Shortly after pulling back from its ticketing ambitions in the US, Amazon is also shutting down its UK ticketing division.
IQ reported on an email sent to clientsby Amazon Tickets’ music boss James Moore explaining that the company has “taken the decision to close Amazon Tickets, and today [21 February] will commence the process of marking back to you any tickets currently on our website and of ceasing the sale of new tickets”… We have already emailed all customers with outstanding tickets informing them of our decision to close the Amazon Tickets business and assuring them that any tickets already sold for events in 2018 and 2019 remain valid and will be fulfilled as normal”.
But wait: this may NOT be the end of Amazon’s ambitions in the live-events market. Billboard published its own report on the shutdown, suggesting that this may be more about regrouping rather than abandoning the ticketing world.
It claimed Amazon had been meeting with show producers in Seattle to brief them on plans for “a new ticketing platform tied into Amazon devices like the voice-activated Echo speaker and the Fire Stick TV streaming device” that could launch in 2019, with a focus on Alexa as the main interface to buy tickets.
It’s possible this too will be ditched, but regardless of whether it’s Amazon or other companies, there will certainly be opportunities around voice and ticketing – Ticketmaster execs have enthused about this in the past, for example.
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