Should Google get into the ticketing market? If so, what would you build?

Goals:

Why specifically the ticketing market ? why not any other?

What is the objective behind this decision? Should i perceive it from any angle like increasing revenue? 

What does success criteria look like?

Which geography

What is the scope of ticketing market – is it just concerts or includes movies, parks etc everything under the hood that needs a ticket?

Is there any timeline?

Website or app or both?

Ask all these questions for interviewer:

Revenues of ticketing market, players of this market, trends in this market, 

Google mission: to make information easily accessible

Strengths:

Lot of data

Lots of cash

Large market share

Weakness:

Major revenue stream is still ads → too much Reliance on ads for revenue

Losing out in genAI space which threatened ad business – google search

Slow or no significant innovation in google search and other products

Trends:

1. Rise of esports 

2. People are social beings and always will have market for concerts, games, movies etc - visible in olympics, concert sales , concert movies etc - 

3. Bad pr for major ticketing platform - ticketmaster

4. Popularity of live VR concerts with advent of new tech

Strategic options: develop Google events

1. Direct one click purchase on google search itself say for whatever event that is searched,  by integrating google account, events platform and google pay 

   1. Easy to use

   2. Capture impulse buyers

2. Partner with top games/game publishers and become goto platform for watching live competitive gaming - 

   1. Twitch is popular in game streaming, so differentiate by focusing on competitive play

      1. Encourage youtube communities to integrate with google events for competitive high stakes gameplays

3. Partner with popular artists and music companies to sell tickets for VR concerts where users can watch their favorite artists live performance on their VR tech(not google owned, although ca push google glass if it comes back)

4. Partner with major games like olympics etc for selling tickets

5. Use personalisation and provide offers so as to get orders. Use deep discounting techniques as the platform can target wide audience, it can afford to use deep discounting to wipe off competition

6. Integrate Google events into Google apps like Google maps, where all the events in a location can be shown and when clicked purchase option is shown and similarly another integration example is with Google lens and with scan of a poster or image, can directly take you to one click purchase screen with all details

7. Penetrate every corner by leveraging local data, this way can become a goto place for anything that needs a ticket

Evaluate the entry:

1. Mission alignment: as google mission is to make information easier to access, by leveraging that information now it can provide a service.

   1. All pieces are already present, google just need to club it to make a service like google events

2. User experience: Through this google events, user experience for buying tickets become easier due to integration of Events platform to google apps like maps, gmail, lens etc This is a win win strategy for customer and company as user experience becomes much smoother for customer and more datapoints and revenue could be obtained for company

3. Competitive advantage: google’s advantage is data and so entering his industry increases its capability to collect more data as it can now get info on spending habits and what kind of events are more sold which benefits google as it can price adwords higher related to this industry accordingly and also gives more datapoint which google can use to push personalized ads and events so as to get more purchases/clicks

4. Stakeholder reaction: Board members and shareholders will be happy with increase in revenue

5. Bariers to entry: by strong integration with google apps primarily lens and maps and google search, this tight cohesion can create strong barriers to entry as people can directly use these to buy ticket 

   1. Google missed out on ecommerce search as people now search directly on amazon rather than google. Problem here is that google lost data which it could have use to monetise

Based on this evaluation criteria, I would recommend Google to enter the ticketing industry

Clarifying questions:

• There are multiple segments within ticketing where Google could venture into? What are we prioritising? (events/ travel/ movie etc.)
• Where are we planning to launch this feature? India
• Do we have any specific user-segment in mind for the feature? (To be prioritised on your own)
• Are we planning to integrate it with any 3rd party vendors? (prioritise on your own)
• Are we planning on building an end-to end flow of ticket booking discovery of the product/ service to checkout to payment page? (Can be prioritised)
• Lastly what is the end goal of this service if we decide to proceed with this feature? (Expand our revenue streams so monetisation)

About the company/ Goal of the product:

Google core mission statement is to enable people to access the right information with ease over the internet. This is why Google core product is a search engine for the internet which helps people navigate the internet. All other Google services are sort of enhancements of this core service and also services that improve this core function.

We need to analyse whether this new venture is in line with this core mission statement.

Also as monetisation is our end goal, Google’s major revenue (approx 70%) is ad-driven revenue. It has a robust ad-network that it has to its leverage. The rest 30% revenue is from subscriptions.

What are the current products of Google that are in line with the ticketing business?

• Travel ✅ (Google Flights & Travel)
• Events ❌
• Movies ❌

Market Overview:

Analysing the market situation for the following two segments:

Not solving for movies segment: Reason is that the general trend post-covid in India is that most movie-goers have switched to OTT platforms. In general the cinemas are more on the loss-making side.

We are mostly going to focus on the Events segment.

Also I am mostly looking to solve for the end to end (discovery → payments) aspect for the following reasons:

Google will have the chance to showcase local events and in return charge them a commission for posting these events in the limited slots. this will be a new revenue stream complementing the ad-revenue.

Industry Rivalry (Low): Not many players in this segment (BookMyShow) solves for this but very few platforms exist that offer a comprehensive list of events (specially local events). Its an unorganised market.

Threat of New entrants (Low): Very few platforms in the space that are highlighting local/ events at a small scale.

Threat of substitute products (High): Instagram & Facebook are hubs / go-to-platform for all kinds of events. These having strong network effects and a large user base, its easier to reach people/ Virtual events are also becoming extremely popular.

Bargaining power of buyers (High): Events largely falls under the entertainment segment. So we might face issues with generating enough traction because people don’t have a shortage of entertainment options.

Bargaining power of suppliers (Low): Local event organisers don’t have many platforms to go to and Google will offer a very big platform which I doubt any other company could.

So overall, its a good segment for Google to enter into:

TAM/ SAM/ SOM calculation:

Total population: 1.4B in India

Urban pop: 420M

Urban pop with smartphones: 70% ~ 300M (TAM)

SAM: People with smartphones who are fond of entertainment ~ 70% ~ 210M

SOM: People with smartphones who are fond of attending local events ~ 30% ~ 63M

Assuming that these events slots would be monetized on the basis of Google’s bidding algorithm.

Google’s SWOT analysis:

Strengths:

• Robust technical architecture (in terms of other G-suite products)
• User data
• Large reach in India
• Easily accessible
• Network effect

Weakness:

• Competing with social media in this segment which also has large network effect

Threats:

• Solving for a niche use case
• Social media

Opportunities:

• Diversify revenue stream
• Leverage user data to understand consumption patterns
• Can venture into a new business segment as well.

According to me, Google should venture into the ticketing market and should primarily solve for the event ticketing industry (aimed at mostly local events) that are largely in an unorganised state.

What I would build?

I would build a small platform that would solve for discovery → checkout → payment → booking created stages. This platform would be on the Google search homepage.

There will be two sides of this platform (vendor side - people who have a local event)

and consumer (people interested in buying the ticket / attending event)

The event slots would mostly work on a bidding model where the vendors would place their bids and basis a certain algorithm, Google would select events for the placeholders.

On the customer side we will have the same flow as described above.

Approach:

1. Ask follow up questions to understand the prompt better

2. Do SWOT analysis in the context of entering ticketing market

3. Make no/no-go recommendation 

4. If it is a go, generate product idea for building a ticketing system

Follow up question and business objective

Candidate: I assume in an continuous efforts to make google suite of products more useful, we are evualating if makes sense for google to offer additional use cases such as ticketing system

Interviewer: Yes

Candidate: When we say ticketing system, do you refer to live events such as concerts, wrestling events, technical conferences, etc or recorded events such as movies, etc.

Interviewer: Both

Candidate: Do we plan to monetize the service by charing the fee?

Interviewer: Up to you

SWOT in the context of ticketing system

Strengths

Large customer base to tap into: For most customers, the gateway to the internet is google and its suite of products from playstore, chrome, search, gmail, maps, youtube, etc.  

Trust: Customers trust google with their payment details 

Access to cutting edge technology: Google pioneered  knowledge graph and natural language understanding that serve google well to help customers when they need them  

Weakness

Lack of expertize in the ticketing system domain as it relates to movies, recreational activities, sport events, etc.

Lack of exisiting relationships with arists, sports team, technical conference organizers to offer tickets to their events on the sites

Opporunities

Being more useful to customers: Customers are divinely dissatisfied and they want to get things done in the easiest way possible. Rather than serving as a information portal (google search) that point the users to the ticketing portal.

Google has the opporunity to let users buy tickects within their own ecosystem, be it youtube, maps, search. Since google already has access to the customer payment information on file from their past purchase on chrome or other play store or other google products. 

There is a real opporunity to add convience and save time to the customers

More disposble income: With high spending power, customers are willing to spend for a new fun experiences. Millions customes buy tickets to the various events from sports, comedy shows, movies, concerts, recreational activities, airline, etc. 

Threats:

Existing players such as ticketmaster with current user base

Recommendation: 

From the SWOT analysis, we can clearly that there is lot of opportunity to enter into the ticketing to serve our customers better. (Market size in terms of customers with disposible income)

Since google is a gateway to the internet, it creates unique strength for google to easily acquires for this new service. Rather than referring to ticketing sites, google can let the users book the ticket within google ecosystem ( Product differentiation)

Ticketing market will generate a new revenue stream for google, boosting the bottomline for the company (New revenue stream)

My recommendation is emphatic 'go'

Product idea:

I would build and integrate the ticket booking capabilies within three services 

a) google search: when customer searches for new movies, sports team, artists, they will see an option to book to the relevants events in their neighborhood within the google search

b) youtube: when the user searches for movie trailer, they will see an option to book an movie ticket. similarly, when the user seearches for the favorite sports team, they will see an option to book ticket to live game

c) maps: users will have an option to book a ticket to a venue that requires ticket to enter, from with in google maps itself.

State assumptions and clarify:

Assuming the question is about tickets to movies, events (concerts, plays, sports), places of interest (museums, other tourist spots) etc. Assuming does not include travel - airlines, trains, buses, public transport, ferry etc. Clarify if this is scope is OK for analysis. 

What does Google already do? I think they show all the details (prices, timings, locations), but dont do the actual transaction on the website. Probably dont show availability of tickets for a certain [event, time]. Clarify if this correct state of affairs as of now.  

Criteria to evaluate market entry:

Is market big? Is it growing fast. At the outset it seems quite big. We can do market estimation, but the fact that large incumbents exist (Fandango, Stubhub, ticketmaster) means that the market is quite large. Using that as proxy for market size. 

Is it growing fast? Dont think market for online tickets is growing a lot - most businesses already offer tickets online. The real metric we should probably track is: How are customers purchasing tickets - online/offline. I think it will become more and more online especially younger population. Growth is not huge, but probably a healthy 15-20% growth. 

Overall market size is big enough that google should definitely consider this. 

Competitor landscape

Movies - fandango

Sports - ticketmaster, stubhub. 

Museums - ?? 

Competition is there, but not in every segment. Medium. 

What is Google’s unique advantage here? What is the extra work that google needs to do to enter this market?

Google is the ultimate aggregator. Most of the competitors advertise on google to get traffic. So Google controls top of funnel to ticket transactions anyway. Google needs to integrate with the businesses to provide availability info and then complete the transaction. Otherwise pretty much everything is already in place. Maybe change the UI to do specialized search facets. 

Unique advantage is HIGH. Effort to enter is Medium - high. Most of the work is striking partnerships with businesses to integrate with Google APIs. This will require focused BD efforts with large customers such as Seahawks, or do self-serve enrollment for small enterprises such as a local museum. 

What is the cost of NOT doing this? 

Fandango, Ticketmaster want to bypass Google and directly become the top of funnel search experience for tickets. For e.g, if the consumer does not go to Google and directly opens TicketMaster app to buy tickets, then Google will get disintermediated. Amazon already did this for online retail. So not doing this will have long term implications for Google. 

What is the harm of doing this?

In near term google will alienate aggregator such as TicketMster who will cut down ad spend on Google. But I think thats going to happen anyway. A ticketmaster mobile app, and ticketmaster subscription already disintermediates Google. Long term dependency on google will happen anyway. So its probably OK to have the near term revenue hit. NOT much harm. 

Market is HUGE, growth is OK, Unique advantage is HIGH, Ability to enter is medium effort, cost of not doing is HIGH, and harm of entering is LOW. So Google should enter this market.

Product scope and clarifications - By ticketing market, I understand the ability to sell tickets to concerts / events / movies etc.

Google's mission statement is - Organize the worlds information and make it available universally accessible and useful and It makes it's money by displaying ads alongside this organised information

Google should get into the ticketing business as it aligns with it's mission statement and revenue model.

For the ticking scenario we have the following customer personas

1. Customer - The one who wants to view the show and buy a ticket
2. The event organizers - The one hosting the show and wants to sell the ticket
3. Ticketing platform - These are often different from the event organizers 

Some the pain points are:

1. Customer Pain: 
   • One finds information about the event via a search on Google. Then proceeds to the event's web site to find additional details like time and prices of the show. To buy the tickets the site redirects to a ticketing platform. Thus this is a 2-step or a 3-step process.
2. Event organizer pain: 
   • Hosting the show is the event organizers core competency. Marketing the show and ticketing are essential parts of the business but not necessarily their core competency. This function, especially ticketing is  often out-sourced to partners that are strong in that particular city.  

Recommendation: Google should get into the ticking business for the following reasons: 

1. Customer win and Google win: 
   • By partnering with the event organizers for ticketing, Google ensures that it has the most amount of information about the show and can serve it's search customers with better results. 
2. Google win: 
   • Google gets better insights into what the customer is trying to purchase and can target more relevant advts around other similar events.
3. Event organizer win:
   • The event organizers are probably already partnering with Google for their marketing (SEM). Sharing complete ticking information with Google only ensures that end customers can find them better (SEO). Google also provides universal reach, thus they do not have to have city / country specific ticket distributers.
4. Customer win: 
   • Having ticketing on Google itself, takes away the customer's need of having to go elsewhere to buy the ticket after finding the event

What to build

• Event creation
  • We'd need event creation pages, where event organizer can create events - Dates / times of each show / tickets classes / number of tickets in each class / prices of the ticket classes
• Searching the event: 
  • Similar to Google Flights, Google events can have a separate tab on the Home page.  Searching for an event from the home page can show up a widget with the event details where the user can fine tune date / show / seat options
• Booking the event
  • Can integrate with Google Pay along with the other standard payment options
• Ticket confirmations
  • Will get added to Google Calendar and also show up on the Google Assistant in addition to the email confirmations 
• Long-shot / Future potential feature : Google Pay integrations for sales
  • We can extend functionality of Google pay to buy tickets from within Google Pay. Using G-Pay like a super app

Risks

• We'd need a way to authenticate that the events are real and not a scam to sell fake tickets. As that would bring a bad reputation to Google even if Google could refund the money in case of no-show.
• Risk mitigation: Sell tickets from only authenticated event organizers and authenticated events. Once an event organizer has hosted a number of events on Google, they can be auto-approved for similar events.  For unauthenticated event-organizers, Google only provides the ticketing information and acutal ticketing is re-directed back to the event organizer.