StubHub Says Ticket Resales Are Booming, Thanks To Lower Prices

from the hot-tickets dept

Fri, Jun 12th 2009 7:33am — Carlo Longino

Online ticket reseller StubHub says that sales revenues and volume were up significantly in the first quarter, as secondary ticket prices fell and lured in more buyers. The head of the company says he wishes he could have some control over the prices and keep them down so the volume (which drives StubHub's revenues) stays high, but the company really has no way to control that, since each individual seller that uses its platform will try to push the price as high as they can. In any case, Stubhub's booming business helps explain why Ticketmaster is trying to grow its own resale business, grabbing a cut from the original sale, and then the resale too. On a related note, the StubHub CEO says he's not concerned about Ticketmaster's increasing use of paperless tickets as a means to thwart scalpers: "There are ways that brokers can provide these tickets. They're not elegant. They don't provide a great experience to the fan... Where there's a will there’s a way, and there are both interested sellers and interested buyers." Inevitably, resellers will find a way around the system -- but somehow, as long as Ticketmaster finds a new revenue stream coming from it, it's hard to imagine the company will mind too much.

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Filed Under: resales, scalping, tickets
Companies: stubhub

13 Comments

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a comment, 12 Jun 2009 @ 8:19am

paperless tickets
Ticketmaster charges extra for the paperless tickets. Doesn't that show that they don't think that paperless tickets prevent resale?
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- Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2009 @ 8:41am
  
  Re: paperless tickets
  No, it shows that there are some higher administrative costs in getting paperless tickets to work (particularly at the shows themselves). I would expect to see Ticketmaster reverse this position over time, making paper tickets more expensive (or possibly not available at all).
  
  Stubhub talks a brave game, but when it gets too difficult to actually get the tickets, I think you will see that stubhubs business will drop.
  
  I think you will see more and more sports teams move towards smart cards to replace tickets, where the card is identified to a user who is the only one that can use the account. Using that smart card to hold tickets and allow access to the facilities might be a workable solution.
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  - Phil McCraken, 12 Jun 2009 @ 10:15am
    
    Re: Re: paperless tickets
    bullshit.
    
    It all about money.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2009 @ 10:20am
    
    Re: Re: paperless tickets
    I think you will see more and more sports teams move towards smart cards to replace tickets, where the card is identified to a user who is the only one that can use the account. Using that smart card to hold tickets and allow access to the facilities might be a workable solution.
    
    Yeah right, I am going to go through all that trouble so that I can overpay for the tickets, then have to pay the "smartcard" fee, the "convenience" fee, the "facility", the "service" fee, the "will call" fee, the "paperless ticket" fee. FUCK ticketmaster, they are and illegal monopoly and add up to 50% to the price of a ticket. FUCK ticketmaster...
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- tom, 20 Jun 2009 @ 7:29pm
  
  Re: paperless tickets
  
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minijedimaster (profile), 12 Jun 2009 @ 9:08am

Forget TM
Or... people could just stop using Ticketmaster all together and just start using local brokers.
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Annoyed ticketbuyer, 12 Jun 2009 @ 9:29am

Higher costs for paperless?
Maybe I haven't seen these "paperless" tickets, but it's absurd that they charge a premium for "print at home" tickets, when it saves them the printing time, handling, and postage. As for admin costs at the venue, even with "hard" tickets, they are all barcoded now to control fraud, and ever ticket gets scanned at the entry point.
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- Yakko Warner, 12 Jun 2009 @ 10:34am
  
  Re: Higher costs for paperless?
  I agree. The Denver Center for the Performing Arts has the same higher-price-for-"paperless" crap (although it's not exactly "paperless" if you have to print something out on paper), which is why we most recently bought tickets and had them delivered by mail.
  
  Which was fortunate, because when it turned out we couldn't go, we could re-sell the paper tickets on Craigslist at cost. (Bummer, I really wanted to see Spamalot, too...)
  
  It's just like the push to go digital with videogames, trying to destroy the resale market and saddle it with as much DRM as possible. But, like with videogames, as the last statement in this article suggests, no matter how they try to prevent it, people will find a way around it.
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me, 12 Jun 2009 @ 9:38am

RE: Higher costs for paperless?
What if a counterfeit ticket gets used/scanned before you get to the venue and you are the SOL? Has happened before.
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Overcast (profile), 12 Jun 2009 @ 12:39pm

What a surprise!! :)

I've had to tell my daughter 'no' to three concerts because of the cost.

And not to worry RIAA - she, like me; prefers the original CD. But $75.00+ for a concert ticket?

naaaaa
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- Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2009 @ 4:55pm
  
  Re:
  The $75 for the ticket is to make up for all the money lost to the artist and record labels as a result of rampant piracy and those who subscribe to the "masnick way". Your concert ticket would have been $30, but hey, someone has to pay for all those free downloads / pirates / infringers.
  
  Welcome to web 2.9! Hopefully we will flip over to 3 soon as this horrible situation will get resolved.
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jah, 31 Mar 2011 @ 2:21am

It's a wonderful news, now i will finally have the money for some Real Madrid tickets game wit my young boy. I think this is a good thing for all of us who travel a lot and need to find ways to cut down on something to get another thing.
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Apr 2015 @ 6:44am

Stub hubs prices are too high. This year they have often priced potential buyers out of the market leaving me with tickets to eat. 20% to the buyer and another 10% fee to seller often makes the tix in affordable. Buyers want to make a bit of a premium since they have had to invest in the tix and shell out the cost a year in advance, then list them and either ship or deliver them, and try to cover some of the increased cost of the season as a whole since thenowners raise the prices every year. It's understandable that the seller wants to make say $50 on a $140 dollar tic ( $185 and $210 face for playoffs rounds one and two).

But when Stub hub hits us for ten percent, then charges the buyer 20% sometimes you can barely cover the cost of the tic.

Stub hub has been too greedy sometimes making over 100 per tic. I'm considering listing elsewhere.
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