Dynamic tix: Could JPJ see Ticketmaster's demand-based pricing?

Live Nation Entertainment, the company whose Ticketmaster division drives customers to the tickets at the John Paul Jones Arena (and also the parent company of Crozet-based click-pack-ship division MusicToday), has announced that it intends to bolster revenues with an experiment in dynamic pricing, the strategy long used by airlines to tailor ticket prices to ever-changing demand.

The New York Times has the story of how Live Nation intends to utilize the strategy to regain some of the revenue it believes it loses to scalping firms such as StubHub.com and trim or reverse its losses, which were $228.4 million last year. Investors have seen the share price of the firm fall by one third in the past year.

Despite the bad financial news, the publicly-held company more than doubled its chief executive's pay last year. The firm purchased MusicToday from Charlottesville-area music mogul Coran Capshaw in two chunks: 51 percent in September 2006 and the remaining 49 percent in July 2007, according to company annual reports from those years. Terms of the purchase were never publicly revealed. Live Nation merged with Ticketmaster last year.

The Times notes that the company plans to launch the new pricing policy later this year for concerts and sporting events. In the Charlottesville area, Ticketmaster may drive customers, but the actual ticketing for the John Paul Jones Arena is handled by TicketsToday, part of MusicToday.

"I'm actually not that familiar with it because we're on TicketsToday," says Arena general manager Jason Pedone.

"I'm definitely watching to see if it helps or hurts," says Pedone. "For a fan, it could be interesting."

–story updated at 12:13pm Tuesday, April 26. (Corrects claim that Ticketmaster actively tickets at JPJ and adds quotations from GM)