The original Ticketron, Inc., active the 1960s until 1990, was a computerized event ticketing company that was the industry leader until overtaken by Ticketmaster.
It was funded by Cemp Investments headed by Edgar Bronfman Sr.[4] It hired Jack Quinn who became president and the company started selling tickets in May 1967 from six Alexander's stores in New York and New Jersey using a duplexed Control Data Corporation 1700 computer system with terminal equipment supplied by Computer Applications, Inc. that it called "electronic box offices".
The original software resided on a pair (one for backup) of CDC 1700 computers located on the first floor of the Beverly Hilton Hotel with a large window facing Wilshire Blvd.
[3] Another competitor, Computicket, owned by Computer Sciences Corporation, folded in April 1970 leaving Ticketron as the sole computerized ticketing provider in the US.
[6] In 1990 the majority of Ticketron's assets and business, with the exception of a small antitrust carve-out for Broadway's "Telecharge" business-unit, were bought by The Carlyle Group who sold it the following year to rival Ticketmaster, which had been founded in 1976.