Fred Rosen ’69 on Ticketmaster, Negotiations, and Taking Chances

(L to R): Professor Seán O’Connor, the inaugural Allen Grubman Chair in Media, hosted a presentation for students featuring Fred Rosen ’69, who served as CEO of Ticketmaster Group from 1982 to 1998. 

Fred Rosen ’69, who served as CEO of Ticketmaster Group for 16 years, from 1982 to 1998, visited the school recently for a lively presentation and Q&A with students on entertainment law, the art of negotiation, and the importance of seizing opportunities.  

The discussion, held on Nov. 18, was led by Professor Seán O’Connor, the inaugural Allen Grubman Chair in Media and Entertainment Law. O’Connor joined the faculty on July 1 with plans to develop a world-class entertainment law program and lay the groundwork for a future Entertainment Law Center at Brooklyn Law School. Guest lecturers such as Rosen allow the Law School to display the strength of its alumni in entertainment law and provide students with role models and helpful advice as they prepare to launch their own careers.  

”Fred Rosen’s enthusiasm to come and speak to students at his alma mater shows how our students both excel in their chosen fields and stay connected across generations. Our new program will succeed because of our students and alumni,” O’Connor said.  

Rosen’s career in entertainment law was unexpected. Brooklyn Law did not offered classes for entertainment law at the time and after graduation, he spent 10 years running his own small firm where he specialized in corporate, debt resolution, and securities work. At times, Rosen would take on work for clients that “made no sense, but was fun,” and through one such client he met a Chicago tax attorney who had invested in Ticketmaster when it was a new company and hired him as special counsel.  

“Then, in early 1982, he said, ‘I don’t want to finance this anymore, and I think I’ll close it,’” Rosen recalled. “That's when it dawned on me that maybe it shouldn't close. The economics made no sense in terms of the way it was run, how it should be operated, and what their business platform was. I thought I could reinvent it and change it.” 

Indeed, Rosen did just that, became CEO and turned the fledgling company into an international powerhouse by leaning into his skills as an attorney and upending the way the ticketing business was done.  

Lessons for Students  

Initially, Rosen believed computerization would have the greatest impact on the ticketing business but in a strange twist, he was advised not to by Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak. The tech entrepreneur had built a concert and cultural event for the Us festival, and he wanted to use Ticketmaster rather than Ticketron (a larger rival) to sell tickets to the California event analog-style, through 50 retail ticket outlets and by phone. Instead of going to New York as planned Rosen relocated the company to Los Angeles where they took on the festival and set up the outlets and the phones, signing two leases, for six months and five years.  

“We didn’t know if it would work. Three months after we got there, not only did we put the Us Festival on, but then we got the Forum on an exclusive contract, and that sort of opened the country for us,” Rosen said.  

The lesson for students, he said, “is if I wasn't playing, nothing would have happened. And then you make opportunities where you find them.” 

One such opportunity which drew on his legal expertise was insisting that venues provide Ticketmaster with exclusive contracts. Many venues were reluctant to give Ticketmaster anything more than an allocation of tickets, not all of them.  

“They looked at me and said, ‘But we'll give you tickets,’ and I said, ‘If I don't get all, I don't want any.’ Nobody had heard that,” Rosen said. “Then they said, ‘Well, we'll give you a one-year deal. And I said, ‘No one-year deals. I want exclusive contracts. I want three to five years. I want built-in raises.’ Because if I have to go back every year for a raise, I'm negotiating a contract every year.” 

At the time, the company was losing money, but he remained steadfast about the contracts.  

“If you can’t leave the table, you can’t sit at it,” Rosen said. “You have to be able to sit at the table and recognize that you can fail.”  

When negotiating a contract with The Forum, the venue management was skeptical about Ticketmaster charging a $1.25 to $2.50 service fee for phone sales. Rosen offered to charge $1.50 and to give 25 percent of the fee to the venue. The deal was swiftly sealed. 

The three keys to building a business, Rosen said, are relationships, marketing, and understanding how good your company is.  

“Always walk in a room knowing what you want,” Rosen said. “Never walk in a room thinking how you're going to get there. You've got to learn how to read the room. The room tells you how you play.”