A Kinder, Gentler Ticketmaster Wants to Know They’re Battling Ticket-Buying Bots

I wrote a piece for the Globe and Mail about Ticketmaster’s effort to become less faceless and more customer-centric. That includes fighting those damn ticket-buying bots.

Hidden behind a pair of innocuous double doors in plain sight on a well-travelled concourse at Toronto’s Rogers Centre, Ticketmaster’s Canadian operations occupy a space once built for a long-forgotten nightclub within the stadium. The concrete-and-steel construction offers a certain intercontinental ballistic-missile-silo ambience to the place. Come to think of it, the design might also make a nice lair for a white-cat-stroking Bond villain.

The industrial-cum-bomb-shelter headquarters fits well with the public perception of Ticketmaster, which has long been regarded as the omniscient, faceless, all-powerful seller of tickets to concerts, sports, theatre and other live events. The company has migrated almost entirely to a virtual plane, having phased out pretty much all its bricks-and-mortar box offices. And, with a corner on at least of 80 per cent of the ticket-selling marketplace, it’s difficult to avoid using Ticketmaster if you want to get into that show.

Now, though, having silently endured criticism and epithets for years, the company would like to soften its image as well as clear up the myths and misconceptions about, well, its facelessness and lack of empathy for customers.

Read the whole story here.