Ticketmaster Stops Affiliate Program

Ticketmaster notified its affiliate partners in early October that it would no longer pay commissions on sales. The affiliate program technically still exists and Ticketmaster will continue to provide affiliates access to its concert database. That program has long paid a small fee (about 1% to 3% of the ticket price) to third parties whose traffic to Ticketmaster.com resulted in a sale.

"This was a difficult decision to make, as we recognize the fiscal impact on our affiliates," the company stated in the email. Indeed, affiliate revenue is important to companies that provide concert listings and collect a small fee for sending traffic to their ticketing partners.

The company made several other cutbacks in its affiliate program back in July, when Ticketmaster cut some of its smaller affiliates and stopped paying commissions on tickets sold during pre-sales.

Expect Ticketmaster to keep paying some of its bigger affiliates as it clearly helps drive traffic to Ticketmaster.com and would address increased competition from smaller competitors. It does raise questions however about whether larger merchants and service provides on the scale of Ticketmaster will cease serving smaller affiliate marketers.