Let’s get this out of the way. Ticketmaster’s fees, dynamic pricing, and how it handles big tour sales have earned plenty of criticism. This isn’t a defense of any of that.
But look past the business model to what happens after you buy, and you’ll find a customer journey problem most companies haven’t even noticed, let alone addressed.
Buy four tickets to a concert and three of them belong to other people. Ticketmaster knows that. Yet most businesses that sell something one person buys and several people use act as though that distinction doesn’t matter.
What the App Gets Right
It’s pretty simple. When transfer is enabled, all you have to do is open the app, select the tickets, enter a friend’s phone number or email, and hit send. The friend accepts, and the ticket appears in their account on their phone. On the night of the show, everyone can walk in separately. Nobody waits at the gate for the person holding all four tickets. Nobody has to coordinate a trip to the lobby around who has the tickets.
And the buyer doesn’t lose track of them, either. They can see which tickets went to whom and whether each was accepted. It doesn’t end there. If plans change, the recipient can pass the ticket along or list it for resale. Because the ticket is tied to the holder, a screenshot won’t get anyone through the door. The recipient gains independence, the buyer retains visibility, and the venue maintains control. Everyone gets what they need.
None of this is glamorous or magic. It just reflects how people actually go to concerts: in groups, with one person doing the buying. It’s part of the customer journey.
Everywhere Else, the Buyer is the Only Person Who Exists
Book a family trip and see who gets the flight updates, gate changes, and boarding passes. Usually, it’s whoever booked it. Other passengers may be able to get a paper boarding pass at the airport, but that doesn’t help them manage their trip independently beforehand. Try buying someone else a standalone plane ticket and see how easy it is to get that boarding pass into their own airline app.
Hotels can have the same problem. One person makes the reservation, one person gets the digital key, and everyone else has to figure out how to get access if they arrive separately. If they arrive before the reservation holder has checked in, they may be stuck waiting. To their credit, some, like Hilton and Airbnb, have addressed parts of this problem. But it’s far from universal.
B2B has the same problem at a bigger scale. Procurement buys the software, equipment, or parts, but the people who use them every day never appear in the seller’s systems. When those users have questions, need support, or want to buy more, the seller has no idea who they are. The vendor may know exactly which company bought the product while knowing almost nothing about the people whose experience determines whether that customer renews.
And families do this constantly. A parent buys for a kid. An adult child manages a parent’s health providers, prescriptions, or utilities. Most digital experiences offer two options: share a password or figure it out yourself. May the gods help you if they’re in multiple health systems.
Three People, Not One
The idea underneath Ticketmaster’s app is simple. A purchase can involve three distinct roles: the buyer, the holder, and the user. Sometimes that’s the same person. Often it isn’t.
Most commerce platforms still center the order around a single customer record, leaving the relationships between the buyer, the holder, and the user largely invisible. Ticketmaster takes a different approach and treats the ticket as something that can move from person to person. Each recipient is then a customer with their own access, notifications, and way in. The buyer, meanwhile, keeps full visibility.
Once you separate those roles, it becomes a lot more straightforward. Each traveler gets their own boarding pass and their own updates. Each hotel guest gets their own key. The engineer who actually uses the software gets onboarding and support and builds a relationship with the vendor. The company finally knows who its users are, not just who its buyers are. That means better onboarding, more relevant communication, and a direct relationship with the people who actually use what it sells.
Where to Start
You don’t need to rebuild your platform to get closer to this. Start by looking at your own orders and asking how many are bought by one person for others. Group bookings, multi-seat licenses, orders shipped to an address that isn’t the buyer’s. The number is usually bigger than people expect.
Then pick the moment where the gap hurts most. For a travel brand, it might be the day of the trip. For a B2B seller, it might be onboarding, when the first users show up, and the seller has no idea who they are. Fix that moment by letting the buyer invite others in, and give each person their own access and messages.
Over time, the bigger shift is in the data. Treat what was bought as something that can be held, shared, or passed along. Model the relationships between the buyer, the holder, and the user. That’s what makes the rest possible.
Borrow the Good Part
It’s okay. You still can dislike (pick a stronger word if you’d like) Ticketmaster fees and still learn from how it gets four friends through the gate. The lesson isn’t about tickets. It’s that the person who pays is often the start of the relationship, not all of it.
At SCIGON, we help companies design commerce and customer experiences around how people actually buy and use what they sell. That includes designing for the people behind the purchase, not just the person who placed the order.