Just got an email about a new ticket reselling site called TicketChoice.

Jeremy Reitman from TicketChoice explained how they came up with the idea:

“I have always been a big fan of music, concerts, theatre and sport. Often times I’ve purchased tickets to an event that I can no longer attend, or maybe I want to find tickets to an event that has been sold out. Where would I look for such tickets here in Australia? I suppose I could navigate through Gumtree, Trading Post, or even Ebay.

The selection on there is pretty good for the most part, but they are missing a few key components. None of those sites have specific criteria related directly to ticket sales. You can’t narrow down the tickets you are looking to buy for a particular sport, artist, venue, date or region. This makes searching for tickets very cumbersome.”

I think there’s no doubting that an easier way to sell tickets you can’t use is needed and that TicketChoice does a good job of making that as easy and relevant as possible for an aussie audience.

But there are factors beyond the utility and usability of the site which may limit its success.

One such issue is that the fine print on most concert tickets (check the back) doesn’t allow you to resell tickets at a premium. Promoters/ticketing agencies and the relevant state authorities don’t enforce that strictly, but if they ever decided to it could destroy TicketChoice’s business. I know that the idea is to let people sell tickets they can’t use, but let’s be real, yeah? This site is going to be about scalping tickets as much as anything else.

Another issue is that ticketing agencies are doing more and more innovative things, like auctioning tickets so their prices reflect market price or even adding people’s names and faces onto tickets. I could easily see those same agencies entering into the secondary ticket market and providing a trusted source for resold tickets. That trust issue is something that all non-official ticket markets struggle with and something that might prove to be insurmountable for sites like TicketChoice.

That having been said, there’s an opportunity in the current enviornment for TicketChoice to provide a better service at a lower price (how does free sound?) for ticket resellers, so until things change they have every chance of success.