By Alfred Branch, Jr.
Secondary ticketing giant StubHub! this week announced it struck a deal with ESPN.com under which StubHub’s links, banners, branding and promotion efforts will be featured across the sports network website. Specific terms of the deal were not disclosed.
StubHub! now has a presence on ESPN.com’s Team Schedule pages, Scoreboards, Game Previews, Clubhouses and Travel Indexes. A custom StubHub “TicketCenter” also appears on every major sport index page where users can buy tickets for any team, according to the company.
With competition among secondary ticketers growing by the day, this move is designed to help solidify StubHub’s presence among sports fans, it bread-and-butter clientele. It offers StubHub! a visual advantage over some text-based adds, and it comes on the heels of StubHub! striking a deal with Major League Baseball to be the league’s main secondary ticket seller.
In addition, ESPN hopes the agreement adds value to fan visits to the site by offering them new features. “Our goal is to make ESPN.com the most complete online sports destination and that includes finding tickets to the events themselves. StubHub gives us the ability to offer a great service to fans, conveniently and securely,” John Kosner, senior vice president and general manager, ESPN Digital Media, said in a prepared statement.
Adds Ray Elias, director of marketing for StubHub, “This signifies yet another level of mainstream acceptance of the StubHub ticket marketplace. We are very excited about the opportunity to provide access to fans in a way that’s contextually relevant within ESPN’s rich sports content.”
