Saumil Mehta

Global President, Ticketmaster. Formerly Chief Product Officer and Head of Business at Square.

[Saumil Mehta @saumil]

As someone that manages a P&L with a large software cost line item, this take is right.

It’s foolish to think that I would spend any time saving a few bucks at the opportunity cost to the core business.

AI didn’t eliminate Core Competencies. And it won’t.

[obsidian capital @obsidiancap1]

Basically the opposite of everything you read on X. Relying on incumbent software vendors for ai functionality add-ons and paying for it, time to market is critical and want to focus internal developer resources on driving revenue and core business forward not rebuilding 3p apps, and so have no plans to displace any vendors and on the contrary growing spend with every vendor coming up for renewal. Havnt downgraded anything, consider their top SaaS vendors mission critical, laugh off the thought of in housing any software and having to maintain it, would rather relay on 3p and outsource accountability and liability. havnt touched dev seat counts. laugh off Claude cowork (although they like Claude code- will change dev workflows and driving heightened productivity), not moving any pre allocated enterprise sw budget to LLM providers

[Saumil Mehta @saumil]

@faken1ceties Uh what. There were waves of cancellations in the last few months. Multiple major tours too, and it was announced via social media and elsewhere. Happy to share more specifics if interested.

[Saumil Mehta @saumil]

@boojwoos Passing Persona verification does not hurt your account.

[Saumil Mehta @saumil]

You should absolutely focus on whatever resale market constraints you want via regulation and legislation. There are many good arguments on all sides. But I get why fans find high resale prices extremely frustrating. What I can tell you is 1/ we cap resale anytime we are asked (and others do not) 2/ capping resale in one place while everything else is uncapped has very limited efficacy 3/ uncapped resale is 100% legal in the US, unlike other countries (eg Australia).

Blaming TM for the resale market’s price caps isn’t that different from blaming us for the high price of eggs. You can do it for likes on X but it doesn’t make it actionable.

[Saumil Mehta @saumil]

So you were originally upset about prices and now you’re upset about fees? Can you see how this is moving the goal posts arbitrarily and not a good faith argument or dialogue?

On the second point, did you forget my prior comment that we always set resale caps when asked for? And what do you think happens when we set caps and no one else does?

I’ll turn it back to you - I get that you’re committed to your ideological priors and uninterested in any narrative violation. That’s ok. But untrue in the main.

[Saumil Mehta @saumil]

@NormalPerson44 We are looking into this thanks.

[Saumil Mehta @saumil]

Let’s briefly address all 3 -

1/ TM does not set pricing for any event. Prices are set by rights holders (in music, sports, arts, anything). Are you aware of this and does it factor in your analysis at all?

2/ TM does not set resale regulations. Your actual critique is about the industry. We honor resale caps whenever teams or artists ask us (others do not, to be clear). Uncapped resale is perfectly legal in the US. Why criticize TM instead of the regulatory environment?

3/ Geofencing is a team choice. We support them in it, yes, we absolutely provide the tools for it.

Our customer is the rights holder and the fan both. The balance is hard and I get your frustration tied to this and other topics.

While TM does have real things to work on, and I can cite you many, broad brush critiques disconnected from facts achieve nothing.

[Saumil Mehta @saumil]

@NickStevensHS And what’s the specific product feedback that applies to Ticketmaster? Happy to clarify things or take concrete feedback.

[Saumil Mehta @saumil]

I hear you and drops are on my list. We have specific ideas here. Trying my best with our team to build more faster. Attacking every problem and working down the list of priorities. If we try to do everything at once we may get nothing done. Hence the need to prioritize what we ship while continuing to study other problems (including some of the ones you have flagged) so we can execute as soon as we have nailed prior things.

[Saumil Mehta @saumil]

@poptivist It's not.

[Saumil Mehta @saumil]

I understand your position, I hope you understand mine. We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one (for now).

We have more to do on drops. But I am working down a priority list tied to impact, as measured by ability to get tickets to fans. Just because there is one problem in one place does not invalidate a bigger problem in a different place.

[Saumil Mehta @saumil]

It's not "just a ticket". The highest demand shows have extreme demand supply imbalance and massive economic incentives to ensure fans don't get tickets.

The comparison with voting is not relevant here. You do need an ID to get on a plane, btw. Comparing air travel and voting and concerts with each other does not help us advance the conversation.

[Saumil Mehta @saumil]

@kinotrumpet @bettys_party13 I would love that but venue infrastructure simply isn't set up for this. Getting 60K fans into an event is hard enough. Checking their ID on top of that is too much of an ask unfortunately.

[Saumil Mehta @saumil]

@JimJones69_ @Aarav__Puri true. Gotta keep trying though.

[Saumil Mehta @saumil]

Realistically, we are at the point where "I want bots to be stopped but I don't want any identity verification" has become the equivalent of "I'm kinda ok with bots getting the tickets". I know that is not perfect. But that really is where we are. And even this may not be enough, attackers get more sophisticated every few months.

I hear the points around data breaches, data retention, usage policies. We have support content and Persona's privacy policies but I'm sure we can do more to be helpful here.

[Saumil Mehta @saumil]

@Aarav__Puri @tisthepamseason Read the tweet please. I'm literally saying stuff in public on the open internet.

[Saumil Mehta @saumil]

@emwprod1 @bettys_party13 Why does it suck? cc @withpersona

[Saumil Mehta @saumil]

@alyssab_96 Certainly would. But play it out. It wouldn't be fair to fans that can't easily travel, fans that are visiting from other places etc. Plus imagine the lines outside the stadium or arena.