vs.
Billboard is reporting that Ticketmaster has filed suit against secondary ticket market site, StubHub, over its supposed sale of primary-market tickets.
Ticketmaster, the world’s largest ticketing company, has fired a major shot over the bow against online ticket seller StubHub. Ticketmaster filed a suit yesterday in Los Angeles Superior Court against Stubhub and its parent eBay, citing intentional interference with Ticketmaster’s contractual rights and other charges…”The issue in this case is these tickets posted on StubHub for a tour were tickets that were made available to the general public, and in these particular instances, we had the exclusive right with our clients,” says Moriarty.
In addition, just yesterday Ticketmaster filed a series of lawsuits against four companies over their use of automated web “bots.” The automated software programs are set up to access Ticketmaster.com to quickly and automatically purchase groups of tickets beyond what a single user could achieve.
Although Sean Moriarty, Ticketmaster’s CEO, denies any connection between the suits being filed, in a way, it looks to me like Ticketmaster is trying to play it off as sort of good cop/bad cop on the same day. I don’t think either move will improve the ticket giant’s standing amongst most consumers. It’s unofficial “ticketbastard” moniker is unlikely to fall out of favor until they stop charging so many ridiculous fees and “convenience charges.”
I hope to have a bit more later, but the main takeaway is that Ticketmaster sees Stubhub’s emerging growth as a threat to its business, and they’re starting to fight back.
Related posts:
Ticketmaster and Facebook Unveil “See Where Your Friends Are Sitting” Feature
[caption id="attachment_25715" align="alignnone" width="500" caption=""Let's not sit here...Davina is a bitch.""][/caption] Yesterday Ticketmaster and Facebook announced that fans ar...
Ticketing Start-up Eventbrite Gets $50M, Bigger Events
Eventbrite just announced that they've raised another $50 million to continue on their path of offering event promoters choices in how they sell their tickets online. Here's the news via NY Times... ...
iTunes Ping Tour Dates Powered by Live Nation & Ticketmaster
Ping, the new iTunes social network, has concert listings provided by Live Nation and Tictketmaster. Here's the roundup....
Apple Announces Ping, the iTunes Music Social Network
Apple unveils a new social network for music built right into iTunes called Ping......
Ticketmaster Launches New Blog, New Policies
[caption id="attachment_17967" align="alignnone" width="386" caption="blog.ticketmaster.com"][/caption] Ticketmaster launched a new blog called Ticketology, and today's first post details out a cha...
Live Nation to Investors: “We’ll Figure It Out Soon!”
Were you following the news today surrounding Live Nation's investor call at Irving Plaza? Supposedly, the company is doing just fine compared to the rest of the industry as a whole, but they expect ...
Google Cloud Print: Never Print a Concert Ticket at Home Again?
It's Internet Week in New York City and the launches, announcements, and press surrounding the heavy hitters on the web will be occurring ad nauseam this week. One of the first to get my attentio...
Live Music 2.0: Apple Files Patent for “Concert Ticket +” iPhone App
The Tech and Music Industry blogs are abuzz today with a new and interesting patent that Apple has filed for a "Concert Ticket+" iPhone App for electronic ticketing. CrunchGear has a good explanat...
Live Music 2.0: SF MusicTech Summit 2010
I just confirmed a slot on my calendar for the SF MusicTech Summit set for the Hotel Kabuki here in San Francisco on Monday, May 17th. The SF MusicTech Summit brings together visionaries in the...
Live Music 2.0: Concerts and the Social Web
Over the past few years, as this whole web 2.0 thing has really grown and progressed, we've seen a number of new sites launch that are specifically geared towards live music fans on the web. In a ...
