Thursday, February 3
Round Table - "Whose Ticket is it Anyway?"
Carl Thomas, Tickets.com

A highly successful new event implemented at the 2005 Concert Industry Consortium was a group of round tables, covering a wide range of topics and facilitated by some of the most highly respected people in their fields. Running the gamut of industry concerns from how to structure a deal to purchasing tour insurance to staying sober on the road, conference guests could stop at one discussion or visit them all for a taste of what’s happening in today’s concert business.

The focus of Carl Thomas’ round table was ultimately “how to structure a deal from the venue perspective with an artist or an artist management company, a tour, or a promoter,” the Tickets.com exec VP of sales and marketing told Pollstar.

“What seems to be the case is the phenomenon of the last couple of years of the exorbitant up-front guarantees the artists were demanding and getting regardless of who represented them, which turned the business model and the risk proposition upside down,” he said, adding that he feels venues today are a bit perplexed on how to structure a deal that makes economic sense.

Thomas was surprised to find that most people at the table wanted to discuss the structure of the deal as opposed to actually tracking ticket volume or ticketing prices.

Discussion and commentary also included issues regarding fees being too high.

“The reality of the full services business that we engage in is that the venue gets equipment, software, reporting, accountability (and) one of the fastest Internet transaction engines on the planet, regardless of the industry,” he said.

“When they start to hear about the economic realities and the capital costs combined with the labor cost combined with the research, development and technological cost that goes into a ticketing system, and then realize they’re getting all that plus the equipment for free, they shut up.”