Tickets.com
Tickets.com is a global company selling tickets for events, based in Costa Mesa, California. It is owned by Major League Baseball Advanced Media, the interactive media and Internet division of Major League Baseball, and currently handles the sale of tickets for 16 Major League teams. It is expected that tickets.com will handle all sales of MLB tickets when contracts expire with Ticketmaster.
Through its business-to-business operations, entertainment and sports organisations can sell tickets under their own brands to consumers online, through retail outlets, at kiosks, via call centers and interactive voice response systems and mobile phones. Tickets.com also sells tickets directly through their website.
History
Tickets.com was originally incorporated as Entertainment Express, Inc. in 1995. In 1996, the company's business operations were launched by its co-founders Irv Richter, David Richter, Jim Cassano and Larry Schwartz with the acquisition of Hill Arts and Entertainment Systems.
That same year, the company came under the control of California venture capital firm Ventana Global. Under the new president, W. Thomas Gimple, the company began to put together a strategy to consolidate the ticketing industry, without raising suspicions at its competitor, Ticketmaster. Over the next two years the company acquired a dozen others, including BASS of northern California (Ticketmaster's largest licensee), and Tickets.com, an company incubated by Idealab of Pasadena, California. Following the Tickets.com acquisition in 1999, the entire company was rebranded as Tickets.com with the free phone number 1-800-TICKETS.[1]
Over the next few years the company went through significant growth and re-organization, funded by private equity firm General Atlantic Partners.
In November 1999 tickets.com made an Initial Public Offering led by Morgan Stanley and its Internet analyst Mary Meeker, which raised $75 million, with the price rising 60% on its first day of trading.[2]
In June 2000 the company negotiated a deal that would lead to its eventual acquisition, winning the exclusive rights to be the provider of online ticketing services to Major League Baseball Advance Media (MLBAM), through a multi-year agreement.[3]
In 2005, Tickets.com was sold to Major League Baseball Advanced Media, LP for $66 million.[4]
Products
ProVenue is an advanced ticketing system introduced in January 2008 at INTIX, the International Ticketing Association’s annual conference. ProVenue has web-based open architecture designed to facilitate expansion, upgrades, and integration with a wide variety of third-party applications. It also contains a large selection of data management capabilities.
Other Tickets.com technologies include Tickets@Home, which uses barcode technology to allow customers to print tickets from their personal computers; Tickets@Phone, which delivers barcoded tickets to customers' mobile phones; and ProVenueMobile, a mobile version of the website.
Offices
Costa Mesa, California - World Headquarters- Syracuse, New York
New South Wales
Milton Keynes
Singapore
Berlin
Rijswijk
Key people
| Position | Name |
|---|---|
| President & Chief Executive Officer | John Walker[5] |
| Chief Technology Officer | Joe Choti[5] |
| Chief Financial Officer | Cristine Hurley |
| Vice President, Development | Derek Argobright |
| Vice President, Client Engagement | Ed Gow |
| Vice President, Architecture | Sal Giambrone |
| Vice President, Systems Engineering | Dino Ciano |
| Vice President, Human Resources | Courtney Kelley |
| Senior Vice President, Client Services | John Rizzi[5] |
| General Counsel | Craig Frost |
| Managing Director, Executive Vice President, International | Derek Palmer[5] |
Sources
- Budnick, Dean; Baron, Josh (April 2012). Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped. Plume. ISBN 978-0452298088.
References
- ↑ Ticket Masters, pp. 239–241.
- ↑ Dignan, Larry (November 4, 1999). "IPO Update: Tickets.com jumps 60 percent". CNET. Retrieved January 22, 2014.
- ↑ Ticket Masters, p. 247.
- ↑ "MLB pays $66M for Tickets.com". The Washington Times. February 16, 2005. Retrieved January 22, 2014.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 "Leadership Team". provenue.com. Retrieved January 22, 2014.