hollywood billionaire

Chapter 197 The World's Third Largest Performance Group

The five companies mentioned by Han Yi are all the most influential ticketing platforms in the United States.

Among them, the most famous is Ticketmaster, an event ticket sales website with a revenue of more than 2016 billion US dollars in 78. It is one of the largest cash transfer stations in North America and an important part of the Live Nation entertainment kingdom.In other words, the main reason why Live Nation can become the king of the live performance industry is its merger with Ticketmaster in 2010.

This merger has such a profound impact on the performance industry in the United States and the entire world that even the US Department of Justice needs to intervene in the name of antitrust mediation.In the end, Live Nation was approved to merge with Ticketmaster to form a new Live Nation Entertainment, but only if Ticketmaster sold its software company Paciolan to Comcast and licensed ticketing software and related technologies to their biggest competitor , Anschutz Entertainment Group, which is the parent company of AEG Live, the world's second largest show organizer.

The feeling of cutting off one's own arm is not good, but the feeling of joining forces is still extremely sweet. Live Nation's exclusive activities, coupled with Ticketmaster's sales network and monthly active users of nearly 7000 million, let them get through the online In the case of downstream, the winner takes all and is invincible.Even if it is AEG Live, if you want to sell tickets online, you must never get around the absolute overlord of this ticketing field.

The same goes for HAN LIVE and their first music festival, Mad City.

Three days, 73000 tickets per day, 2000 early bird tickets at $188, 13000 ordinary pre-sale tickets at $258, 2500 tickets at $558, including fast track + VIP viewing area + VIP dance floor area + VIP There are 200 VIP one-day tickets for the lounge and other rights and interests, 1558 US dollars, including all the above-mentioned rights and interests, as well as the VVIP package of limited time backstage pass + After Party admission + private car transfer + designated artist photo opportunity.

Why are there only 17700 single-day tickets available for sale?
Because on the spot, Han put the bulk of the ticket warehouse and the main point of marketing on the three-day pass.

Three-day early-bird tickets, 3000 tickets, $450.Three-day GA pass, 50000 tickets, $580.Three-day VIP pass, 2000 tickets, $1172.Three-day VVIP pass, 300 tickets, $3038.

How much is the three-day pass for EDC in 2016?

Early bird tickets are $335, pre-sale tickets are $355, regular-price tickets are $386, and VIP tickets are $762.

What about Coachella 2016?
For two weekends, pre-sale tickets are $375 each, plus $435 for shuttle tickets, $899 for VIP tickets, and $199 for VIP parking.

No matter how you look at it, the ticket price of Mad City is much more expensive than that of EDC and Coachella.

Of course, this is not because of Han's greed. EDC 2016 is held at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway and can accommodate a total of 40 spectators in three days.Not to mention Coachella, in March 2016, the Indio City Council in California just passed a resolution allowing the number of participants in the Coachella Music Festival to increase from 3 to 99000 in a single day.Two weekends, a total of six days of performances, means that the Coachella music festival can receive a total of 125000 people.

And Mad City can only receive 219000 people in three days.

Before Han Yi bought the Las Vegas festival venue and carried out large-scale renovations himself, it was difficult to break through this limit.

However, Mad City's seemingly jaw-dropping pricing is actually the optimal solution after repeated deliberations by the internal team.First of all, the 24 groups of guests that Mad City is about to announce, with star flavor and influence, are larger and much larger than the top lineups of EDC and Coachella music festivals.Among other things, Kanye + Gou + Eminem + Dr. Dre + Kung Fu Kenny, which has already broken the sky, is no longer a combination that Coachella and EDC can expect.

Strictly speaking, Mad City cannot be regarded as a traditional large-scale music festival. In 2016, Coachella had 160 groups of artists performing on multiple stages, and EDC had more than 250.This kind of experience that music fans can see when they enter the venue, from the unknown newcomers on the seventh sub-stage to the world-famous superstars on the first main stage, is a comprehensive music festival that people are accustomed to.

Mad City is more like a superstar celebration between a platter concert and a music festival.

An awards ceremony where no awards are given out.

People come here to satisfy their inner fantasies about the bright starlight.

You know, the average ticket price of Jennifer Lopez's solo tour this year is 206.69 US dollars, and the world tour jointly presented by Madonna and Live Nation has reached an average ticket price of 216.01 US dollars.According to this pricing standard, the price of Mad City, where 24 groups of stars gather, is actually quite reasonable.

More importantly, Han Live has another hidden goal different from the conventional organizers for the pricing and sales this time.

That is, to explore the specific commercial operations of the organizers' direct involvement in the secondary ticketing market.

Ticketmaster's standard service fee is 10% of the face value, plus various taxes that the sponsor needs to pay, the final deducted amount can easily exceed 15-20%.Even if Mad City has a large number of tickets and can negotiate a 6% discount with Ticketmaster, it will still generate more than 12% of the direct sales cost after tax is included.

Moreover, although huge traffic is indispensable, Ticketmaster is a brand under Live Nation after all, and they will not give Mad City the best promotional resources, and Han Yi does not want his music festival project to be tied to Ticketmaster for a long time.Before building your own ticketing platform, the best way is to put your eggs in multiple baskets.However, there are only a few baskets in the primary ticketing market, and together they are not as large as Ticketmaster.

Take Eventbrite, which is doing well, for example. Their annual revenue in 2016 was only US$1.3 million, which was more than an order of magnitude worse than Ticketmaster, which was US$75 billion. AXS, another ticketing giant under AEG Live, would have been a good partner for Mad City. Although the annual revenue of 40 billion US dollars is not comparable to that of Ticketmaster, it is still dozens of times the volume of Eventbrite.But Han Yi wants to find an opportunity to eat Eventbrite and incorporate it into the ecosystem of Han Live, so that Han Live can have its own consumption port.In addition, he has other plans for AXS and Anschutz Entertainment. Before establishing a relationship with Philip Anschutz himself, he does not want to have too close a relationship with any business line of AEG Live.

Therefore, in the end, Mad City only reached sales cooperation with two first-tier ticketing platforms.Han Live will launch 2500 three-day early bird tickets and 4000 single-day early bird tickets, 20000 single-day advance tickets and 30000 three-day passes on Ticketmaster tonight. On Eventbrite, Han left 500 three-day early-bird tickets, 2000 single-day early-bird tickets, 5000 single-day advance tickets and 12000 three-day passes. VIP and VVIP tickets will be allocated between the two ticketing platforms in a ratio of 4:1.

As for the remaining 15000 three-day passes and 14000 single-day pre-sale tickets, Han Live will successively put them on three secondary ticketing platforms after more than 60% of the above-mentioned tickets are sold.

Stubhub, SeatGeek, and Viagogo.

Stubhub was acquired by eBay in 2007. SeatGeek is supported by entertainment giants and investment funds such as Ashton Kutcher, Guy O’Shealy and TCV Capital. Behind Viagogo, there are also European giants Index Ventures, British tycoon Brent Hoberman, the fourth Baron Jacob Rothschild and other European giants.

Although each platform has a direct cooperative first-tier ticket source supplier, such as SeatGeek, NFL's Dallas Cowboys, Arizona Cardinals, New Orleans Saints, Premier League's Liverpool Club, Manchester City Club, and AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, Ticket sales will be conducted directly on SeatGeek, but the main source of income and business growth for these three platforms is the ticket transaction between users.

The C2C secondary ticketing market is also the fastest growing point in the live entertainment industry in recent years.

For example, a ticket for Taylor Swift’s 1989 world tour, originally sold for $118 on Ticketmaster, was resold to another fan on StubHub for $208.In this way, one ticket was sold twice, and the two ticketing platforms earned a total of 32.6 US dollars. Fans who resold tickets also got actual benefits. Fans who bought second-hand tickets made up for the fact that they could not get pre-sale tickets. Unfortunately, the price at hand is not as high as the price of the scalper.From the perspective of macroeconomics, this goods, originally worth $118, changed hands once, creating a GDP three times the face value for the U.S. economy.

The legalization, formalization, and e-commerce of the secondary ticketing market have spawned a large number of online unicorns with a valuation of more than one billion US dollars, and have also enabled the US government to find new sources of tax revenue that were difficult to accurately monitor before.

Every stakeholder is winning, except one loser.

event organizer.

After the tickets are out of hand, the organizer has almost no real influence on the subsequent ticket resale and second-hand market prices, and cannot obtain benefits from the subsequent links.

The venue is rented by the organizer, the stage is set up by the organizer, the artists are invited by the organizer, and the risk of tens of millions of dollars is also borne by the organizer. In the end, the income of the secondary ticket market has nothing to do with the organizer.

Who would want to?
Therefore, when physical ticket sales still account for the majority, many organizers will directly release tickets to professional scalpers, allowing some sought-after positions to flow directly into the secondary market. After the scalpers get the ticket money, they can share it with the organizers.In the digital age, the same operations are still common, but the sponsor's partner has changed from a scalper to a ticketing platform.The name has also changed from "black box operation", which is not pleasant at all, to "floating pricing".

First release a batch of tickets in the primary market, and then formulate the price that the organizer will sell directly on the secondary ticket market based on the sales situation and the ticket prices that fans voluntarily resell, and it can be adjusted in real time according to changes in the average transaction price.

For example, the official price of Mad City's three-day pass is $580.If someone gets the ticket and transfers it to another consumer at a price of $640 in the secondary market, at this time, Han Live can release another ticket at a price of $635 or $630 on Stubhub, SeatGeek or Viagogo. A source of tickets to attract fans to buy tickets.

If the second-hand price continues to rise, the ticket source of Han's site can also follow the premium, as long as it is guaranteed to be the lowest price in the market, it can attract fans to buy these own tickets first.

"If the sales in the secondary ticket market are very hot and the supply of second-hand tickets is in short supply, then we can directly cut off some of the primary ticket sources provided to Ticketmaster and Eventbrite, and let them flow into the secondary market directly. In this way, we earn There will be more, and the inflow of a large number of ticket sources is also conducive to the relative stability of the secondary market price, avoiding the situation where the reputation of the organizer is damaged due to the high price of second-hand tickets.”

"Even if ticket sales are cold and we can't sell out the quota in the primary ticket market, the secondary market can also be a place for us to make up for it. As the organizer, if we lower the official sales price, it will inevitably cause public outrage, but if In the secondary ticket market, we put a cover up, cover up our fan status, sell unsold tickets at low prices, and inform buyers that they can only reluctantly give up because of 'work reasons' or 'family reasons', then We can recoup some of that cost as smoothly and quickly as possible without causing a PR crisis."

"In the future performance market, the floating pricing strategy will become more and more important, and more and more organizers will directly participate in the secondary ticket market sales. Mr. Han holds this view, and the team at the Han site also agrees. .This is why we use Mad City as a pilot, and under the condition of ensuring cost recovery, a large part of the ticket source - more than 15% - is directly handed over to three secondary ticketing platforms for cooperation. If the experiment is successful, future No less than 25% of the tickets will be allocated directly for each event at the Han site, which will be reserved for the secondary market to digest.”

Ori Bristan adjusted his thin-rimmed glasses, pointed to the pie chart on the screen behind him, and introduced.

"At present, in 2016, the total turnover of the global secondary ticketing market will reach 65 billion US dollars, and the CAGR will fluctuate between 19%. That is to say, by 2020, the secondary ticketing market will grow into a billion-dollar behemoth, accounting for 150% of total live music ticket sales worldwide."

"As an ambitious start-up company with the goal of becoming one of the world's top three performance groups, if we want to overtake others in a corner, we must pay attention to this segment whose growth rate exceeds the market average by four times."

"Well said, Ori."

Han Yi gave the person in charge of his music festival an approving look. Although it was the first time we met today, he and Ori had a lot of communication in Whatsapp groups and online video conferences.It seems that Ori Bristan has fully accepted the advanced concept of the employer, and has faithfully implemented it as a goal.

Han Yi's rough plan for Han's site is to form a complete upstream and downstream supply chain of performance activities + primary market + secondary market.Han Ontology is responsible for the planning and development of event projects, and then acquires a medium-scale ticketing platform similar to Eventbrite for incubation, and finally cooperates with large capitals to acquire Stubhub or Viagogo, walk ahead of Live Nation, avoid the war in the primary market, and directly aspire to the top The throne of the secondary ticketing market.

This is the case with all-round competition. If you want to increase the overall share, you must always go head-to-head with your opponents in their areas of expertise.Whether it is a record company, copyright distribution company, film and television field or live performance sector, Han Yi's strategy is to find incremental markets that large groups have not paid attention to or not enough attention to, invest heavily, and quickly establish unequal advantages.

You, Ticketmaster, are the leader of the first-tier ticketing platform, and your position in the industry cannot be shaken in a short time?It doesn't matter, then I will buy the leader of a secondary ticketing platform.Even if you account for 70% and I account for 30%, Han Live can still emerge and become the third largest force in the world's live performance industry.

One of the four major music groups + one of the four major performing arts brokerage companies + one of the three major performance giants.

Can such a business combination give birth to a new darling of the capital market with a valuation higher than that of Anschutz Entertainment Group?
If you can win the once-listed AEG Live from Philip Anschutz again...

"I believe everyone already knows about the preparations in all aspects."

Meals have to be eaten one bite at a time, and meetings have to be opened one by one. No matter how high Han Yi's expectations for Han's scene are, he must first complete Mad City, the first large-scale project.Multitasking is what he is best at. Han Yi is drawing the future in his mind while asking Ori Bristan a realistic question.

"Now, Ori, you or Laura, can you take us through the publicity plan before and after the ticket opening at ten o'clock tonight?"

"I think Laura will have a better say in this regard, Mr. Han."

"Yes, Mr. Han, I am mainly in charge of the media."

Laura McWhorter, head of Universal Media and Sponsorships, stood up and walked over to Ori Bristan.

"The preparation time for Mad City this time is very short, and the artist lineup was not fully confirmed until half a month ago, so the space left for us to warm up on social media and online announcements is also quite tight. Starting from June 6 By yesterday’s Independence Day holiday, we had created Mad City’s accounts on various platforms, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Vine and other smaller social platforms, officially announced the logo of the music festival, and released some unique promotions Visuals, silhouettes of the guest lineup, and a series of gimmicks such as ticketing platform partners are insufficient, but quite important early information."

"It is precisely because we have a very tight time for publicizing before ticketing, so our method this time is to release the participation information of 24 groups of artists in one go today. Including their own Twitter and Instagram posts, the editing is complete teaser video, and of course the main festival poster we just saw, as well as the schedule."

"Starting at three o'clock this afternoon, our music festival guests will gradually release performance and ticket information in accordance with the order of the performance, taking the hour as the node. That is to say, three groups of artists every hour, starting from Madison Bill, Bi Li -Eilish, Lil Yachty, finally to Kanye West, Diplo and Dr.Dre, Eminem and 50 Cent. Three groups of guests will be announced every hour, and we will announce the full lineup at exactly ten o'clock in the evening, the main poster meeting It will be released at ten o'clock sharp, and the ticket sources of Ticketmaster and Eventbrite will also be open at the same time."

"These screenshots behind me are the content of tweets that we have negotiated in advance with various artist management teams-including our own management team. Although still in an unpublished state, this is their Final content. Take a look."

Looking in the direction of Laura McWhorter's finger, a series of carefully edited tweets came into view.

【@madisonbeer：嘿，亲爱的们！很兴奋地宣布今年万圣节我将把魔法带到疯狂之城。是时候沉浸在音乐和情感的宇宙中了。迫不及待想与大家分享这段经历。SAVE THE DATE！门票将于太平洋标准时间7月5日晚上10:00开始发售。让我们在这座不夜城留下一些回忆吧。#MadCity2016】

[@ArianaGrande: My loves!Some very exciting news.This Halloween I'll be on stage at Crazy City, and it's going to be a night of love, music, and magic.Tickets go on sale July 7th at 5pm PST!Come join us for an unforgettable night in Vegas See you there, babes! #MadCity10]

[@justinbieber: Big news, Beliebers!Get ready for a crazy night, because this Halloween I'll be taking the stage at Crazy City!Let's make Vegas our playground.Tickets go on sale July 7 at 5 p.m. PST.Let's make some epic memories together! #MadCity10 #Beliebers]

【@kanyewest: Yeezy in Mad City. Halloween. Vegas. Let's shake the desert. Tickets July 5th, 10pm PST. #MadCity2016 #YeezySeason】

"Official announcements one after another, they were on the hot search list of Twitter in North America, 24 groups of artists, 24 hot searches, all pointing to Mad City 2016. Imagine how many fans there will be at ten o'clock in the evening Pacific time Keep refreshing the event pages of Ticketmaster and Eventbrite crazily, and how quickly the early bird tickets will be sold out.”

"Have we got every management team done?"

Squinting his eyes to study Kanye West's short tweet, Zhao Youzhen asked.

"Every team, including Marshall Mathers."

Pointing to a tweet on the far right of the screen, Laura McWatt responded.

"Many of our guests are not active members of social media, but we still have their permission to post information about festival performances through their accounts."

[@Eminem: Vegas, we're going old school. Mad City. With Dre & Fiddy. Tickets drop July 5th, 10pm PST. Be ready. #MadCity2016 #ShadyBack】

"Hashtag... shady back?"

Han Yi crossed his arms and laughed in disbelief.

"Did we actually get him to agree to wear the label?"

"That's what he wanted to bring. This dude may not know enough about the current Internet ecology." Laura curled her lips and spread her hands with a smile.

"Let's see how the fans react, and it would be nice to have a batch of 'ShadyBack' memes."

"Thank you Jackie, Celine, Ori, Laura, all members of the Han site, and everyone who attended today. Thank you for your dedication and creativity in planning Mad City. From our discussions It was clear that this would be a groundbreaking event that would showcase the vibrant marriage of music and culture. The shared vision of everyone in this room brought Mad City to life, and I have no doubts about how it will end up, Will exceed all our expectations.”

"With the lineup of artists we've negotiated, and the unique experience we promise, I'm sure tickets will sell out quickly once they go live. Once again, I want to say thank you for all the hard work you've put into this project. It's My personal vision, but also the collective efforts and wisdom of the whole group, I am very proud of what we have achieved together."

"Now, go eat something. After a busy afternoon, recharge your batteries and take a good rest. The company also prepared a free buffet dinner and a bar for all-you-can-drink. Tell your respective teams that tonight, I hope to see Everyone in the Han Music Group, stay in the office to revel and cheer for the ten o'clock ballot opening."

(End of this chapter)