YouTube on Tuesday announced a partnership with Ticketmaster, a West Hollywood, California-based ticket retailer and distributor. Google’s subsidiary described the collaboration’s main goal as supporting artists who depend on concert revenue, with the two teaming up to devise a straightforward solution for discovering such events and buying tickets to them on YouTube. The most popular video streaming service on the planet still isn’t interested in pursuing its own ticketing platform, with the collaboration essentially integrating Ticketmaster’s system into YouTube by automatically populating eligible video descriptions with information about related events and links to Ticketmaster’s website where the tickets to such happenings can be purchased. The solution hence isn’t particularly comprehensive or highly integrated but it’s a start and will serve as a base for other possible collaborations in the future, as suggested by YouTube.
The platform is presently only available to consumers in the United States and will soon be making its way to Canada. YouTube said that a global expansion is also being actively planned but provided no more details on the matter. Ticketmaster is officially present in all Central and Western European countries save for Portugal, as well as Scandinavia, though it remains to be seen whether it also expands its partnership with YouTube to the Old Continent and other parts of the world. YouTube is understood to be receiving a percentage of sales Ticketmaster generates through its leads but no financial details of the deal have been disclosed.
The move itself comes shortly after Facebook entered the ticketing segment through a similar partnership with SeatGeek. Both social media giants have been experimenting with event promotions for many years now but haven’t been actively trying to sell any vouchers until recently. The two companies may see their recently established ticketing collaborations as pilot programs for evaluating the worth of this business, possibly paving the way for some related acquisitions in the future. For the time being, Facebook and YouTube are focused on different event categories, with Ticketmaster now primarily promoting its concerts on YouTube, whereas SeatGeek appears to be focused on sports games and related happenings, as well as selling tickets to such events via Facebook Pages.