A recent Reuters report reveals that Amazon could be in talks with event venue owners around the United States as part of a plan to enter the event ticketing business. The four sources told Reuters that Amazon wants to partner with these venue owners and start offering event tickets on its online portal.
If the information is true, this could really shake up the ticketing industry in the U.S. that’s currently dominated by Live Nation Entertainment owned Ticketmaster. The latter is already the primary ticketing representative for many of the largest event venues in the U.S., covering a range of sports stadiums, concert halls, arenas and so on.
Amazon is not new to the ticketing business. In the UK, the company has been selling West End show tickets for the past two years. In fact, they’ve even outsold Ticketmaster at certain events, according to the owner of several event venues in the island nation.
Reliable sources have also spoken of talks between Amazon and Ticketmaster on partnering, but the conversations came to a halt after disagreements on data management.
Amazon has been actively trying to leverage the strength of its Prime user base through live events, and even agreed to pay the NFL an amount of approximately $50 million for rights to livestream this year’s 10 Thursday Night games.
Prime currently has over 80 million members in the United States, according to Statista. With that kind of a following, event ticketing would be right up Amazon’s alley, not to mention that it’s a whole lot more profitable than its own retail business. Volume is key in the ticketing business, as it is in retail, but the margins are much more handsome.
If Amazon does go into this business in the U.S., it’s going to require a significant upfront investment, since many venues are paid beforehand for rights to sell event tickets. It’s something Amazon has been thinking about for a long time, so now may be the ripe moment to make a big move in this space.
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Source: Reuters
