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MLB Now Partnered with SeatGeek, drops StubHub

Gwreck Feb 27 2023 06:31 PM

Interesting piece of news today: MLB has a new deal with SeatGeek as its official resale partner. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jabariyoung/2023/02/27/exclusive-seatgeek-wins-100-million-deal-to-resell-mlb-tickets/?sh=5dcfdd6a31ce Preliminary takeaways: -Competition is good; Stubhub got complacent as a market leader and hadn't evolved: their fees went up, they made it harder to figure out how much you were paying, etc. -That said, it's not really clear if this makes any meaningful difference for fans. MLB clubs were already leveraging years of StubHub data to figure out what the market would bear on ticket prices, so doing the same with SeatGeek probably doesn't change anything there.

batmagadanleadoff Feb 27 2023 08:49 PM Re: MLB Now Partnered with SeatGeek, drops StubHub

I don't see how this constitutes competition. MLB dropped one exclusive ticket provider for another exclusive ticket provider. If there's any competition, it's to see which ticket provider can deliver the most money to MLB. If fans benefit from whatever deal is ultimately struck, well that's just incidental. Competition, as far as fans are concerned, would be when fans can choose from several ticket providers.

Edgy MD Feb 27 2023 09:06 PM Re: MLB Now Partnered with SeatGeek, drops StubHub

I think he means competition between multiple agencies vying for the sweet MLB contract. So yeah, MLB enjoys the benefit of people competing for them, but get a protection from being accountable for their own anti-competitive practices. Big boo.

batmagadanleadoff Feb 27 2023 10:35 PM Re: MLB Now Partnered with SeatGeek, drops StubHub

Edgy MD wrote: I think he means competition between multiple agencies vying for the sweet MLB contract. That's not how I read it. If so, then why that first paragraph after "Preliminary takeaways"?.

Frayed Knot Feb 28 2023 05:13 AM Re: MLB Now Partnered with SeatGeek, drops StubHub

On the primary market, meanwhile, you still need to pretty much (if not entirely) go through the Ticketmaster Mafia and their add-on fees.

Lefty Specialist Feb 28 2023 05:36 AM Re: MLB Now Partnered with SeatGeek, drops StubHub

=batmagadanleadoff post_id=118974 time=1677556193 user_id=68] If there's any competition, it's to see which ticket provider can deliver the most money to MLB.

Bingo. We'll just have to pay those 'junk fees' to somebody else.

bmfc1 Feb 28 2023 06:08 AM Re: MLB Now Partnered with SeatGeek, drops StubHub

As with everything else, they didn't do this for our benefit. If anything, it's an inconvenience to season ticket holders that had integrated their StubHub account with MLB. What needs to be done is to merge the Ballpark app with the MLB app. I transferred tickets for a game and StubHub claimed that I hadn't when the buyer didn't realize that the tickets were transferred (via StubHub's directions) using an app he didn't know he needed. I wrote to the guy and all was well.

Gwreck Feb 28 2023 06:36 AM Re: MLB Now Partnered with SeatGeek, drops StubHub

A couple of notes: MLB dropped one exclusive ticket provider for another exclusive ticket provider. That's not at all accurate. MLB switched their “official resale partner.” The deal with SeatGeek is not at all exclusive, whether for primary or secondary sales. Edgy MD wrote: I think he means competition between multiple agencies vying for the sweet MLB contract. So yeah, MLB enjoys the benefit of people competing for them, but get a protection from being accountable for their own anti-competitive practices. Big boo. Competition for contracts is generally a good thing, yes. But I actually was observing that there is a competitive element here that benefits the consumer. Primary ticket sales have long been a take-it-or-leave it proposition for the consumer; it's not unique to MLB. Especially since tickets are not fungible — unlike, say, running shoes, for which I have 10 different brand options. In the secondary market, however, there are several different players vying for the business of both the sellers and the buyers. And there, the benefits of competition comes in on price. StubHub had enjoyed the privilege (because they paid for it) of being MLB's “most favored nation,” for resale. MLB in turn made it easiest for ticketholders to resell there and guaranteed that the tickets being sold were legitimate. But 15 years of that goes by (with Stubhub now enjoying brand awareness with the consumer that they're a good place to look for tickets) and they've gotten lazy about their user interfaces (it's hard to buy tickets, they're hiding the ball about their fees) and also raised their fees. Stubhub is nowhere near my first choice to buy tickets as a consumer. SeatGeek getting the new MLB deal may result in the same thing happening over time, but it may also force StubHub to evolve, or it may lead to new upstarts in the market such as SeatGeek (itself started to compete with Stubhub) or more recently, TickPick. That competition is generally good. Frayed Knot wrote: On the primary market, meanwhile, you still need to pretty much (if not entirely) go through the Ticketmaster Mafia and their add-on fees. This is not true at all. MLB teams have been progressively moving away from Ticketmaster as those contracts expire. The vast majority of primary MLB ticket sales are done by the teams themselves through a platform developed after MLB bought the former Tickets.com.