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.
