Amazon Tickets, launched in 2015, was a ticketing platform for music concerts and other public events.
Amazon’s goal with Tickets was simply to become THE premier destination for event tickets. Amazon even had plans of saving the best seats on the events for their Prime members, as a way of promoting their membership.
The platform was first launched for the US market. However, the immense competition in the field restricted its growth. Amazon retargeted to the UK region to achieve their desired results.
The biggest challenge that Amazon faced was not getting access to tickets for massive and popular shows. The ticketing industry has been functional for quite some time, and the venues and promoters already have strong partnerships with conventional ticket agents. The cash flow and finances involved in the process are so strong that it is nearly impossible to break the traditional partnerships.
In the US region, the market is already dominated by well-established ticket organizations like Ticketmaster, See Tickets, and AXS. Amazon understood the need for collaboration and hence tried to partner with Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster, which has over 80% dominance in the US market, offered Amazon to sell tickets of underperforming shows on its platform. But Amazon disagreed with their conditions, and the deal was called off.
The fierce competition in the market and the low profitability led to the closure of Amazon Tickets.
The company announced that Amazon Tickets would be discontinued, but tickets that had already been purchased wouldn’t be affected.
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