I am so pissed at my 2004 self. I was in 2nd year university and won a bid to create the website and ecommerce platform for a local event. The website was for: Event information, Team Schedules, Buying merhcandise, and event tickets.

My partner and I created, to our knowldge, the first ticketting system with live purchasing for seats at a stadium where you could choose your seats. Ticket master was not doing this at the time.

We drew the stadium with squares. It showed reserved, and purchased seats while selecting. It even picked the best possible seating so it wouldn't leave one spot vacant if you choose the "get me the best availble seats for N people option".

It was a huge success for a stadium that seated 8k people.

After the event was over, the main attraction host team asked us if we could do the ticketing system for their games. Their games were at the ACC. After a couple weeks they came back and told us it wasn't possible because Ticket Master had the rights to the stadium.

So what did we do? University was stating up soon so we went back to school. My business mind didn't even think to turning it into a service back then because we assumed ticket master controlled everything.

Forever facepalm.