The event-promotion giant AEG has created a new venture called Outbox Enterprises that will allow venues internationally to use a ticketing system other than Ticketmaster’s. This will, theoretically, lead to a healthy competition and, eventually, less exorbitant ticket fees for those Josh Groban front-row seats. Hooray! It’ll be a while until that actually happens, of course: AEG plans to roll Outbox out over the next six to twelve months in the venues it owns, and to have all their venues on the system within the next two years. But in order to directly compete with Ticketmaster, AEG will have to wait until the evil empire’s current contracts (with what feels like every venue ever) run out before they can try and snap them up over to the side of goodness and light. Still: Someone’s trying to get in the way of Ticketmaster’s steamrolling dominance, and that’s a good thing. But until we see any real-world effects, our favorite thing about this story will remain the convoluted metaphor utilized by Outbox CEO Fredric Rosen in The Wall Street Journal story to describe the dastardly Ticketmaster/LiveNation merger that led to AEG taking this action: “The deal not only let the fox into the henhouse. It let the fox own the henhouse. Now the hens are starting to move out.” But, dude, doesn’t the fox want to eat the hens? Why would he act as their landlord and then slowly let them move out? That sounds like a stupid fox.
Promoter Crowds Ticketmaster [WSJ via Rolling Stone]
