Thanks to its acquisition of a small venue ticketing agency Wednesday, Ticketmaster Online CitySearch Inc.
announced plans to integrate Ticketmaster’s services to
more venues listed in CitySearch’s city guides.
The company released a suite of new online products focused on local and
community-level tickets for a wide variety of music, sports and cultural
events at smaller venues. The move is designed to allow smaller venues such
as nightclubs, museums, comedy clubs, amusement parks and zoos to
self-manage their ticket sales online and give consumers online access to a
greater number of events. Ticketmaster Online-CitySearch (TMCS)
previously only offered tickets for larger venues such as major sporting
events and concerts.
The expansion was made possible due in large part to its acquisition of 2b Technology Inc., a fully-integrated
visitor management and ticketing company. 2b’s flagship VISTA software is
targeted at venues such as higher volume museums, cultural institutions,
historic sites and other attractions.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
“There are three keys to expanding online ticketing in local markets — an
advanced ticketing engine designed for the smaller venues, a knowledgeable,
local sales force and the traffic that we bring with our leading local
portal and destination for online tickets,” said John Pleasants, president
of Ticketmaster Online-CitySearch.
“Our new initiatives and products will leverage the strength of our trained
and motivated citysearch.com sales force who already have relationships with
many of the targeted venues for these products. We believe our new product
suite greatly expands our addressable market and we are excited to offer our
users another way to get things done in their local market online through
Ticketmaster Online-CitySearch.”
