Ticketmaster’s most successful quarter in history helped Live Nation to register double-digit growth in the first three months of 2017.
In a trading update, Live Nation said that Ticketmaster generated gross transaction value (GTV) of $493.7m (£382m/€449m), which was up 22 per cent year-on-year. Fee-bearing primary and secondary businesses were up by GTV of 18 per cent and 20 per cent, respectively.
The company recorded operating income of $54.5m, which was up 54 per cent, with adjusted income up 26 per cent to $103.1m.
Commenting on Ticketmaster’s performance, Live Nation said: “With this strong start to the year, we expect another record year in ticketing, driven by our concerts flywheel and enhanced by the progress we have made in our ticketing products and fan experience.”
Live Nation said that Ticketmaster’s “success starts with continuing to build our venue client base”, and explained that 245 new clients were added in the first quarter.
Online visits to Ticketmaster sites were up by 10 per cent year-on-year, while app installations grew by 41 per cent to over 33 million.
The company added: “While growing ticket sales on our sites, we have also been deploying APIs to extend our distribution. As a result, in the first quarter we sold almost four million tickets off-platform, up 32 per cent year-on-year, helping our clients, sports teams and artists, to sell incremental tickets.”
It also gave an update on Verified Fan, the platform which uses proprietary data and analytics to verify potential ticket buyers and limit scalping.
It has now been used to support 30 tours, including Ed Sheeran, Depeche Mode, Linkin Park and Harry Styles.
The company said: “This programme has been highly successful in reducing, by over 90 per cent, the number of tickets that are then sold on secondary markets.”
Overall, Live Nation saw first quarter revenue up 17 per cent to $1.41bn, operating loss down 36 per cent, and adjusted operating income up 25 per cent to $73.4m. It noted “strong operating performance across all our concerts, advertising and ticketing segments”.
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