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Event Ticketing Companies Consolidate

Event Ticketing Companies Consolidate

Over the last few years, there have been many corporate acquisitions of ticketing companies. We have seen many event ticketing companies consolidate. For example, Eventbrite has been buying up their competitors. They acquired Ticketea in 2018; Ticketfly and Ticketscript in 2017; and nVite and Queue in 2016. Vendini was also on an acquisitions path, taking Boxxo, CrowdTorch, Dataflow, and inTicketing over the last few years. When they announced the CrowdTorch acquistion, Vendini’s Chief Revenue Officer described it in the following quote: “There are companies who are eating, and there are companies who are being eaten.” In May, 2019, Vendini was itself eaten, when AudienceView acquired them.

Good For Event Producers?

Better products and service are not often what results from corporate consolidation. New corporate owners may want to cut costs or move clients to their own platform. This can cause problems for event organizers. After Eventbrite acquired Ticketfly, they announced that they would shut it down and move event organizers to Eventbrite’s own platform.

Often, customers of the acquired ticketing company were with that company because there was something about it they loved. Perhaps their technology, their customer service, their culture, or any combination. What the event organizer liked, could go away after an acquisition.

An example is New York’s Capitol Theatre, who made the following announcement after Eventbrite said they were moving Ticketfly’s customers to Eventbrite’s own platfolrm:

“In November of 2018, it was announced that Eventbrite would shut down Ticketfly and move customers to their new platform, Eventbrite Music. The acquisition affects The Capitol Theatre’s ability to sell reserved seated shows. We are proud to be Ticketfly’s first customer ever, and The Capitol Theatre was the first reserved seated venue they ever ticketed. This is a bittersweet moment for us. After exploring various options, the results gave us a clear line of sight to move to Ticketmaster.

John Oliver describes the downside of corporate consolidation in this episode of Last Week Tonight, in his unique humorous style. (Contains some profanity.)

Outside of event ticketing system companies, my personal experience is that service usually deteriorates after a company gets acquired. I’ve seen it with companies that we use internally – computer hosting companies, marketing companies, software development companies, you name it. You find a vendor that you love and that provides great service; after a few years, they get acquired; and either the product or the service changes. I’m not sure what drives that – perhaps the acquiring company’s objective to cut costs and see “synergies”, or perhaps the acquiring company was mostly interested in buying the acquired company’s customers and moving those customers to their own product.

TicketPeak Remains Independent

TicketPeak remains a privately owned company dedicated to serving the best online ticketing system needs of our clients. We have grown by word of mouth, and we have evolved our technology based on customer input. If you’re looking for an alternative to Eventbrite, or Vendini, or any of the large corporate consolidators, we’d be delighted if you considered TicketPeak.

 

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Ticketing for Events | Online Ticketing Software | Event Ticketing System | Online Event Ticketing Software | Event Ticketing Solution | Event Ticketing Management | Event Ticketing Software Online | Online Ticketing Solution | Online Ticketing Platform | Online Ticketing System

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