Ep. 50 – "Why OTAs Missed the Concert: The Untapped $10B Ticketing Opportunity with Eric Taraby" - Tickets to Travel

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Tickets to Travel, the Business of Travel Experiences. I'm your host, Mario DeWine, and today we're not just talking about ticketing or travel. We're finally pulling back the curtain on a decade long conversation that's been quietly shaping the future of how fans book and travel for live events.

(00:01):
Joining me today is Eric Turabi, a longtime consultant, technologist, and ticketing expert who's been deep in the trenches of the secondary market. The global API supply chain for event tickets and the ongoing struggle to merge live entertainment with travel booking flows. Eric and I go way back, back to the days when he cold called me during my time at Jetsetter pitching the idea of throwing event tickets into curated hotel packages.
That call may have sounded simple, but it cracked open a bigger problem. We've both spent the last 10 years chasing why hasn't the travel industry fully embraced live event tickets. As a trip driver from his early days at Ticket Evolution to his recent work expanding Global Ticket Supply at stock, Eric has been solving the backend challenges that no one sees.
From mapping mismatch inventory across marketplaces to helping global resellers confidently sell Super Bowl and Taylor Swift tickets in Tokyo, London, or even Bucharest. This episode is Equal Parts Crash Course and Crystal Ball. We dive into how ticketing tech works, the trust issues with OTAs, and how secondary ticketing has quietly become a powerhouse for driving travel demand, all while still being misunderstood by most of the travel industry.
Whether you're an OTA exec, a hotel you're near a stadium, or just a fan who books flights around your favorite bands. Stick around. Eric's here to decode the entire ecosystem and help us imagine what travel would look like if we finally understood how ticketing works. Don't forget to follow us on all the socials at Ticks two, the number two travel pod, and of course, subscribe wherever you get your podcast because.
Tickets to Travel starts now.
Welcome to Tickets to Travel, the Business of Travel Experiences. I'm your host, Mario DeWine, and today we have Eric, Ravi. Eric, welcome to the pod. Thank you, Mario. Happy to be here. So we've been talking about merging tickets and travel for the latter part of about 10 years, if I remember correctly. Do you remember the first time you decided to give me a shout?
Do you remember what we, what was on your mind when we first connected? Yes. I think it was like maybe 20 13, 20 14. We're around 2014. Yeah. In anticipation of this podcast. Screamed and mentally it was like, this is just gonna be a continuing conversation of the one we started that when I was at Ticket Evolution and you were at Jet Center reaching out to you and it was like, you guys are curating me special.
Unique packages. There's some event tickets in there, right? This is trend we recognized a long time ago, and I remember it wasn't you, I was dealing directly, but someone tagged you in and you're like, yeah, we need to figure, we need to figure this out. And here we are 10, 11 years later and nobody's really quite figured it out yet.
Yeah, no, exactly. It's our problem to solve. Eric, I think I remember briefly getting, it was actually a phone call too. Remember that you cold called me. And that was rare, even back then. It was a little rare, but now it never happens, right? Like people typically are texting each other or they're on a phone or they're emailing, and I remember picking up and you were saying, why don't you have event tickets in there?
Not really understanding sort of the, the way that online travel agencies work. And so I started to sit back. I'm like, yeah, I really don't see an issue. It's just a matter of putting up a tab. Then later on during that process, it was all this sort of coordination that had to be done in terms of pulling in an API or having a white label that would then sync with your checkout process.
And it became more of a challenge to sell it internally when an OTA in particular is really used to selling hotels, selling flights. And then later on during that time at TripAdvisor, actually it, it turned into selling activity tickets. I really don't think live events, sports, entertainment, concerts has really had its moment with online travel just yet.
Would you agree, or you've been in this 10 year trail as well of trying to figure out how to inject live event tickets into the travel process? I agree. It's still not been solved or the opportunity hasn't been really. Tackled by at least the major travel resellers and OTAs looking to upgrade your ticketing game.
Tick Stock is your all access pass to smarter, faster ticket distribution. Say goodbye to clunky systems and hello to real-time inventory, streamline operations and global reach all in one sleek platform. Whether you're a reseller, rights holder or event prot, stock connects you to the world. Tick stock.com where tickets move smarter.
Looking for the hottest events, concerts, and experiences around the world. Look no further. Hello Tickets. Has you covered from Must-See concerts at Sports Games to Unforgettable Tours and Broadway shows. Hello Tickets gets you fast, secure and hassle-free access to the best events worldwide. Skip the lines book with confidence and make every moment count.
Visit hello tickets.com today and say hello to your next adventure. It is funny, I'm thinking back to that conversation and subsequent conversations that we trying to tease out potential solutions and, and that reminds me of kind of education you gave me on how OTs operate and how they think terms hotels being the, by far, the biggest margins that they have and.
The need to absolutely optimize conversions and even if a load time on page is microsecond is lower, it convert all this stuff. So event tickets will always be, or activities or everything will be outside of hotels will be afterthought to the OTA process E even back then, since back then, the industry has evolved.
Some, like you just mentioned, trip. Now via tour is the major driver of their revenues towards an activities platform. Even though that we all know, and everybody in the industry knows that church by themselves is never really a traditional OTA in that sense, and then subsequently the online rise of tours and activities, OTAs like Get your Guide and Klu and et cetera, et cetera.
And then they're focused on more the experiences. There's been some movement in the travel industry as a whole. That movement hasn't really addressed nut that needs to be cracked. That is events. I think you're right in the sense that you bring up the activities and experiences and arrival coming into play in the chain of events.
When you're booking travel, usually it was about the destination first, right? So I'm going to Paris, so I'm gonna buy my flight, I'm gonna get my hotel, maybe I get a rental car and I'm gonna take a tour. So that in the chain made a whole lot of sense. What's changed over, I would say, over the last few years, and we can thank again Taylor Swift and the Super Bowl and F1 and all these big events, is that now people travel because of the event.
It's that thing that says, I really don't care where it is, but I have to go see it. And that's the main driver. I have to buy the ticket first. And then build the trip around that. Now, the problem for those traditional OTAs, as you mentioned, the first one is that it's legacy. They're legacy tech, so they're used to doing it in these silos of air, hotel, rental, car, that, that type of thing.
So to introduce something at the beginning of the process, it's somewhat difficult, right? Because these are big systems that have been around for a while, and so it's a multi-level. Business development endeavor to talk to a BD person, a product person, a tech person, and then getting it scheduled. There's a lot of things on, I think the ticketing side where the APIs are still maturing as well when it comes down to seating maps and ease of use and things of that nature.

(00:22):
I think that's the first piece. The second piece is that because activities have been the rage, or I say over the last, I don't know, like five to seven years or so, it's pretty low margin for the OTAs. Everyone did it, but it's not really killing it. It's not a huge percentage of hotels or anything else.
So do they really wanna spend the time? I'm curious, like what kind of margins from a OTA perspective on your traditional tours and experience throw inbound and iteration on a, a theater ticket, which I guess is the most analogous thing to events. Well, what is the margins there? Theater tickets are a little bit different because it, it just depends on how they're distributing it.
A more traditional sense is like a walking tour or a, let's say, statue of Liberty ticket, right? Something for a major tourism, tourist attraction. It's typically in the 20% range. Basically they'll discount it 20% and you mark it up and then it, it shows in parity what it would be@statueofliberty.com, for example.
That's usually it. How does that compare to hotel general averages? I know everything's negotiable from, it's similar in the way that it's slides. So independent hotels, you'll have above 25% in margin, sometimes all the way down to a corporate Marriott, for example, which is probably in the 12% range. And so the difference is just frequency.
People don't necessarily have to go to the Statue of Liberty, but they definitely need a hotel room and hotels two, $300 a night compared to $50. So yeah, and don't get me wrong, those tickets will get up to, in the case of helicopter tours, if you're going to the Grand Canyon from Las Vegas, that could be two, $300 per person.
A family of four 1200 bucks. And then, but that's a one-time shot. It's not like they're doing that every single day, so they don't see it as the same type of baseline business that a hotel, that's why they're specifically just OTAs that sell just hotels. They don't even wanna deal with flights because flights, no matter if you're going from here to Dubai or here to la, it's still $5 a booking.
It doesn't really matter. It's a flat cause. So they want the frequency and the evergreen inventory. 'cause that's the other thing that's a question for you actually, is the difference being is that these are all event based. Their dates are set. And that's another complexity for an OTA to market around because there's so many of these events that it's easier just to say New York Marriott, Marques, put that sign up for the entire decade.
Versus Taylor Swift in Madison Square Garden this one night, right? Or these two nights. Sure. It doesn't scale. You have to be a lot more nimble and flexible and it doesn't scale all that sense. That makes complete sense. That's why I always thought sports was the easier thing for OTAs to consume because it's a season, and so I would think like even back in your experience.
Possibly at the MLB or other entities that you worked around, just being in ticketing for so long, how was the marketing structured? Obviously you have opening day and then you have different tent poles throughout, but it was, you almost had time off versus in the hotel world it's always on. How did you guys approach marketing that way?
Instrumental beside, I really wasn't. On the marketing strategy side, but it's pretty much common sense. You're right in terms of when the season is, and obviously local teams have their own kind of local marketing objectives around typically now is before Christmas, and then there's also bump up before the season starts, right?
Since in March, you'll see on the taxi cabs here in New York City, all around yankees.com. That's dot com. Whatever baseball stuff and then as a whole, yeah, a R would market around 10 pole events, so that's it. As a hotel or as a ta, you need to be always on. It's really tough for them to just see as these one single off events when they're building product and buying marketing.
I think where it comes down to, and this is what we talked about a lot, is it's one of two things, right? Like it's demand, which we're talking about in terms of marketing it, but then it, it becomes supply. So the supply part on live events is a little bit different than hotels. So on the supply side, an OTA needs to be able, they can't just take a one-off, I'm just gonna do the Yankees.
They have a global audience. They're spending millions of dollars on driving traffic. They wanna make sure that whoever lands on that site, whatever they wanna do, wherever they want to go, there's a ticket available. And so this is a good transition to, to talk about what you do. On the API side for some of the ticketing partners that you've worked with in the past.
At Ticket Evolution, what we built out was essentially solving the supply side or anybody who wanted to sell that ticketing inventory, re aggregated a bunch of inventory for trust, and bigger resellers created solutions via API for them to be able to seamlessly sell that out to their customers. And the, the end to end, well, I should say 90% of course, what whoever that brand is would interface with the customer and me do everything in, in, in the background, and really making me go back to those first conversations that I would have.
Dumb dumbing Lee, knowing nothing about travel, the treat thing, this is no brainer. And calling someone like you, Mario up and being like, why don't you guys do this in a lot of ways at the time, say 10, 12 years ago. That's a solution I was selling for a problem that never existed. We solved the, the supply problem.
So you can have a reliable source of supply. It's year round, it's all these major be at the time. I think the biggest objective outside of putting it on the homepage was really the big, uh, against the secondary market to getting more market, um, Expedia, for instance. Boom. Like I'm, I don't know who I'm dealing with because it's not the New York Yankees.
It's some. The media who in my imagination could be rowdy Rick, around the corner swinging Yankee Stadium on hundred sixth first Street, that kind of fast forward 10 years. That part, the cultural stigma at least, has attenuated, especially here in the US with thery of Wallies, secondary marketplaces led by StubHub, vivid seats, SeatGeek, et cetera, et cetera.
From a travel reseller perspective, the supply. Or challenge suspicions or what have you challenge around it. Yeah, I can, Ima that was one of the problem and that's what these are the conversations I get into now is that it's still the trust issue. It's how do I make sure I can transfer that ticket as a large OTA to the right person?
And I think what gets as a piece of education, maybe you can enlighten how these ticketing systems work in terms of getting. That supply into any type of ticketing API and what would make an OTA confident that if I am Joe Schmo, who wants to go to the Yankee game and it, it was bought off my travel site, that using one of these wholesale or secondary APIs are, is the right solution.
I think your typical consumer and even your. Typical OTA or the audience here would on this travel side, would be surprised about sophistication of technology into a very existing veterinary ticketing market. This is not just a random broker like sending you the tickets and it's multiple third party software services that kind of help facilitate the flow of data across multiple marketplaces, distribution channels, and that also, which eliminates a double sale.
Technology automatically pulls it off to any other marketplace. And that's old technology at this point, but just even the facilitation of the, uh, inventory and the fulfillment of the inventory itself, it's a pretty complex solution that secondary ticket industry has spent a lot of money on figuring out.

(00:43):
So, and then I should note, the rise of mobile ticketing eliminates a lot of the. The manual errors that would come into play with secondary thinking fulfillment that way when, and they were being manual error, your PDF and you have those four pack and it seats 1, 2, 3, 4, and say two are sold on marketplace A and two are sold by marketplace B.
And you've got somebody Chad Stringer and seats one and two to marketplace A, again, one and two to marketplace B. There was never fraud, Craigslist and all those places, but online, there was never like fraud in secondary ticketing industry. Those problems were always like manual with the Verizon and mobile tickets make it very easy, just crash from an email graph.
Somebody accept shows up on their phone unless they wanna transfer it back to someone else. Yeah, it's the primary ticking system. A big barcode is this year. It eliminates all that fulfillment. It shouldn't be a problem now when it comes to certain events, while you're putting that thought together. I think it's important to name that technology.
It's ticketing automation is what you're speaking of that allows the mirroring, right of same event, it's Yankee Stadium. On this particular date, there's all these different marketplaces, but essentially once a ticket is purchased in the primary ticketing system, it is pulled outta the inventory. So it then marked and it have to be an approved secondary market to be able to.
Have the primary ticking system, which 90% is one company, and then they will push that out, right? Yeah. You don't have to be an official marketplace. You don't have to have a license. MLB has rolled out their ATM authorized ticketing marketplace, but that only enables, part of that enables the marketplace to deliver the ticket within their own kind of wrapper and their own brand.
Join the movement@humanics.com. Every time you buy a ticket, someone profits. At Humanetics. We believe that profits should have purpose. Our booking fees, fund education, healthcare, and critical programs for those who need it most. Not corporate bonuses. We're a nonprofit ticketing platform, turning live events into global Impact.
So if you're hosting an event or just buying tickets, choose tickets for good, not greed. Join the movement@human.com. Tired of overpriced tickets and sketchy promoters. Discotech is your personal nightlife concierge. Discover guest lists, discounted tickets, and VIP tables in cities around the world.
Whether you're booking EDC in Vegas or a yacht party in Croatia, Discotech gets you in. With over 1.9 million downloads and realtime push alerts for the best deals, save money, party smarter, download disco tech on iOS or Android today.
But even then, like if my, I'm a consumer, I being a PTO fan transfer, it's still, I can still, I've got the ticket to, to my email address by, have ticket map server, select the tickets or CK a and I transferred 'em to your email address and fix. At that point, a transfer, it hits ticket mastering system, reissues a barcode or QR code or whatever the union is.
And then you have, now you have the tickets and the unique barcode that works. Now, once you transfer it again, your barcode gets canceled out. So what they're saying is, does that have to be an official license with or primary or rightful? And it could still be, and it's still automated. So it's automated.
It's a, an actual ticket. It's being transferred to the right people who have basically been verified, whether this, it's the seller or the buyer at that point. All of this is very interesting because if you talk to someone in the travel side, on the travel side, maybe the best parallel is a hotel room. So.
They're pulling inventory out of a property management system, PMS. It'll be pushed through whatever channels that are connecting, usually through A CRS if it's a corporate hotel company, and then of course on an actual OTA. So it's similar and with the pm MS, but you're also able to price it justly per channel for marketplace based upon negotiated agreements or just, I like them and I don't like them, or.
Trying to understanding geographic yield. So if OTA is in whatever geography and knowing that you could get more very similar dynamic at play, I feel like that's important to note because it takes a little bit of the fear out of it, and they've perfected a hotel sales through various OTAs to distribute.
Then it's the same thing. It's just a new learning curve on the ticketing side and with just different players with different names in a lot of ways. One of the things that I think is very challenging when we start to have this conversation is just supply in general, especially in Europe, when it comes down to soccer, to basketball, all these different sports that are played in the UK and in mainland Europe.
Because I had a, an episode earlier here in the season with Tema from Hello Tickets. He was describing the, the challenges between how these tickets are transferred or the seat licenses are made because they're truly members of a club. I don't think as Americans, we understand that as it's a football club, meaning you actually like a country club, you're part of the membership.
And so those licenses are few and far between, and the loyalty factor of those fans is big. So. For them to actually put it out on a secondary market is really hard to do. So do you have any insight as to how maybe that type of European supply is aggregated? Yes, I do. As you're aware, Barry, try to replicate and mature the secondary ticketing model that was created in the US and I did Attivo and trying to do it on a global scale with a company called Tick Stock.
And you're right, the biggest challenge in Europe is the start rule. Securing the inventory. It's also kind of cultural seller status. But yeah, securing the inventory, also figuring out the fulfillment piece of it, and Tomas is right there. There's challenge when it comes to European football in certain parts of the stadium that are seizing card.
You need to actually show what season card to get the gate alongside with your ticket. Those are more specific and they're not as large. On the pitch or 50 yard wine, let's say for American audience at Berta Bow Stadium. For real. Madrid game. Yeah. The only way to do that is to receive card. Yeah. The fulfillment aspect is a little bit more challenging.
It's obviously not as automated. Choosing cards are on a barcode on your phone and more so for the challenge in in Europe versus what I, what we know here in the US is the primary platform marketplace is a lot more fragmented. Here in the US you have obviously Ticketmaster the major dominant player, and then you have maybe 3, 4, 5, 6 other smaller plays.
Access obviously for venue, which is 22, the 30 major League baseball clubs, and then a couple other smaller. We tend to look at Europe and think it's pretty homogeneous, but it's 36 different countries in west of Europe itself. Right, and they have different regional players and different specialty and different languages.
You just gotta understand. So automating, figuring out how to automate, automate with these, all these different ticketing system is a little bit more of a complex. And that's what we've been trying to build out at stock. That's promising in a lot of ways, because you're right, it whatever people think or say, Ticketmaster is the dominant primary ticketing system.

(01:04):
And I say this a lot because we have friends over there too. It's a primary ticketing system, but it's also a marketplace. And I think that gets. Clouded in the regular fan experience stuff. Yeah, but to your point, there are other primaries out there, whether it's. ProView Pro venue access, Lin audience, you know, there, there are different ones, but I never knew that in Europe there's is that number right?
60 to 70. Like that's what I believe I was told, but I had the same reaction You did? I couldn't believe it. I was like, really? She's not used to that. Yeah. I mean, that didn't make sense from a language perspective. I could see why that would make sense, but man, that's a lot of. Immigration work and look consolidation's coming soon for the same trends that you're having with Bobcat because the internet ization of events and now Sean Taylor Swift, I, you know, I can have certain demands that standardize things across different.
I don't have to pick and choose. If I want to go to Buca rest, then I want to go to Sydney, Australia. Then obviously there's gonna be more consolidation as due to the globalization of the event. And that's the trend right in, in our super fan conversations. It's, I can't get to Miami because it's $5,000 per seat if I want a decent seat.
But I can go to Bucharest, fly there and get a decent seat and be completely happy. And also make it a travel experience. 'cause I'll take in the sites and have the food and do all these different things. And so as you may see a little bit of that data from a tick stocks perspective, do you guys track how many US people are coming over and buying that?
Do you have any sense of what those numbers might look like? That's a great question. And like TiVo, it's a B2B perform, so we, and visibility, the end user data, that's our marketplace partners and other distribution partners who interface good percentage. You would think. And, and as you touched upon the kind of travel aspect of even just European events in Europe, it's just so much, a lot easier to travel.
So if I'm in, in the uk, if I'm in London and Beyonce is ludicrously expensive, maybe it's. 500 quid cheaper to CRN Paris. We're gonna spend this money. Might make it a vacation. Yeah, I'd nice hotel. That's segue into another piece of technology. Spotify helps artists identify where they've got demand and these algorithms into, can we do sustainable for there?
And then that goes into, which I don't know if you want to get into right now, Merrill. In terms of the, again, the globalization of events, right? Like the, a little bit of an arms rush now, geography to geography in terms of investing in the requisite infrastructure to be able to support Taylor Swift Next Tour or Beyonce Cowboys Court next tour.
You, you mean from a events you a new perspective, colossal opportunity for travel. Are you speaking? Yeah, not only from venue perspective, obviously starts from the venue perspective. I read currently there's over $3 trillion worth of investments going on across the world and stadiums and arenas being built the next 10 years.
Obvious Saudi Arabia, they're hosting the World Cup, but they've got some arts venues, Milana, so Rica, Nairobi, on Kong, over three Triller. And it's not only, it starts with the stadiums, but you need the surrounding courts of the stadium to be able to host. Foreign visitors coming in, and that obviously starts with the event, the venue, hotel infrastructure, and the rest of the economy that kind of supports tourists, places, the et cetera.
Great. In these countries, 'cause they're able to, they're able to attract new people. It's Singapore. Having Taylor Swift for the only three nights in the south in the Indian Ocean, it almost caused a foreign crisis with the Singapore apparently negotiated with table switch people. Have some exclusivity around that.
Now they've got all these people flying into Singapore saying, wow, what an amazing time. I had a table shift concert. I can't wait to go back to Singapore to see another concert. And now you have all these city geographies wanting to bolster their tourism programs, investing in this requisite entry. It's a topic that comes up here a lot from a destination perspective, and hopefully I can get some destination people on the podcast to talk more about it because there is a movement in these, whether it's A-C-B-B-A-D-M-O.
Destination management organization, that is one. You may not have tickets to the actual show, but you can still come to said destination and experience. The team, the sport, the artists through workshops or seeing everything deemed a certain way, and then it becomes like a almost piggyback riding on the popularity of a particular artist that drives more tourism into the future.
Because then what I'm finding too is that if the fans do react a certain way. Maybe you have some insights here, but the promoters, the artists themselves are like, you know what I, I think we need to book that destination again, because there was such a great vibe there, right? There was so many fans who were engaged.
We packed the house. There's great feedback online about it. There's many people looking at our socials and all this stuff post, post fake YouTube videos of the concerts, and. Whatever the social around that, and of course Sierras wants to go back. Yeah. I feel like that's the other piece, like you mentioned, Saudi Arabia and Dubai.
I think those are the next Las Vegases globally. And again, that infrastructure piece, it all comes back to where this conversation started. It's the supply piece. You have to be able to have the. Technical integrations into these various arenas to provide the supply and then an aggregated API of some type if I'm a major distributor to make sure that I have something to sell.
And so really, companies like Tick Stocks, victory Live, TiVo, they just, and so there's also a consolidation on that end from what I'm gathering, right? Because you essentially have Victory Live now and you have Ticket Network. Then is there any other kind of wholesale, I mean there's a few, like Elevate does direct rights to people, but they're very bespoke, how they push their inventory out.
And I know everyone's selling each other's stuff from a broker perspective, but are there any other sources that people should look at and say, Hey, listen, I can if this API and get all the supply I need. So to clarify, I'm a travel seller rule. What other sources are out there? From an aggregate supply and having the right technology in terms of the distribution solution, travel seller, to be able to re also travel, also pick back there, there're a number.
Different companies we could get like the event ticketing, weeds and fibo or Victory Lives. Recent acquisition of Logix also where there, that there's consolidation there. There, there's just a limited number of flavors out there, to be told are Boy Keith. At TFL Solutions, they, they also provide a similar company to serve service, ticket network.
It's probably the other big one right now. And then there's tech stock and issue that we have is we're more in nature, whereas the other companies are. 99, 90 5% against trade to US or Canadian inventory. Yeah, no, that definitely is a differentiator for dick stocks. I think the, it's similar to hotels though.
Each one of the major OTAs will go out and directly contract, and there's other wholesalers who directly contract. So pick any hotel. They probably have anywhere from three, four, or five up to 10 different wholesalers who they negotiate rates for. And then they each have an API for distribution. Where either a they and what they do is they aggregate all of them.
It's a little bit different with hotels because it's not by seat and by view. It's a room type and depending on the demand, the bar rate will fluctuate and then there are discounts off of those bar rates. And so the point I'm getting at here, Eric, is at everyone sells each other's stuff. Whoever has the most supply makes a distributor's life a lot easier because you're probably getting better pricing.

(01:25):
Depending, 'cause they now have technology that sort of bubbles up the best price based on the query. So if I'm looking at one website and I'm like, Hey, I'm gonna go to Fort Lauderdale for these set of dates, depending on who has the best rates at that time, that'll come up because then they're gonna back channel a bit and say, oh, I'm gonna get more margin on selling this particular inventory.
Then that's what they show to that particular fan or guest who's looking for it. So I feel like ticketing is similar in that way to a certain degree, although I don't really know the pricing element very similar because if it is the same inventory rate, just flow through different types and that'll create, it's the same host sale price.
But in correlate of the ticketing that the broker list, the resell list costs doesn't either. The care, he just wants that list price, but, but now then the intermediaries, the solution providers, the aggregated exchanges, like a lot of like a tick stock. Yeah. They would then have to compete in theory, compete on what their immediate take is in order to be that, that result that shows up first on whenever OTA paid.
The similar concept work. I don't think they're we're there yet. So yeah, you're right. It is not as happening as involved, I guess, in the hotel industry, in the OTA industry, but it is slowly happening. It's remarkably to marketplace perspective. Yes. Yeah. So I'm curious as to, you've been doing this for a little while on the ticketing side.
You've talked to lots of travel people on B2B as well. Sure. There's just no education around it, and so what happens is. I think here's another difference. I think with ticketing, live events, people and travel. Travel, the travel industry is a, between a nine and $11 trillion a year. Industry versus ticketing is a little bit smaller, maybe a lot smaller.
And so when it, when you start to look at this lot smaller, a lot smaller. So I was just being respectful, but the, because of the type of content that they provide, whether it's a. OHI ticket or piece of demand on the hotel side, absolutely it does. But from a, I think that's where you're getting in it. No, that one, but two, there's the, this comparison of whether or not it's worth it for the travel industry to, to even sell it.
And then you have this, these different entities within ticketing and entertainment where. They hold on to that information and they wanna make sure everyone goes directly to them. So there's little factions of that happening. And so there's a lack of education, so people don't really understand. They keep secrets as to, Hey, hey, I have the rights for this, so I have the best price versus this one and that one.
And I think that education piece doesn't exist to the wider travel industry to understand what's gonna be best for when I sell that to the guest. So if I have, if I'm a travel agent and I'm plugging into a ticketing backend to to sell a Yankees ticket, how do I know that's a good ticket for that fan who's I'm already booking their travel, their airfare, their hotel, this and that?
And there are different types of fans slash guests who they're price conscious, or some of them just are like, I wanna sit as close as possible. Just like it. Yeah. Or they like to just create noise, but stellar in that not having. Pure visibility into the supply that, and that's by being a little murky in terms of where it's come from, pricing differences across different other channels.
I get why I would be a little hesitant to, to sell a rent. You wanna make sure that you're selling the most competitively priced ticket that a consumer could otherwise get. Elsewhere at all, that just doesn't exist. Well, it's hard to, given the dynamic nature, especially hotels are dynamic in nature in terms of pricing, but in it, it's just the way it is.
Also, there's no real comparisons on the ticketing side, meaning you have kayak for hotel and flights, you have TripAdvisor comparing rates, and people, those hotel companies or those OTAs are buying ad spots for that kind of tough, tough do. Ticket on the METAS search site. There, there are a couple of, uh, meta search sites in ticketing.
In fact, CGE was originally a METAS search site. Oh, I didn't know that. But a story like SeatGeek great at technologists at he being able to pull data, they made it fully deals with all the major marketplaces, but then it's just like meta search sites and OTAs. But SeatGeek, they realized, all right, I'm going you, here's my marketing spend.
I'm driving people to my search site by meta search site and then pushing 'em out to marketplace, where in that marketplace, capturing say 30%, 35% margin. Whereas SeatGeek was getting whatever fine, 10% Philly could spend. Geek was like, wait a minute. They ran the numbers eventually, and they're like, why don't we create our own marketplace?
More money in that? Currently in Europe, there are a couple of meta search sites that are trying to become more global in nature. And again, they can only have true visibility over the market if they have true visibility, if they have true integrations with all the different secondary ticketing marketplace that out there, even within the, I guess the event ticketing meta search side, there is a pure 100% visibility into all the inventory going to this.
I would imagine it'd be really tough going to seat to seat. I know people who do that. If it's an on sale for a Beyonce, Taylor Swift, that you don't have time to do that. In sports, you might be able to, because doing a seat to seat comparison on four or five different sites, that'd be really tough to aggregate.
Yeah. Yeah. But you could do it via a section or even down to your room. Somebody was so finicky that they definitely, I wanna sit section 1, 2, 4, but I need to sit and. Row M or better. I'm not, somebody's not panicky. I think you can do it. The data exists out there to do, but yeah, I get what you're saying in front, like hotels room type, that's 300 sections in a stadium, and then there's so many different seating maps, different plans in an arena.
I think the biggest issue for the secondary and really come up with the solution for the trauma industry. Because if you are going to, and this is the way I would recommend, is to integrate multiple achieves from multiple different sources, ensure you're, there's some competition among the different feeds.
Also to ensure you're getting full geographical reach, multiple integrations. Now then kind of fundamental sin in the secondary ticketing industry. In the US especially, there's no standard protocol, SHRM a, what we call mapping basis. Meaning there's no standard normalization of data that flows across different market.
Vivid teeth could call an event. They could say the, the Chicago Cubs versus the Los Angeles Dodgers, whatever their vet ID and the nomenclature StubHub is gonna do Los Chicago Cubs at the Los Angeles Dodgers and have whatever vet I Id. And then there's so many different third party software and automation tools that exist too gr They all have.
Their own unique identifiers and they might call sections in a stadium very differently. And it be, it's a big kind of mess that obviously the industry is individually, has thrown a lot of resources at fixing and the fuzzy logic, the normalization of data, but there's still some leakage that exists. And what, what I was knee deep in the US industry personally was like, you know something, God fix this.
I did do some kind of temperature checking with different marketplaces or the third party software provider, and it's one of those things where nobody wants to uni unilaterally disarm, and it will only work if everybody, I guess when you tell me like Octo and towards an activity space, I forget who the holdouts were, but don't you understand it's better for the industry as a whole?

(01:46):
It'll list all our boats world, the whole industry, but you still have some companies that are like, we think we have a competitive event and here. Yeah, that's one of the things. That is one of the things that is holding ticketing industry back. And if I was sitting in booking.com shoes or get your guide shoes or whatever, it'd be like I wanted to tackle this the right way and get multiple iteration.
That's a problem that now I have to solve, and that requires more resource that. We're getting really technical here, Mario, but I think we pouring the audience. No, you'd be surprised. I know. Interested educational school, but no, just to end that piece. 'cause you're right it, it's interesting that there isn't a standard, and when Octo came about, for people who don't know what Octo is, it's this uniform language for tours, attractions.
Sure. Ticketing. Exactly. So I remember I actually presented that option to a client once on the live event side, and they're just, their mind was blown. They're like, guys do this on the travel side. I'm like, yeah, but I think that just serves, that travel's more like hospitality based, right? So they, yeah, they're trying to help each other out as an industry versus.
Like I was saying earlier, live events is a little bit ego driven. People wanna Yeah, it's onto, it's stupid. It's a easily addressable solution in the whole scheme of things that would help easily. And if everybody comes together to help, all fans are help secondary. Right. And also, okay, so now you're eliminating all the pointers, zero 1% issues that may come up, which is, gives the secondary the bad name.
So it's, if you stop for that. You're without doubt growing the industry because then you eliminate that little dark cloud in the consumer's mind, or in the case of travel resellers. So why don't we fix it? And not only that, each unique exchange automation piece of software marketplace, they're all investing their own dollars and resources and infrastructure and mapping it themselves internally through, and I've said this before, maybe not in a podcast, it makes too much goddamn sense that.
Nobody's gonna do anyway. It's so simple. That's my ran. No, I get it. But that's what I was trying to get outta this is that there is, that makes it tough for businesses that wanna distribute these tickets, and I think it's the, at the core of the CTF in a lot of ways that there's one big company that is setting the parameters around transferring the tickets.
Whereas it could be a lot easier to help fans get access to the right. Ticket at the right price, and so on and so forth. If there wasn't all this static from a technical perspective. And I think that's the thing that people don't understand is that you're right. Agreed. Yes. So what gets you up in the morning in terms of live event ticketing and travel?
What's the next wave that you wish things would change? I about change looking at the ticket event, ticketing industry, and the rise of global events for the last three years. Really been very exciting. I'm learning tremendous amount about different markets, but just in save time, just seeing real time, like the globalization of events.
I spent the early part of my career, almost 60 years at Major League Baseball America's past time, so. I do have some perspective from a rights holder in a league and just to see the kind of globalization events a lower specifically starting with the four major US sports leagues, MLB, just coming off the Tokyo Sterns with the tigers over there, and then Cubs and Dodgers kicking it off just from red ticketing perspective.
Did you see like flew in from Chicago and they were paying like $3,000 for a ticket or cotton? What they paid the airfare in hotel, but that trend is all, all over MLB. After Korea last year announced they're playing Mexico games this year. The NBA did the Celtics Nuggets and Abu Dhabi did Brooklyn Nets takeover Paris last year.
And then the NFL say next year, they plan on playing international games. It's a Paulo this year. Next year, Beau Stadium, Madrid, the Dawsons are playing. See, I'm not a Daws fan. I'm a Madrid State Madrid fan, but I pay money to go see that kind of experience. It's all over. And not only just sports, the US importing sports to Europe and beyond, it's also rise of European football.
We, when we were kids, married, you and I, we woke up before our parents did and we snuck in, turned on TV to watch cartoons. Now our kids are waking up early and they're watching Arsenal versus Chelsea. They grow up, they grow up to become fans. They're supporters of, um, they're gonna buy their kits that they're gonna subscribe to whatever local streaming services in their market, televis those games they're gonna have on their bucket list experiences to one day go over and visit White Heart Lane.
I just heard about your half guests with this Liverpool experience, sports density entity themselves, like liver. So even the nature of sports league and sports teams, all these sports players, but sports personnel, everything has become globalized. Globalized. It's great to watch, it's great to see and experience.
This is all pretty new man, right? Like it's, this was not a thing 10 years ago. This was not a thing pre COVID, but I think there's been this focus on moments. That's why you could put a premium on that ticket. I understand that it wasn't a thing before, and I think it's companies like all the ones that we've been talking about today that provide access to the supply, which then drives the travel for it and hopefully it's conversations like these, it's like tip the hat of certain leaders on both sides to think about whether or not.
They should merge these at scale and create products for fans slash guests, which I always say it's ironic because a ticket seller or rights holder is selling to a fan. They're tickets. But when you add them into a travel process, they become a guest. And ironically, they're not the same person, right?
Because you, you have to serve them differently. Typically, when they have the ticket, they're waiting for that one experience. But if they get that hotel room. They gotta have a great check-in. They gotta have a nice room, have a good mattress to sleep on. And even if the breakfast is horrible on the third night or the third morning, you're gonna hear about it on TripAdvisor or wherever else they're gonna put a review.
So there has to be this merging of fans slash guests, I guess processes or protocols, even from a marketing perspective or definitely from an operational perspective to help grow that base of. Fan slash guest. Let me ask you, as, um, from the perspective of the OTA and or hotel property though, are, how are aware, are they cognizant of, and I don't know if that there's any impact on the data, that they see a big event happening in a surgery.
They see certain spikes before it happened. Do they have teaming that are actually like. Wait a minute, Eric, like what's going on that is dedicated on what's going on in the world to help with, they're putting yield pricing or is it just all algorithm based? Do they know that M mc, you know about Super Bowl do?
Are they aware, like the seasonality will? I think from a local perspective, they may be, take New York City, that's easy. They will download the event calendar. They may know somebody who's there who will give them the indication like, Hey, you know what? On sale for Billy Joel is coming on this date. And so typically what they'll do is they'll just keep their rates really high or just, or stop sell it altogether.
And then once the marketing sort comes out, then they start to talk about, okay, we're gonna open up these dates, but the rates are gonna be super high. So usually with hotels, they have revenue management systems that give them the indication of historical data that comes in, and then they tell them how to price it.
But old school wise. They, there's no way for them to understand the demand. You know what I mean? Yeah. There's, the data is out there to plug into, and there's no standardized source of data yet to plug into what exactly. When Taylor Swift comes town in Month X, when YMZ or also in town, how is that gonna impact?

(02:07):
It's more of a, a question of the destination. Chicago said that when Taylor came to Chicago, she broke all the occupancy records because over those particular dates, that three night period or whatever it was, they were at 98% for the market. So they, they can tell, but it's all historical data. It's not, they can count on it because I think it happens in a, in micro markets, right.
Where. A Cubs game in the same market. It works for when they play the Dodgers, but not so much when they play someone else. Having that data is there. I think another thing is just the entire market could sell out. It's a citywide, but it then it becomes more of a exercise for the hotels competitively against each other.
To say these people are gonna pay a premium because I'm better during that Taylor Swift concert versus this other place. And then it becomes this race to who can get the highest average daily rate or a DR. That's the strategy. So I've touched on this before where tickets are a lot different in terms of how they collect the data, how they price a ticket, so on and so forth.
Versus hotels don't really care. They're just managing the demand that comes into the market and then funneling it and trying to capture as many of those people as possible. And then you give them a good stay and then they come back when they wanna come back and they become loyal. So it's a different way to look at it.
For the right poor and or team travel experience, would it make sense? Like I'm Taylor Swift, do I do my people reach out to Marriott, say, let's do a deal for my next tour and we're gonna give you whatever licensing rights. And you guys come up with the Taylor Swift fan package. It doesn't necessarily have to include event ticket, no.
But just has some kind of more authentic. Feel closer to the artist. That, and then Table, swift obviously gets a big check for Marriott. Marriott gets to associate the brand Wolf okay. With Swift. And their fans get a great experience when they check it to Marriott. There's nothing stopping Taylor or any artist from doing those type of deals.
And then there's another angle where, you know, the manager, promoter, whoever it is, if they get a piece of that, let's say sponsorship deal from Marriott, then they can release premium seats. Look, I talked about this two years ago or three years ago with you during the pandemic, so my annual lunches and breakfast, and I remember saying we should get together.
The ticketing industry, trying to push a solution to a problem that really be not thoroughly defined work for a ticketing company and help them. How do they get a red ticket into it? Yeah, you're doing it too, right? There's, but there needs to be, there's a handful of people understand both sides and have to customize a pitch.
It's definitely a thing that, that's what I say to everybody. It's definitely a thing, but getting. A large travel seller to take the risk to integrate this, to create the packages. Because that's the thing, that's the other thing I've learned throughout the last few years too, is if it's not automated to scale, like through APIs, if you're doing just an individual packages, it's just a lot of work.
You gotta go contract the hotel work. Yeah. You gotta take care of, yeah. You take companies like on location, like what they do. Is really great, but man, they gotta throw a lot of people at it. It's very expensive to run and that's why the packages are $15,000 per person. Yeah, it's funny you say that. So maybe it is something that starts on a grassroots level.
Eric, thanks for your time on Tickets to Travel. We hope you come back. Attention travel and Ticketing innovators, whether you're a startup disrupting the industry, or an established company ready to take your distribution strategy to the next level. Expo Travel is your ultimate partner in online travel and ticketing distribution.
We specialize in helping businesses of all sizes optimize their operations. Expand their reach and unlock new revenue streams. And for startups looking to grow, we partnered with Top Venture Capital syndicates to help you secure the funding you need to turn bold ideas into thriving businesses. From refining businesses to scaling operations and raising capital.
Expo travels here to drive your success. Visit Expo Travel today. That's XPO travel.com. For a consultation and let's transform the way the world travels. One innovation at a time. Expo travel because the future of travel and ticketing starts with you.

All Episodes

Ep. 50 – "Why OTAs Missed the Concert: The Untapped $10B Ticketing Opportunity with Eric Taraby"

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

24/7 News: The Latest

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 50 – "Why OTAs Missed the Concert: The Untapped $10B Ticketing Opportunity with Eric Taraby"