Amazon Looking At Sport Sponsorship & Ticketing A Move That Could Hurt Harvey Norman

Amazon is looking to move into the Australian ticketing market while also becoming a major sports sponsor, a move that could seriously hurt Ticketmaster who have often been accused of price gouging in the past as well as Harvey Norman who are a major NRL League sponsor.

According to sources Amazon is keen to attack the ticketing market, and want to offer premium customers tickets to events while also being able to bundle live shows with their Amazon Prime offering.

Analysts claim that Amazon could easily deliver a massive global tech savvy customer base and bargaining power in a move that could take it right up to Ticketmaster, who are seen as being, arrogant and dominating due to their monopoly with ticket sales for music acts and sports events.

Currently Ticketmaster, is the exclusive seller of primary tickets for many top venues in both Australia and the United States.

Would-be challengers have struggled to compete in the face of Ticketmaster’s strong relationships with the operators of major sports stadiums, arenas, concert halls and other venues.

Amazon has had success with ticketing in Britain, where it has been selling seats to West End shows since 2015, even outselling Ticketmaster for some events, according to one of the sources, who owns venues in that country. It is less common for venues in Britain to have an exclusive ticket provider.

Amazon has had conversations to partner with Ticketmaster as a potential way to get into ticketing in the United States, but those conversations have stalled over who would control customer data, according to sources with knowledge of the conversations.

As a result, Amazon is now looking to go it alone.

Ticketing would likely make money for Amazon, which has a patchy record of profitability. Ticketmaster generated $1.6 billion in revenue worldwide from initial sales of tickets to events in 2016, according to estimates by research firm BTIG. That figure does not include revenue from the reselling of tickets, which BTIG estimates at $250 million.

Amazon has approached at least one entertainment venue and a major football league about selling tickets on the secondary market.

According to analysts getting a foothold in the ticketing business would likely be an expensive proposition. Ticketmaster in many cases pays the venues for the right to sell tickets and manage the box office, and venue owners are loath to give up that revenue even when it means high ticketing fees for consumers.

In the USA Amazon has offered to write sponsorship checks worth millions of dollars to the venues, one of the sources said.

ChannelNews understands that Amazon is set to approach two major football leagues to discuss sponsorship, the move could hurt Harvey Norman said insiders.

“It’s all about Prime,” said Brandon Ross, an analyst at BTIG. “The reason they are spending multiple billions of dollars a year on programming is to get more Prime subscribers and engage more consumers.”