Buyer Creation
A buyer is the person or organization paying for client services, or paying UTA directly, such as in a consulting services relationship. The DMO, as part of its governance process, is responsible for the creation of the buyer party within Auth Data. Each buyer entry within Auth Data correlates to a registered business entity within the state, province or country in which they operate.
Buyers operating multiple regional offices in the United States
Buying parties may operate multiple regional offices. Within Auth Data, the regional offices are not destinct buyers unless the offices themselves are legally registered independent entities. Each of the regional offices are allowed to operate in their states because each register as a foreign entity (also called foreign qualification) in that state. For the purpoases of Auth Data, we care only about the official registration in the business's original state. The regional office is considered an alternate address linked to the main party.
Example: Bowery Presents LLC, The is a registered business in New York state. They have regional offices Baltimore (MD), Philadelphia (PA), and Boston (MA). Within Auth Data, the entity in New York is set as the main buyer party and the three regional offices are set as addresses of type "RegionalOffice" to that party.
Buyer organizations buying through different departments
Similar to regional offices, within Auth Data only uniquely registered businesses can become buyer parties.
Example: Live Nation Latino and Live Nation Comedy each book distinct groups of clients. Each are not uniquely registered businesses; they are departments under the main Live Nation Entertainment business entity. Within Auth Data, these departments would not be registered as distinct buyers. If departments are in different offices, those addresses would be added to the list of addresses associated with Live Nation Entertainment.
Buyer organizations with international offices
Buying organizations may operate in multiple international offices. Individual countries require local business entities to conduct business. Therefore, each of these international entities appears in Auth Data as distinct buyers. We connect these individual entities by connecting them to a parent buyer that represents the main global entity.
Example: Ticketek Entertainment Group (TEG) operates TEG Live Europe Limited in the UK and TEG Dainty Pty Ltd* in Australia. The UK and Australia entities would be children of the main TEG party.
Parent Buyers
Some corporations may place all non-domestic entities into holding companies that are then owned by the main corporate entity. These organizational structures may be several levels deep and may not be publicly available.
In Auth Data, we do not seek to capture the corporate structure/hierarchy of any individual buying organization. As an example of the potential complexities of potentially reproducing an outside party's corporate stucture, see Live Nation's extensive list of subsidiaries and holding companies. To avoid complications of tracking this and focus on the information that is relevant to UTA, we instead flatten the structure and link all of the buyer children to a single parent buyer.
Buying organizations operating different brands or subsidiaries
Brands and subsidiaries must be distinct business entities to appear as different buyers. Brands and subsidiaries that are distinct business entities must also be linked to a parent organization.
Example: Goldenvoice, LLC is a subsidiary of The Anschutz Corporation. Goldenvoice is a registered business in California. Goldenvoice appears as a distinct buyer linked to The Anschutz Corporation as its parent organization.
Parent Buyers: Joint ventures and ownership stakes with other buying organizations
Large buying organizations may create joint ventures with other buying organizations or take large investment stakes in other buying organizations. Because ownership stakes can fluctuate and not be available to the public, we only connect child buyers to parents when the child is a wholly owned subsidiary and publicly declared subsidiary of a parent buyer.
Example: Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. acquired a 51% stake (later increased to 75%) in OCESA Promotora de Eventos S de RL de CV ("OCESA") As OCESA is not a wholly owned subsidiary of Live Nation, we would not mark Live Nation as a parent buyer.
Note: While it may be possible that Live Nation has enough of a controlling stake in OCESA to dictate operations, in the context of Auth Data we do not want to put ourselves in a position where we are tracking investments of buyer parties as this information often not available or relevant to the data we are collecting.
Buying organizations doing business under other names
It is farly common for a buying organization to do business under a name that does not match their officially registered business name. These alternate names are known as DBAs ("doing business as"), trade names, or brand names. Within Auth Data, these names are listed as aliases connected to the underlying buyer party.
Example: "The Keswick Theatre" is a dba of AEG Presents LLC and is not an independently registered business. AEG Presents LLC would be listed as the buyer while "The Keswick Theatre" would be listed as an name alias for that buyer.
Individual people as Buyers
Buyer parties may be individuals, acting on their own behalf or as a sole proprietor for a buying business. Within Auth Data, the individual would be registered as a buyer. The individual buyer may already exist within Auth Data in another Role (such as being a UTA client themselves). In these cases, the individual would have an additional Role attached to the existing party.
Linking to uTour
Every buyer party created within Auth Data must be linked to a corresponding entity within uTour to maintain consistency between the two systems. We use an ExternalRecord of type "uTour" to enter the uTour id that corresponds to the buyer Party. Note that in uTour, unique buyers are a combination of a name and address. As a result, a buyer with 10 regional offices in the United States would have 10 corresponding uTour ids.
Multiple buyers on a single uTour buyer profile
Example: “AEG Presents Productions, LLC as an authorized representative of LIV Golf INC.” This combined profile is created in uTour because only one buyer can be listed on a deal. AEG Presents LLC and LIV Gold Inc are both independent entities so each is a distinct buyer within Auth Data. In these situations, we will not link the uTour Id for this profile to a party in Auth Data.
Logging additional Buyer information
The DMO's standard operating procedure is to log as much data as possible about a buyer into Auth Data when a ticket is submitted to add a buyer. This includes (but is not limited to) the following information gathered about the buyer:
- Identifying related buyers existing within Auth Data that roll up to a parent organization (also creating the parent organization if not already existing)
- Adding any known DBAs or other business aliases
- Adding addresses for regional offices
- Adding links to external sites such as websites or social media
- Adding tax or company registration numbers
- Identifying buying or operating relationships with venues (and adding Venues if not already in Auth Data)
- Adding or linking buyer contacts to a buying party