In a move designed in part to streamline the process and reward affiliates faster, StubHub will begin paying its affiliates program members based on the types of tickets they sell, not on the amount of tickets they sell.
The change takes effect tomorrow, August 1, and in a recent email to ticket sellers the company said the move will “allow you to focus your efforts on the ticket genre that makes you the most money. This will also eliminate the wait time for performance incentives to be distributed.”
In addition, the company has stopped allowing the ability to direct link to StubHub, also known as pay-per-click (PPC) ads, from the major search engines Google, MSN, Bing and Yahoo. Seller can continue to use PPC ads to drive traffic to their own Web sites, and from there they can link to StubHub.com.
Emily Panos, partner marketing manager for StubHub, oversees the company’s affiliates program and told TicketNews that the changes should help to motivate sellers. “In addition, this model allows StubHub to provide extra bonuses on a more flexible basis. For example, right now, we are able to pay an extra 1 percent commission on NFL and Concert tickets, which are in high demand and have a higher average order size. We plan to roll out these extra bonuses throughout the year, allowing our affiliates to market tickets that provide the highest return.”
Panos said the company decided to make the changes, in part, because affiliates wanted to be paid faster and only once per month. “The old structure paid out monthly commissions in two payments. The first payment was the base commission for all affiliates, regardless of total sales. Based on the total tickets sold, affiliates could then earn additional performance incentives which were paid out eight weeks later.”
She added, “We listened, and our new payment structure addresses that concern, paying the affiliates in one payment shortly after the close of the month. We are excited about these new changes as we feel they will benefit the entire network of affiliates and promote long term growth of the program.”
The new commission rates are for concerts, NFL and NCAA football StubHub will pay 8 percent per ticket order, for MLB tickets, which is part of a partnership deal with StubHub, the company will pay 4 percent. For motorsports, such as NASCAR, the NBA, NHL, NCAA basketball, theater and other sports StubHub will pay 7 percent.
The changes are not without some controversy, however, for some sellers.
For example, sellers may find the changes confusing, and they will have to revamp their PPC strategies. Also, will they want 10 different categories for commission payments based on the genre of ticket? The affiliate programs for TicketNews’s parent company TicketNetwork, TicketsNow and RazorGator, all continue to pay a flat commission rate instead of by the genre of ticket.
“We all knew this was coming after StubHub’s commission-reversal debacle last month,” said Patrick Lucas, who manages the TicketNetwork affiliate program. “They issued a temporary fix, but hinted it was only the beginning.”
Panos declined to say how many members are in the affiliates program, but she said it remains strong and highly successful. “StubHub is very selective about who we will work with and insist that our affiliates adhere to our guidelines for compliance and promotions. We consider our affiliates an extension of our best-in-class marketing team.”
She said that StubHub has received positive feedback from affiliates because “the new structure is more flexible” and allows them to better “control their marketing dollars” and structure their programs for maximum benefit. “This model also incents smaller affiliates to benefit from our program incentives. We see this as a win for everyone.”
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Can’t imagine too many publishers are giving “positive feedback” like Panos says. Especially MLB-based affiliates who’ll only make 4% on already-cheap baseball orders or direct PPCers who are getting cut out completely. Lets see how long until they make more sweeping changes and start reversing commissions again.
So what was the “StubHub commission-reversal debacle”? That sounds like news but there was no further explaination of it? Or was there another artical on it I missed?
It sucks We helpped stubhub for so long and now they are trying to cut us out of the system!
We have helped Stubhub, Ticketnetwork and Ticketsnow and even Razorgator, have all grown off the backs of brokers. We should be the ones calling the shots not the secondary sites. It is our inventory that we cannot compete on search engines, they stolen any potential new customers away from the broker, we have become nothing but envelope stuffers who lose customers to them and they collect fees from us. They undercut us on our inventory only to gouge it all back from the consumer and who gets blamed for high prices for gouging?? The broker, you don’t hear them defending the prices they tacked on to the dumb customer who fails to look in their area for seats. The consumer is too dense to look in their area for a ticket service and cut out the secondary sites which only wants us to work for them. Bas%$#@% !!!
Sounds like they are losing their a** on the baseball deal to me.
Affiliates also work with TicketsNow, TicketNetwork and Razorgator, who all pay more. Those three have the best baseball inventory from brokers also, so affiliates will still sell baseball tickets, just not through Stubhub. Actually I know some brokers who are not listing their best baseball tickets on Stubhub anymore any way. Stubhub is going to end up selling what they are rewarding, only the poorest quality MLB tickets at low prices.
Stubhub is treating everyone like they are blind and stupid, and trying to put a spin on it like they are doing good and just by their affiliates. However it is pretty easy to read between the lines. They are basically screwing their affiliates. It is in the middle of MLB season, and they drop their rate from 9% (potentially) to 4%. That is what they say affiliates asked for?. If you are going to drop the rates for some reason, just make the announcement. Dont insult everyones intelligence and act like its a positive movement.
Early in July, Stubhub issued an email saying that they could no longer afford to pay for sales that came through multiple (duplicate) channels. Thus, they would be reversing commissions for any affiliate sales that came to them through other means (their own ppc, paid banners, etc). It was a really anti-affiliate move, and tons of publishers saw all their commissions reversed. SH then put all the commissions back, saying it was a glitch (yeah right), but in this most recent email they said they would start doing it again in August(with a generous 72 hour notice, joy).
Not to repeat everything that was already said (above) that I agree with. We have been selling tickets locally for a lot longer than StubHub has been around, but due to their huge advertising budget, they seem to be able to fool the public into buying from them instead of from us directly. Locals who are looking at email advertising to purchase their tickets fall for the StubHub ads all over the place, including the baseball teams’ home pages, to purchase tickets from StubHub. Not realizing they are paying a huge markup, plus a commission, plus this and that (cf TicketMaster). We have helped StubHub from day one with the many errors (they refuse to list parking passes even though they are often in great demand, and allow hugely ridiculously overpriced spec tickets to show up) and omissions (they don’t list all concerts and miss listing huge shows sometimes, and they also refuse to list some sold out concerts per their prerogative) they have had on their website and ticket listings, only to be slapped in the hand for doing this and that. They treat brokers like dogs, scolding them for almost everything. Rules come out every day: they can decide to change the delivery date of your tickets if they want to. Envelope-stuffers is what we have become, but when we are left with tickets we can’t sell, watch how low you have to go with your prices to try to sell on the public StubHub website which also invites the general public to “dump”. We lost a long-time customer a few years ago when he discovered SH because he found some cheaper tickets that a fan was selling on SH that we naturally did not have on our website. Then a year later, when he received tickets from SH that were not in the exact area promised (he did not realize in time to have SH take his tickets back), who did he call for help? Us! Yes, we have now become the underdog. How long can this last? I can think of a lot of other things I could be doing with my time than to be StubHub’s dog and underdog. They can sign any number of “deals” they want to with teams, but teams are going to lose valuable long-term season ticket holders because of SH. Wait til they realize what is happening…
To go to TicketSummit and listen to StubHub give their spiel is a waste of time and money.