Subscribe to RSSTicketMaster and StubHub
TicketMaster is the website you love to hate. It has nearly monopolized the event ticket industry and makes a nice chunk of change on every ticket it sells by charging a delivery fee, a convenience fee, a save the unicorns fee and a fee for charging the fees.
TicketMaster has enjoyed its market dominance, but has recently seen StubHub nipping at its heels. (To accurately represent the situation this is like a poodle nipping at the heals of a grizzly bear).
StubHub has created one of the first official secondary markets for event tickets. It originally launched in 2000 and set out to "˜reinvent the ticket resale’ market. At that time, all ticket resale occurred on eBay, Craigslist and with JoJo the street scalper"¦ you know, the guy who is buying tickets, but then asks if how many you need.
StubHub struggled early on, relying solely on the consumer-to-consumer model, but then switched gears and began striking deals directly with sports franchises. Historically, franchises would independently try to sell un-used tickets or rely on Ticketmaster — StubHub offered to be their default inventory solution. Since this strategic move StubHub exponentially increased its inventory of available tickets and has experienced strong growth, motivating eBay to purchase the upstart outfit in January.
TicketMaster still controls the non-sporting event market, but there is no denying that StubHub has a real sports presence. The velocity graph shown below illustrates how attention on StubHub — a blend of visitor volume and time spent — has grown faster on StubHub since the beginning of the Major League Baseball season.
Ultimately I feel I’m overcharged by both services, all bands and each and every sports team, but it doesn’t stop me from going to Fenway or dipping into my retirement for U2 tickets.
