The ticket giant StubHub is about to see its market absolutely explode after a deal was inked between the company and the NFL. It allows StubHub users to buy and sell tickets on the eBay-owned platform.
“Starting next season, StubHub users will be able to easily buy and sell tickets for all 32 NFL teams on the eBay-owned platform, tapping into Ticketmaster’s API to transfer digital tickets, manage inventory and create a more seamless customer experience,” Amplify reported on Thursday.
It’s an interesting dynamic to look at. StubHub will now technically partner with its biggest rival, Ticketmaster, on the secondary market. Ticketmaster just recently extended its deal with the NFL, meaning the two will have a relationship with one another under the umbrella of the league itself.
It also comes as the two continue to have a relationship at the Major League Baseball level.
For its part, Ticketmaster’s new relationship includes $200 million and will see the site now offer PDF-format tickets instead of the paper ticket option that has defined its presence over the past couple decades.
As it relates to StubHub, the company is now expanding into a market that had in the past been solely dominated by Ticketmaster. That’s definitely not a bad thing.
“StubHub wins because they will now able to gain access to more tickets for its marketplace,” said Patrick Ryan of ticket pricing and distribution company Eventellect. “Ticketmaster and StubHub have made significant investments servicing and marketing to fans and this feels like a logical way for them to each leverage their strengths in this era when fans don’t really distinguish between primary and secondary markets.”
The experience for fans should be much better now, too. In the age of smartphones, the idea of paper tickets remaining prevalent didn’t make much sense. Fans are also not forced to be limited by a semi-monopoly that Ticketmaster had on the secondary NFL ticket market.