For fans looking to buy tickets to the next highly anticipated event, the days of waiting outside overnight at the box office are long over, as ticket sales have gone online. Online sales have their own added difficulties to buying tickets as floods of people log on at the same time through a limited supply, which means you also need that element of luck on your side. But what if you could take that element of luck out, and reserve a seat before anyone else? Well you would have a Web site like FirstDIBZ, a company that calls itself part of the “pre-primary” market.
“It’s an online reservation list,” FirstDIBZ Chief Marketing Officer Tim Browne told TicketNews. “Before the market is established, you can get a DIBZ.”
The site is similar to other “futures” market services like yoonew and viagogo’s “Victory Pass,” and FirstDIBZ was designed to create a new way for people to secure tickets, as well as other goods and services, before they are made available to the public.
With competition in the ticketing industry heating up, and more fans clamoring for guarantees, such Web sites are increasingly gaining stature in the marketplace. All seek to give ticket buyers peace of mind that they’ll have access to tickets, but also want to give fans the opportunity to have some fun and even make some money if they get in on an event early enough and resell the rights down the road.
Through partnerships with sports teams, leagues, venues and other companies, FirstDIBZ allows these “Rights Holders” to sell the rights for their product to consumers, based on anticipation for the event. Like other comparable sites, fans can also resell their rights to other fans, often at a profit.
“A DIBZ contract is the right to buy at face value,” FirstDIBZ CEO and co-founder Rick Harmon told TicketNews.
For example if someone is looking for tickets to see the Boston Red Sox in game one of the World Series, they can purchase a DIBZ on a set of tickets for a non-refundable price. The chance you take is that if they don’t qualify for the fall classic, the DIBZ will be valueless. But that chance could mean big savings if the Red Sox do make it, because the DIBZ holder will be able to purchase those tickets at face value. The combined total would be significantly less than what could be found on the secondary market.
“We always want to get contracts to just get you in the park,” Harmon said about the demographic his site is aiming for. “Our marketplace is the quintessential Steelers fans, the passionate Red Sox fan, the common man.”
Those same fans now have the chance to buy from other fans, through the recently launched uDIBZ service offered by the company for the Major League Baseball playoffs. For the first time, season ticket holders who have advance rights to buy playoff tickets can sell those rights on FirstDIBZ. Along with the baseball playoffs, season ticket holders for the NBA, NHL and NFL can now do the same as well.
In the near future the company will allow other sites to embed the FirstDIBZ technology onto their site, and sell the advance rights for other goods and services in addition to tickets. Things that would be too limited for the main FirstDIBZ site could then be sold on the individual’s site.
“[The sites] know there own brand and how they want their product to be distributed,” Harmon said, adding that he envisioned the selling of goods that could include dinners with athletes to advanced album sales.
