Amazon isn’t known to sit idly by when it enters a market, and that could be true of the online ticketing business, which it got into last year. According to a report, Amazon is gearing up to expand it to Europe, Asia and maybe the U.S.
According to a report by Recode, which based its assumption on recently posted job listings, Amazon is hiring as a way to make its new service the premier destination around the world to purchase tickets. The job postings, noted the report, appear to imply the ticketing service will be integrated into Amazon’s Prime program with a service dubbed Prime Tickets.
“[O]ur vision goes beyond just selling tickets as we aim to disrupt the entire live entertainment experience, including what happens before, during and after the show,” one posting read, according to Recode. “The ticketing business is ripe for innovation and improvement, as much of the industry has not fundamentally changed since the 1970s.”
Amazon Tickets went live in the U.K. last year so that Amazon could sell tickets to concerts and theater performances. But if it is aiming to expand in the U.S., it will face a lot of tough competition from the likes of Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation, which are already the leaders in the U.S. market. Because of their leadership position, music artists, sports teams, venues and promotors often strike exclusive deals with the existing concert-selling websites, which will make it tougher for Amazon, the report noted. Amazon isn’t the only one that is eyeing the concert ticket market in the U.S. Facebook has been getting its toes wet in the area, launching last year with a handful of venues, artists and events promoters. At the time, it said it isn’t taking any cut of ticket sales and that the reach of the program was very, very limited; so far, buying tickets on Facebook is a Bay Area-only thing.
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