A report from Reuters suggests that Amazon is considering a serious foray into the live events tickets market in the USA. According to sources, Amazon has had discussions with Ticketmaster (owned by Live Nation) but is apparently considering various partners.
As it stands Amazon is most interested in the primary market (selling directly to the end users) for venues and events organisers. It’s understood too that Amazon would be interested too in the secondary market (ticket reselling).
At its heart such a move would be another way of making Amazon Prime ever more attractive to subscribers. If Amazon could corner the market and exclusively offer tickets to big sports games, big concerts and stadium gigs then it would be yet another reason to sign up.
Amazon has already experimented with ticket sales in the UK, specifically for West End theatre shows in London and it seems that has been successful. But cracking the US tickets market is rather more tricky with exclusive dea, especially regarding big venue, make it harder to muscle in. As we wrote in March: Amazon Tickets launched in the UK to promote Prime.
eBay has had not inconsiderable success with tickets in Europe and America via their SyubHub division. And we know that there really is no sector that Amazon won’t consider if they can see a buck to be made. As it stands, Ticketmaster is reported to have generated $1.6 billion in revenue from tickets to events in 2016.
The market for events remains controversial with fans often frustrated that they can’t get their hands on tickets for their favourite events because so many of the tix are snapped up by resellers or touts. But Amazon is an obvious partner. Not least Amazon is in a position to apply their favour focus on efficiency and also cunning use of technology to grease the wheels.