The man who joined Ticketmaster and built it into an empire left the company in 1998. Now, he plans to launch a startup that will destroy it.
That’s the latest from Fred Rosen, who is profiled in a recent New York Times article:
Mr. Rosen, 67, is the godfather of the $18-billion-a-year tickets business. Go to almost any big-name concert — or to a Dodgers game or to a Broadway show — and the odds are that you will pay dearly for his legacy.
Those you’ve-got-to-be-joking prices are, in good part, Mr. Rosen’s handiwork. Starting in 1982, he built Ticketmaster into the tickets giant that drives many people nuts.
…So it might come as a surprise that Mr. Rosen, of all people, wants to challenge this behemoth, which sells tickets for more than 80 percent of the major concert venues. Mr. Rosen walked away from Ticketmaster 13 years ago, after a love-hate relationship with one boss, Paul Allen, and then a battle of wills with another, Barry Diller. But now Mr. Rosen is back and is hoping to reinvent the global ticketing business again.
If you practically created a hugely successful company and personally created an entire industry, why would you bail entirely? The answer in the case, is personality. The way that Fred Rosen operates did not mesh with his colleagues and business partners.
There’s something else, though, which fascinates Mr. Rosen. Stepping away and starting again powerful stuff. Failure is the secret to success. Or has he puts it:
“I always prefer to be the underdog,” he said. “As the underdog, no one expects anything.”