Tickets.com picked a fight with Ticketmaster and ended up owned by Major League Baseball. Buying a concert or ball game ticket then meant a phone line, a box office or an outlet in a record store. Tickets.com put the sale online and gave venues their own ticketing systems. When it filed to go public in late 1999, it promised fans an easier way to buy. It promised venues a choice beyond the dominant player.

Venues That Wanted Control

Tickets.com bet that the internet could break the hold of a single ticketing giant. It combined several ticketing software companies. It offered venues technology they could run themselves, plus online sales. It worked with theaters, arts centers and sports teams, and many of them wanted more control over their customers and their fees. The fight was hard, because the market leader held long exclusive contracts with many big venues.

Bought by Baseball for $1.10

Tickets.com priced at $12.50 a share in November 1999. It lost money for years fighting a much bigger rival, and its stock fell far below the offering price. Its strongest ties turned out to be with baseball teams. In 2005 Major League Baseball Advanced Media bought the company for $1.10 a share, about $66 million. The league used it to build its own ticketing for clubs across baseball.

Cover: The Loge with the Gilded Mask, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a theatre box (a ticket to the show).