Q1 2020 Texas CEO Magazine

He pulls out his badge and goes, “Well, you can’t do that.”
I’m like, “Why not? They’re my tickets!”
But he took my money and my tickets. I had a few seconds to
make a decision then, and I made the wrong one. I took the
money and tickets back and ran out of there. I knew I could
beat the cop on foot. But then all of a sudden I hear, “We’ve
got a runner! We’ve got a runner!” I came to a corner as they’re
chasing me, and if I would’ve made the right turn, I would’ve
been home free. I made the left, and my feet came out from under
me. Money and tickets everywhere. I spent the night in jail. I
thought that was ridiculous. I should be able to sell tickets I own.
That taught me a real lesson: Make sure you know the rules
and ordinances. From there, things slowly started to happen,
and when I started TicketCity full time in 1990, I’d learned the
rules. Later, we’d put together associations like the Texas Ticket
Brokers Association. There’s a lot of scammers out there in the
ticket world, but it’s trust that has made TicketCity so successful,
as a reputable ticket company that’s been around for 30 years.
So how did you get from being chased by cops to a reputable
business? It’s been a heck of a journey. I was doing the ticket
business on the side while I had a sales job, selling labels and
ribbons and mailers for a commercial printing company. But
in 1990 we were doing enough business that I could quit my
day job. And sure enough we started getting some traction.
By the mid-nineties, the Internet was really going. We
were one of the first companies out there to put together a
secondary-market software and real-time ticketing. We did
have trouble getting everybody to jump on that software
at the time—“Cohen’s going to steal my information.”
But I started buying tickets to all the college football teams around
the country, all the NFL teams, all the NBA teams, all the MLB
teams. I had so much inventory grandfathered in. And I still have
a lot of that today, even though it’s a different ballgame. We’re still
able to make a lot of money off having the right to buy, say, UT
tickets or tickets to ACL or the US Open or the Kentucky Derby.
What’s the process of managing your ticket inventory like?
At TicketCity, I like to say, “It’s not sold out until we say it’s
sold out.” Because we have access and relationships, so we’re
able to get seats even though something might be sold out.
In today’s day and age, all the tickets are online, obviously.
Today it’s all about eyeballs, so I’m putting my inventory
not just on the TicketCity site—I’m putting it on StubHub,
I’m putting it on Vivid Seats. We don’t care who sells them.
I just want to get them sold and maximize my margin.
But for the individual, the question is, What do you value
more? “Do I have more money or do I have more time?
What’s my stress level worth?” Many times you can get
a better deal waiting until the last second, but then one
out of 10 times it will blow up and really be sold out.
When do sellers typically drop those last tickets? Well, today,
the market stays higher for longer. I’m in control of my inventory,
so I can decide whether to lower the price or be the last man
standing. If I have World Series tickets and the game is in a few
hours, I can still sell them up until game time and just transfer
them to your phone. But usually the last six hours before a
game or event—that’s where the best potential deals are.
We like to have, say, a hundred tickets or less on the day of the
game. That’s the inventory we can play with. But in general
you make more margin by selling early. At the end of the
day, it’s supply and demand on the game. You might have a
bunch of LSU fans who bought season tickets from UT just
to make sure they had a ticket to the game—well, now they
might be selling their tickets themselves. We do the best we
can to keep the market up. We’re the market makers for some
events, like the US Open. We have a lot of tickets there every
year. But we’re not the market makers for everything.
If I’m trying to buy tickets, how do I recognize a scam? There are
a lot of shams out there in the ticket world, and the shammers
are smart. It gets tricky. I’d say that a deal too good to be true,
is. Recently, you had people walking hundreds of kids into ACL
for 50 bucks. Those guys ended up getting thrown in jail.
There are plenty of people on Craigslist who offer sham
deals. I see tears at these events all the time from people
who don’t get in. At the end of the day, it’s about whether
it’s worth the stress to get a good deal. That’s what makes
TicketCity so successful: We’re a reputable company that’s
been around for 30 years. We’ve earned people’s trust. If
there’s an issue, we’re going to handle that issue right away.
You’ve been to just about every major sporting event that
exists in the world. If you had a year to live, what are you going
to make sure to catch? Man, the World Cup is amazing. The
Ryder Cup is tremendous. The Davis Cup is tremendous. The
opening ceremonies of the Olympics too. In fact, the Olympics
are where I got one of my big epiphanies. I got a call on opening
day of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. We’d set up an
office there. We’d been preparing for years. Now this lady is
asking, “Hey, do you have any opening ceremonies tickets?”
“Yeah, we have great seats,” I tell her. “How many do you need?”
She says, “Well, I just need one. But the thing is I don’t have a
ride.” That was a big moment. I’m thinking to myself, “Randy,
you’ve got to do this. This is what you talk about—doing the
right thing long after the feeling of doing it leaves you.” So I
said, “Ma’am, it’s your lucky day. I’m coming to get you.”
I went and rented a black Lincoln Continental and I picked up this
75-year-old grandmother about an hour and a half outside the city,
TexasCEOMagazine.com
75