NEW YORK – Barry Diller, the media mogul who runs the Internet conglomerate IAC, told investors Tuesday that after the company spins off four divisions, he would stay involved in the management of the restructured IAC, Expedia and Ticketmaster.
“Other than that, these companies will be on their own,” Diller said at a Citigroup conference in Phoenix. “Each of them will manage. They don’t need me.”
In early November, Diller announced the spin-offs of four IAC/InterActiveCorp units: HSN home shopping network, Ticketmaster ticketing service, Interval time-share business and LendingTree mortgage referral. Analysts saw that as the failure of the conglomerate’s strategy to capitalize on synergies between the loosely related Internet businesses.
IAC’s other assets – including the Ask.com search engine, Match.com, Evite, Citysearch and Excite – will remain as part of IAC, run out of its iconic headquarters building on Manhattan’s West Side. Diller, who will continue as CEO of the Internet business, said Tuesday he expected the spin-offs to be completed in early summer.
Diller will stay involved in Expedia, which was spun off from IAC in August 2005. He is executive chairman of the Bellevue, Wash.-based company that owns Hotels.com, Hotwire.com and others.
Diller will also remain involved in the lucrative ticketing business through Ticketmaster, which had 2006 revenue jump 14 percent to $1.1 billion. He said he was confident the company would make up lost ticketing volume after its contract expires with promoter Live Nation. The contract wraps up at the end of this year for most of its locations, and in 2009 at the House of Blues venues.
He said the company would pursue growth in the secondary ticketing market with reseller Ticket Exchange and Ticketmaster Auctions, services that compete with eBay subsidiary StubHub and Tickets.com, owned by Major League Baseball’s Advanced Media LP.
The secondary market, Diller said Tuesday, is arguably bigger than the primary market, in terms of dollar value. He predicted the Internet would help ticket sellers do a better job of pricing tickets so more of them are sold. He said roughly half of all tickets are never sold.
“At some point, it’ll all be variable pricing,” Diller said. Its online-only rivals allow buyers and sellers to make it easy to price seats on an individual basis.
Diller also said on Tuesday he had been disappointed by the progress IAC’s search engine, Ask.com, had made in gaining market share against the dominant Google.
“We’ve certainly not taken an inch out of the hide of Google,” he said, even though the market share of Microsoft’s MSN and Yahoo have dropped. “I’ve been daunted by the progress of that.”
—
More technology news and opinion at www.siliconvalley.com
