By Stacey Willets
TicketNews.com
A battle of the titans is brewing in this week’s exclusive Top Ten Primary and Secondary Live Event Ticket Sellers Rankings, released this morning. In case you missed it, here is a quick taste of where all the websites stand.
In making a monumental partnership with MLB, StubHub! isn’t making any friends in the industry. While the secondary market Goliath further enhances its position in sports ticketing, bolsters its reputation as “the fan’s ticket marketplace,” and boards up Ticketmaster’s resale windows for MLB teams, rival Ticketmaster is looking to keep football ticket transactions within the primary market. . .
The industry leader announced Tuesday that in alliance with sports destination provider TBG Fan Experiences, it will be introducing an offering of “ultimate football experience weekends” to NFL and college football fans. Ticketmaster’s sports packages are a veritable cornucopia of goodies for the football enthusiast, including tickets to the game, two night deluxe hotel accommodations, welcome reception, hosted tailgate party prior to the game, sports merchandise, private motor coach transportation to and from the game and related events, and access to TBG Fan Experiences’ on-site hospitality staff. The reveal of this new offering is just one of several recent announcements made by Ticketmaster as the company tries to find innovative ways to keep afloat and remain the number one primary and overall ticket seller in an increasingly competitive market.
Live Nation’s stocks are back up, but its ranking is down. The site drops to number three on the Primary Sellers chart. Tickets.com regains the number two spot, where it may very well get comfortable depending upon the results of Live Nation’s second quarter earnings, which are scheduled to be released today.
Wantickets also looks to shake things up this week, though in a way that is seen and not heard. Without big announcements or media hype, it makes a four position jump up through the rankings, taking it from the number nine spot to number five. To balance out the up, Telecharge suffers a dip from number six to number nine.
Once again StubHub! sits atop the Top Secondary Sellers chart. Between being purchased by eBay earlier this year and the recent MLB deal, the company is growing as a formidable competitor not just to secondary sellers, but even to the ticketing giant Ticketmaster. Yet while StubHub! works to keep competitors’ attempts to snag back market share as effective as throwing rocks at a mountain, the company’s co-founder Eric Baker is planning to bring his London-based online ticketing company viagogo to the states to take on his former business.
Whatever ripples StubHub! has created with the MLB deal are not immediately apparent in the Secondary Sellers rankings. The top half of the chart remains unchanged. TicketsNow, TicketLiquidator, TickCo Premium Seating, and ABC Tickets hold steady in positions two, three, four, and five. There is some movement in the bottom half of the chart, most notably the appearance of Net Tickets, a seller that previously has not broken into the Top Twenty. The site debuts at number nine this week.
Even with all that commotion in the industry, the Top Overall Sellers rankings vary little from last week. Though the secondary market continues to dominate the chart with seven of the ten rankings positions, Ticketmaster retains the number one spot. StubHub! takes number two. TicketsNow appears at three. Tickets.com moves up to four, pushing Live Nation down to the number five spot. TicketLiquidator, TickCo Premium Seating, ABC Tickets, and GoTickets.com hold their positions at six, seven, eight, and nine, respectively. RazorGator moves up from the bottom half of the Top Twenty chart to take the number ten spot.
To see all the Top Tens rankings, check out the press release in the Daily Buzz section of TicketNews.com. Visit the Industry resources section of TicketNews.com for full lists of the Top Twenty Secondary Ticket Sellers and the Top Twenty Overall Ticket Sellers, to read an explanation of how we calculate the rankings.
