Atmosphere outside the Lena Horne Theatre on December 23, 2020 (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images)
There are not many more Broadway tickets for Ticketmaster.
After more than two decades, the Nederlander Organization has decided to part ways with Ticketmaster and use its own ticketing service. Rivaling the Shubert Organization’s Telecharge ticketing service, all tickets to shows presented in the Broadway landlord’s nine theaters can now be purchased through BroadwayDirect.
The move comes a couple of years after the Broadway theater owner Jujamcyn Theaters sent shockwaves through the theatre industry, splitting with Ticketmaster and selecting SeatGeek as the exclusive ticketing service for its five theaters. Adding a third major player to the primary marketplace for Broadway tickets, “this is one of the most disruptive moves on Broadway in decades,” commented one producer.
But, it was only a matter of time until Ticketmaster, which once served 15 Broadway theaters, would see its Broadway market share shrink.
In 2011, the Nederlander Organization set up BroadwayDirect as a platform to promote Broadway shows with news articles and interviews. But, the company has been inching more and more into the ticketing world, expanding the website to offer online ticket lotteries in 2016, and buying the ticketing technology company TixTrack last year. “The acquisition of the company is a natural next step,” stated its executive vice president Nick Scandalios at the time.
Now since Ticketmaster has been booted from Nederlander theaters, the company only serves the New Amsterdam Theatre, which Disney leases from the New York State Urban Development Corporation in exchange for two percent of the revenues generated from the shows presented in the theater escalating to three percent of the revenues once $30 million is received.
While executives at the Nederlander Organization declined to discuss their reason for breaking up with Ticketmaster on Broadway, using their own ticketing platform allows the company to collect service fees and customer data. Gaining invaluable insights into the demographics and ticket purchasing patterns of Broadway audiences, the company will be able to make more informed decisions about which shows to book in its theaters and which shows to develop and produce on Broadway.
In addition, Ticketmaster became a target for criticism recently over the issues customers encountered while attempting to purchase tickets to Taylor Swift’s “The Eras” concert tour. About forty percent of American voters reported an unfavorable view of the company, and the incident even prompted the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee to hold a hearing into Ticketmaster’s dominance in the ticketing industry.
But, at least on Broadway, Ticketmaster’s dominance over the ticketing industry is a thing of the past.