker 1: Do you think that was partially because you're Jewish? Well
Speaker 1: think about this. You're in New York, you're ethnic, you're
Speaker 1: a lawyer, and you're living in l A. And that's
Speaker 1: four out of three strikes. And you went around America
Speaker 1: and took care of it, you know, and built a business.
Speaker 1: I think anti Semitism today is I would say this,
Speaker 1: the pilot light of hate is always on. I think
Speaker 1: Trump turned it up to a full flame. I look
Speaker 1: at people like Kanye and this other twenty four year
Speaker 1: old moron. You know there's a place for them to talk. Um,
Speaker 1: It's always there under the surface. I have not encountered
Speaker 1: a lot of it in my life, fortunately, not directly. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I think it's awful because I think part of what
Speaker 1: America is about. I think some of it's driven by religion.
Speaker 1: America has evolved because it's free him of and firm religion.
Speaker 1: And I think Bob, to be fair, Jews are easy
Speaker 1: to blame when you when you run out of everything else,
Speaker 1: who do you blame? You blame the Jews. It becomes this,
Speaker 1: you know, interesting dynamic. Um. I think the president and
Speaker 1: I think, um, the various organizations are doing what they can.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's peaked, but I think it's close.
Speaker 1: I think in the end, when I look at anti
Speaker 1: Asian stuff, I can't comprehend it. I can't comprehend what
Speaker 1: the cops are doing. On some level, I think, I
Speaker 1: think what COVID did is by locking everybody up for
Speaker 1: two years. It's like rats in a maze, and so
Speaker 1: there's this dynamic of this frustration that gets filled out. UM.
Speaker 1: My hope is it goes back to where it was.
Speaker 1: I think people are a lot more proactive about dealing
Speaker 1: with it. I hate the fact it's on campuses. UM.
Speaker 1: I hate the fact that young people think that that's
Speaker 1: the way to behave They have always been lunatics in
Speaker 1: this country of the far right, UM, and the far
Speaker 1: left is no fan either. I mean, it's like when
Speaker 1: I watch some of the anti Israel stuff from some
Speaker 1: of these people, and I go, so, let me ask
Speaker 1: you a question. How would you feel if the people
Speaker 1: in Mexico We're gonna start lobbying bonds. It's not like
Speaker 1: Hamas hasn't had a million ways to make peace, but
Speaker 1: their whole goal is, Okay, we have to eradicate Israel,
Speaker 1: which is not gonna happen. My view of how to
Speaker 1: I have actually a view of how to make peace
Speaker 1: in the Middle East, which is by it, but underneath
Speaker 1: it is it bothers me that it exists. I'm troubled
Speaker 1: by it. UM. I've been to Auschwitz My wife and
Speaker 1: I have been at Auschwitz. We've been at various places.
Speaker 1: That place. You can't even describe it as evil because
Speaker 1: it's a level beyond the evil and dastardly and mean.
Speaker 1: And I always think the thing that's most interes thing
Speaker 1: about that is they knew how crazy they were, which
Speaker 1: is why they all left to go to whether they
Speaker 1: all try to escape, because they knew that what they
Speaker 1: were doing was wrong, and a Western civilization doing that shocking,
Speaker 1: but and and appalling, um and you know, frightening. So
Speaker 1: I hope the more we focus on anti Semitism, um,
Speaker 1: that it lessens and goes back to where it was.
Speaker 1: I cannot see it getting much beyond where it is now. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, I have levels of nervousness by who
Speaker 1: gets elected. I mean, the ultimate line was ghosts are
Speaker 1: throwing Omar off the committee because she made anti Israel statements.
Speaker 1: This moron actually went to a pro Nazi rally. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't, you can't wrap your head around
Speaker 1: stuff like this. And my view has always been to
Speaker 1: be tolerant and let people be who they are. And
Speaker 1: I look at religion in the following way. If it
Speaker 1: gives you comfort, I'm all for it, don't inflict it
Speaker 1: on me. And if it's if it's violent or nationalistic
Speaker 1: or creates hatred of another race or nationality, I can't
Speaker 1: deal with that. In the same way I told you
Speaker 1: the third about a gay guy. We had this young
Speaker 1: African American come into my office in three and he goes,
Speaker 1: do you know Peter Schwartz? And I he was a
Speaker 1: guy fixed machines, And I go, why would I know
Speaker 1: Peter Schwartz? And he said, well, he's Jewish. I got
Speaker 1: there's five thousand Jews in l A. Do you know
Speaker 1: every black person? He goes, well, no, but I thought
Speaker 1: all the Jews knew each other, And go, okay, you
Speaker 1: need to have a seat at the table. But that's
Speaker 1: life experiences. Man. It's like, you know, like wow, um,
Speaker 1: and what my hope is this? You'll find this funny.
Speaker 1: All work, to me is spiritual and holy, not holy
Speaker 1: in the religious sense. But if you do something and
Speaker 1: you work at it and you want to be the
Speaker 1: best at it, that's great. Some of us are fortunate
Speaker 1: and have evolved. Some of us are fortunate where we've
Speaker 1: had careers and been successful economically. But if you're a
Speaker 1: bus driver. That's that's honest work. Be the best bus
Speaker 1: driver if you're I mean, I'm not judgmental about stuff
Speaker 1: like that, because to me, what counts as human capital.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I'm proud of st the
Speaker 1: ticketmaster is and Larry will tell you this. I took
Speaker 1: fifty people who started with me between thirty and fifty grand.
Speaker 1: They didn't go to the best colleges. I didn't have
Speaker 1: an NBA in the company for ten years. I made
Speaker 1: him all millionaires. That to me, because they all became
Speaker 1: more than they thought they would be. And these the stories,
Speaker 1: you know, you got me in this place that I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna be in a newspaper article that I'm not
Speaker 1: going to talk about because I'm too busy being Darth Vader.
Speaker 1: And I think people pay. The loyalty I got was
Speaker 1: because of the loyalty I gave and I protected my people.
Speaker 1: And there was a story I won't tell you the
Speaker 1: building where a guy walked into my office and he
Speaker 1: was almost crying, and I said, why are you crying?
Speaker 1: He said, because so and so beat me up. And
Speaker 1: he said, you sold him a bill of goods. And
Speaker 1: I called the guy who ran the building, and I
Speaker 1: went to see him the next day and I threw
Speaker 1: the contract on the table. I said, rip it up.
Speaker 1: You can't beat up my people. You can beat me up,
Speaker 1: you can't beat them up. And if you think I
Speaker 1: sold you a bill of goods, I'll stay till you
Speaker 1: find another ticket company. But you cannot behave like that
Speaker 1: because I won't tolerate it. And you know, he said, no,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get you another client. But the point was.
Speaker 1: The point was people saw I stood up for them,
Speaker 1: and when you stand up for people, they will do
Speaker 1: amazing things for you if you give them loyalty. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like I spoke to a group of people and
Speaker 1: I said, your generation talks about quiet quitting. My generation
Speaker 1: talked about quiet firing. You gotta do your job. You
Speaker 1: need to show that you have ambition, otherwise ten years
Speaker 1: from now you'll be in the same place. I'm not
Speaker 1: known Fred. I think we're gonna leave it there for today.
Speaker 1: We could certainly go on and I would enjoy it,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna give the audience a break. I want
Speaker 1: to thank you so much for being so honest and
Speaker 1: forthright and explaining all this to some people who don't
Speaker 1: want to hear it, but there you go. Well, let
Speaker 1: me say thank you for giving me the opportunity to
Speaker 1: do it um and let me answer the questions openly.
Speaker 1: And you know, after all these years, it's nice to
Speaker 1: put a face to the person, and you know, we
Speaker 1: both evolved and the truth is, you know, the truth is.
Speaker 1: Guess what, Let everybody live a long time, Let everybody
Speaker 1: be happy. I know that sounds kind of weird. And
Speaker 1: the answers, man, it's only a ticket. Can we just
Speaker 1: get on with life? I mean, really, it's a ticket.
Speaker 1: And it's like, it's so insane when you watch this stuff,
Speaker 1: and oh, I gotta I gotta share one anecdote with you,
Speaker 1: one more anecdote, which you love. So there was this
Speaker 1: class action lawsuit because we didn't get back service Georges.
Speaker 1: And there were two lawyers. I'm not gonna tell you
Speaker 1: where because you would know, you would know the situation.
Speaker 1: But we gave back the money. There's ten people in
Speaker 1: the room and I'm paying for everybody, you know, the building,
Speaker 1: the promoter, everybody's got lawyers. And these two guys go
Speaker 1: on for about fifteen minutes about how I basically ruined
Speaker 1: the world by not giving back service charges. So when
Speaker 1: they finished, I took a toy ambulance out of my
Speaker 1: pocket and I've rolled it down the conference table and
Speaker 1: they said, what's this and I said something for you
Speaker 1: to run behind. You guys are so full of crap
Speaker 1: it's unbelievable. They started screaming, and I said, tell you
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do. Tell you what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give a hundred thousand dollars to the school
Speaker 1: system grand the year for four years. You have exactly
Speaker 1: five minutes to take the deal, otherwise I'm gonna leave,
Speaker 1: in which case, all these lawyers you can go sue
Speaker 1: me and I'll just pay the money in legal fees.
Speaker 1: But here's the deal. Because I think you're such monumental asses.
Speaker 1: You can make the press conference that I gave the
Speaker 1: hundred grand, but you know what your fear is zero.
Speaker 1: You've got five minutes to accept it because I'm going
Speaker 1: back to l A. And they took the deal, Bob
Speaker 1: being thank you, Fred. Until next time, it's Bob left
Speaker 1: Sex