Ticketmaster Acquires Front Gate, Universe D.I.Y. Ticketing Platform
Live Nation owned Ticketmaster is the dominate live event ticketer in the U.S. and many overseas markets. Today, they moved to extend that dominance with 2 acquisitions – one a competitor associated with C3 and its mega-festivals and the other aimed at the D.I.Y. market.
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Ticketmaster has announced the acquisition of two rival ticketing services, Front Gate Tickets and DIY ticketing platform Universe.
Front Gate Tickets provides Ticketmaster with deeper access to the festival market. Founded in 2003 as an alternative ticketing service for venues in Austin, Texas and has since grown to become the leading ticketing platform for festivals in North America. Its client list includes Coachella, Austin City Limits, Electric Forest, The Governors Ball Music Festival, Lollapalooza, RBC Royal Bank Bluesfest and X Games among others.
Front Gate is also at the forefront of RFID integration and in 2014, Front Gate processed over $300 million in sales, sold over 3 million tickets, shipped over 1 million wristbands and scanned over 2.5 million RFID chips.
Universe provides turnkey ticketing services and management tools to promoters, allowing event organizers and bands to sell tickets through their website via a customizable application. The company, which serves thousands of event organizers globally, saw a seven-fold increase in sales last year, Ticketmaster said.
"We are dedicated to maintaining Front Gate's fan-focused philosophy and targeted festival-specific functionality. Universe's advanced DIY ticketing and event marketing platform will not only provide event organizers with amazing tools to manage their events, but their plug-and-play distributed commerce and analytics products will also benefit clients across the entire Ticketmaster portfolio, including festivals," said Jared Smith, President of Ticketmaster North America. – via Celebrity Access
