[Nick]

Here is an idea I think has merit.

Tickets for many events, especially music, sell out extremely quickly. Those who miss out either can't attend or are faced with extremely expensive scalped tickets on ebay, which often carry the threat/risk of being cancelled by the promoter. I think a website where people could sign up to be notified via email before their favourite bands tickets go on sale would gain a lot of popularity. Users could also sign up to be notified about sporting events, musical events of their favourite genres in their city. If successful, adding free sms notification would drive popularity further.

It would work using a "user enters" system, similar to the way wikipedia works. Fans would enter the information on when tickets are about to go on sale. I think loyal fans would be motivated to do this to combat ebay scalping.

Monetisation:
1. sponsored listings/advertising - a website/email alert system focused purely on ticket sales would make a great place for event promoters to advertise. Of course requires the service to become popular before any advertising revenue would be derived.
2. a premium subscription service - such as notification by sms, although i think this feature would work better if it were free.
3. for those who like to dream big - if the service became popular there may exist some potential to move into ticket sale referrals or actual ticket sales. Although (without any research) I believe ticket sales companies have a lot of market power due to agreements with major venues, which may mean it is impossible to gain ticket sales business and/or mean there are few ticket sales companies for any one event and so they would be unlikely to enter into a referral agreement.

Pros:
- "user enters" system, meaning music/sporting fans provide all the content
- somewhat unique service in a highly visible market area (ebay ticket scalping is always in the news), which would aid greatly in marketing
- Sizeable market (music and sporting fans, no geographical limitations)
Cons:
- weak monetisation model, at least until already gained popularity


I'd love to hear any feedback on this, or any other ideas anyone would have in conjunction with this that I've missed.

I'd also like to hear from anyone who would be interested in the implementation of such a project. I run a medical trial and market research recruitment business, that operates in a similar way, so have some experience with the method and target market, as well as a large market I can advertise to for free to get started. I'm interested in hearing from people who can assist with the website creation, or in any other way. I'm especially interested in hearing from Australians, though anyone could contribute. Please detail how you would be of help either in this thread, via PM, or by email at nickkarrasch at gmail dot com.

[Newton]

Hi Nick

Sorry to be a fly in the ointment, but can't you just subscribe to Ticketmaster or Ticketek for this kind of thing?

[DrMoney]

Already done---google buy and sell tickets.

[akula]

yeah...interesting idea, but this is more of a feature rather than a company

typically, a company will have some core technology which can be spun off into a number of product/services in case the first product doesn't work out.

with your idea, if the product fails, there is little one can do with the intellectual property

really, what you should be doing is selling bands/managers technology solutions for promoting ticket sales

for example: SMS ticketing and peer advertising solutions

[Nick]

No, ticketek doesn't offer this.

This is not for buying and selling of tickets, this is a notification service, maintained by fans.

Yes this is somewhat of a feature that could be implemented by existing ticket sales companies. However, if implemented by a third party there would be no limitations on coverage, which would be a better service for the consumer. Yes, it is not creating any new technology that can be protected by IP laws, and your point is valid. However that is not to say that if the service did fail, it is worthless and could not be used for other applications, and one does not need to protect their commercial application with IP to be successful. There would still exist a framework for user contributed content for email and sms notifications, which is somewhat generic and likely to have other possible uses.

[akula]

good points there, i guess

sure, i would definitely use the service and recommend it to friends

whether you can make money doing this is a different question

simply put, I don't feel that the problem being solved is compelling enough, in the same way that ticketek hasn't implemented these features for the same reason

there's a lot of alternative markets where timely even notifications are rather more critical

real estate and financial services is one area. medical trials and legislative changes is another