Ticketmaster

"Paul was a bona fide futurist, a believer in the societal benefits of a wired world, and by 1998 he would buy a controlling stake in one of the largest U.S. cable operators, Charter Communications, in which I own a substantial stake today. Years later, Liberty would buy Paul’s stake in Ticketmaster."

"If I had succeeded in buying Paramount or CBS, I know two things for certain. One is that I would never have been able to control either—I’d have still been an employee and most likely been thrown out at some point. And I’d never have become an internet entrepreneur. Big word, “entrepreneur.” I wasn’t a natural one. I was a tried-and-true corporatist with more than a master’s degree in managing large enterprises. It had been decades since I’d started anything from scratch and my first moves were pretty mundane. We had these two dreary assets, HSN and Silver King, and while turning around HSN wasn’t going to excite anyone, it did give us cash and some credibility to think about expansion. I wish I could say I saw the possibilities of the internet in some full-blown prophetic way. I didn’t. But inside the humdrum reason I wanted to buy Ticketmaster was the seed of what would consume me for the next twenty years."

"Ticketmaster was a public company controlled by Paul Allen and run by a blustery caricature of a loudmouthed but incredibly effective lawyer named Fred Rosen, who had brashly led it to total domination of the ticketing business for live events throughout the world. Thank god he was a Luddite, or we wouldn’t have gotten the chance to buy it. When asked about the idea of putting ticket sales online, his reaction was “We’ll do it after everybody else does it. Right now it’s just a waste of resources.”"

"I didn’t know any of this when I cold-called Paul, thinking he might find the idea of a combination of Ticketmaster and HSN compelling. He told me of his frustrations with Rosen, and how he believed the company should jump-start online ticketing. Eureka—that was the seed and… suddenly I did see the future and got so excited about the online possibilities that I couldn’t race fast enough to get a deal done. I told Paul that if he traded his stock in Ticketmaster for stock in HSN, I’d deal with Rosen and he could get out of that tortured relationship. I’d dealt all my life with far more obstreperous characters. Paul Allen quickly agreed and ended up with 11 percent of my company and joined our board. A year or so later he sold his shares, doubling his money (not that he needed it, but if he’d kept his shares, he’d have become far richer than the Midas he already was)."

"I thought there were synergies with HSN’s call centers. It had 2,500 people taking phone orders for merchandise, and Ticketmaster had 1,000 taking ticket orders; we thought combining the back office of the two businesses would save money and be much more efficient. It was a basely pragmatic move, hardly inspired or aspirational."