Ticketmaster cost Bloom twice as much as price pitched by losing rival bid

Ticketmaster’s bid to act as agent for this year’s Bord Bia Bloom gardening festival was double the cost of its rival for the contract, tendering documents show.

State agency Bord Bia recently confirmed that Ticketmaster charged it €88,517.13 for the sale of tickets to the show staged in Dublin’s Phoenix Park.

Ticketmaster, part of multinational entertainment giant, Live Nation, won the contract for Bloom 2023 following a competitive bidding process that the State body ran late last year.

Bord Bia documents show that Ticketmaster’s cost was twice that of the only other bidder for the contract, an Irish company, Future Ticketing. A score sheet to evaluate the cost of both bids shows that Bord Bia awarded Ticketmaster 150 points against its rival’s 300, while it states that the multinational’s bid was the “highest cost”.

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State agencies must get the best value for money when they buy goods or services from the private sector, but must also take factors other than cost into account when gauging competitive bids.

[ Bloom organisers paid Ticketmaster almost €480,000 over four years ]

Bord Bia confirmed this week that it used a standard formula used by all State bodies to calculate costs when it weighed both Bloom contract bids against each other. On this basis, the fact that Ticketmaster’s points were half those of the other bidder indicates that the multinational was twice as expensive as Future Ticketing.

The State agency said it applied the formula but took “additional metrics” into account as both companies used different pricing models.

“The panel created a projected ticket sales model for 2023 and applied the different cost proposals,” said Bord Bia.

It added that the five-person panel awarded Ticketmaster the score of 150 out of 300 “as a fair and balanced representation of the tenderer’s proposed costs” against projected ticket sales.

“The procurement panel reviewed and discussed the proposed pricing structures based on a number of projected and hypothetical ticket sales scenarios,” Bord Bia noted.

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The panel awarded Future Ticketing 300 points, the maximum possible for cost, as it offered the better price of the two. However, Bord Bia pointed out that the “cost of proposal” represented 30 per cent of the total 1,000 points that either company could score.

The agency said it awarded Ticketmaster the contract because it scored higher on six out of eight criteria. The documents show that the multinational’s final score was 790 against its rival’s 730.

Bord Bia paid Ticketmaster almost €480,000 as its agent for the Bloom gardening shows in 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2023.

Sales for this year’s show dipped following a record 2022, according to the State agency. Bord Bia intends to seek bids for the 2024 ticketing contract later this year.

[ How big is Ticketmaster? How one company dominates the Irish market ]

Bord Bia, responsible for promoting sales of Irish food abroad, said it received two responses to its tender for this year’s Bloom show.

Ticketmaster is the agent for this weekend’s Electric Picnic music festival in Stradbally, Co Laois, promoted by Live Nation sister company MCD, as well as next year’s Coldplay and Taylor Swift concerts.

A court order dating from January 2021 bars Ticketmaster from agreeing exclusive deals with venues or from agreeing any exclusive contract with any live event organiser lasting more than three years.

[ Ticketmaster offers GAA incentives for ticket sale deals ]

The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission imposed these conditions after an investigation reached the preliminary finding that Ticketmaster had breached competition law by abusing its dominant position in the market. Ticketmaster rejected this and was never convicted of any offence.

Instead it agreed to the commission’s conditions and consented to have them made an order of the High Court.

Neither bidder for this year’s Bloom contract would comment.