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Ticketmaster has signed a deal with the NFL to launch a new web site for after market ticket sales. StubHub, which was purchased by eBay for more than $300 million earlier this year, is the leader in the market, which allows fans to sell their tickets to each other online.
Meanwhile, Ticketmaster already offers individual sites for 18 NFL teams where fans can resell their tickets, but the idea here is that a centralized location for ticket exchanges endorsed by the league will help drive sales.
The problem with Ticketmaster is readily apparent when doing a search for NFL tickets. For example, I tried both StubHub and Patriots.com for tickets to this Sunday’s game against the Miami Dolphins, and Ticketmaster (which powers ticket sales for the Patriots) yielded 0 results, while StubHub at the moment has 357 tickets available, all at considerable mark-up to face value.
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Ticketmaster is clearly missing out on a big market, so this deal with the NFL makes a lot of sense. It also adds some legitimacy to the space, which many have accused of being nothing more than online ticket scalping. In fact, Ticketmaster actually sued StubHub earlier this year.
[via AP]