Ticketmaster Will Have New Online Revenue Opportunities Despite Losing Court Ruling.

Ticketmaster and Ticketmaster Online-CitySearch lost their lawsuit against Tickets.com last week, but the ruling can be a positive for both companies, according to Gartner Group Inc. (NYSE: IT and ITB). Ticketmaster filed the lawsuit because Tickets.com was hyperlinking into Ticketmaster's Web site without its authorization, bypassing its home page and much of the advertising there. Ticketmaster contended that it was losing advertising revenue from this type of "deep" hyperlinking.

Gartner analysts said advertising revenue represents a small portion of overall revenue for Ticketmaster. The company makes most of its money by brokering sales to the event. Ticketmaster could use organizations such as Tickets.com to act as a marketing and sales channel for Ticketmaster event tickets. The company could change its advertising model to take advantage of its new partners' referral activities.

With the availability of event and concert tickets online, new companies such as Tickets.com have catered to consumer choice. It sells tickets for various events and travel where it has agreements with event organizations and venues, but it also directs consumers to competitors such as Ticketmaster.

"Tickets.com doesn't receive any revenue for directing consumers to competitors, but it does provide consumers with more ticket listings," Labatt said. "If choice drives consumers to ticket Web sites in the future, companies such as Tickets.com will have stronger business models for collecting advertising revenue than companies like Ticketmaster."