(This story was updated on Tuesday, March 9, 2010, at 4:56pm EST to add a comment from StubHub.)
The Boston Red Sox, the last holdout from the secondary ticketing deal Major League Baseball (MLB) signed with StubHub in 2007, has finally agreed to let the ticket exchange giant be its authorized online ticketing partner.
Financial terms of the one-year deal have not been disclosed, but StubHub reportedly pays the league under its current five-year deal so the Red Sox will likely begin receiving a cut of that money, if the team is not already. While the Red Sox stayed out, the other 29 MLB teams were all part of the original deal with StubHub, and they split the estimated $20 million per year that the exchange pays the league.
The new deal will not directly affect the team’s current contract with Boston-based ticket reseller Ace Ticket, which has a multiple-year, “offline” agreement with the team. Under that deal, Ace is the team’s authorized bricks-and-mortar secondary ticket reseller. Fans can go to one of Ace’s seven storefront locations to buy or sell tickets.
StubHub spokesperson Joellen Ferrer told TicketNews that the company would not comment specifically on the deal but that StubHub was pleased to be working with the Red Sox.
“The Red Sox join our growing partner roster, which extends well beyond MLB and includes professional and collegiate ranks, motorsports, and most recently boxing, as we are the Official Fan to Fan Marketplace of the upcoming Mayweather-Mosley fight in Las Vegas,” Ferrer said in a statement. “The combined synergy with Ace Ticket will provide Red Sox fans with access to the widest selection of tickets to games at Fenway, along with thousands of other events in the New England area. StubHub’s truly dynamic marketplace assures the fairest pricing in parallel with demand, all backed by our FanProtect guarantee.”
Jim Holzman, owner of Ace Ticket, said he was made aware of the StubHub deal well before it came to fruition. While not among the nation’s top ten ticket resellers, according to TicketNews’ exclusive industry rankings, Ace Ticket is considered one of the nation’s largest brokers that concentrates on a specific local market.
“We remain excited to continue to serve the fans of Red Sox Nation, because we’re fans, too,” Holzman told TicketNews. “Will this [StubHub deal] affect us? I think only time will tell. On the one hand, it’s another valuable distribution channel, and other the other hand we remain fiercely independent and proud to continue to stand on our own two feet.”
By all accounts, the Ace Ticket/Red Sox deal has made both entities happy, and the agreement’s success could serve as a model for other teams to explore similar contracts with local brokers.
“We’re looking at other, similar opportunities,” Holzman said, but he declined to elaborate on which cities, leagues or teams the company is looking to partner with. “I could see a day when Ace Ticket is a true national company, but our home will always be Boston.”
Don Vaccaro, CEO and founder of TicketNetwork, which has worked with and in competition with Ace Ticket in the past, praised the move by the Red Sox.
“The Red Sox having an offline partner as well as an online partner paves the way for other teams to potentially double the amount of money they make on the secondary market deals,” Vaccaro said. “The Yankees, for example, could realize more money from a local offline partnership over their national online deal.”
As for the Red Sox, the team is taking a measured approach with the new StubHub deal. “We continued to take a wait-and-see attitude with regard to secondary ticket and wanted to be very cautious. But it seems like this [StubHub] platform offers a great convenience, and we’re going to see how this goes,” Sam Kennedy, chief operating officer for the Red Sox, told Sports Business Journal.
“So we’ve broken up the category in which Ace is strictly offline and StubHub is strictly online, which we think is rather unique. But Boston is also very unique market for secondary tickets,” he added.
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Can now contact an MLB team to make a deal for the local off line stuff
I don’t get it Stubhub has an office in Boston..Ace has a web site…looks to me both parties are getting ripped off by the MLB/Red Sox…but hey more power to them if they can convince them both of that more power to them
Does anyone seriously care what this clown has to say?
Ace will remain “offline” officially for the Sox, but of course they do sell two to three thousand tickets a game online from season tickets holders, computer macros and employees standing in line.
the sponsorship has nothing to do with how ACE obtains its tickets though your equivocating offline sponsorship with offline/online buying…..
This really looks like a very big issue for us brokers. Lets face it Stub gets bigger and more powerful everyday, all at our expense. Ace Ticket, im glad to see has found a way to stay in the game, both in business competing with StubHub and with remaining in a deal with the Boston Red Sox. More of us should rally behind an independant like Ace, who is one of our own, nice job Ace. Lets hope Ace Ticket and us small brokers stay in the game and Stub doesnt squeeze us and put us all under.
We all know Don and ticket news are ona and the same, yet here we are reading this site on a regular basis, and we have to give him credit for that. What i dont understand is why Don and TicketNews wouldnt be trying to support Ace Ticket more in regards to this situation. I recall last week or so , there was a blurb about Ace Ticket extending there original Red Sox deal, TicketNews idnt give Ace much credit for that, when in fact its an even bigger deal than this Stub development, why would TicketNews, a site for brokers not promote brokers vs large aggregators with huge service charges, even more confusing when Don im sure dislikes Stubhub more than Ace, or maybe not. And than the article points out that AceTicket is not a Top Ten Seller and than promotes a link to its industry ratings, SELF PROMOTION, than you look at the ratings, currentlty and over the past year and you see that Ace is a top broker website and is always in the Top 20, and sometimes in the Top 10, why didnt ticket news say Ace was a top 20 industry site?, instead of throwing a knife in there. Is Don more scared of Ace Ticket than Stubhub? Would TicketNews run a story and say that TicketNetwork is not in the top 2 aggregators? as they seem to be in 3rd place , cmon Tnews give a broker a break and stop trying to have us all lead to slaughter and go with Stubhub over your sites
I wasn’t talking about the sponsorship. I was just pointing out that, while ACE preaches that they get tickets only from season ticket holders, they are full of ****. Clear enough?
[This comment was moderated for inappropriate language.]
Ace is a supporter of the NATB and attends the NATB Conference and not Ticket Summit. Coincidence?
The Red Sox have some nerve sending letters to season ticket holders saying that they are not allowed to re-sell their tickets for more than face value and threatening to revoke season tickets of people who do sell for more than face value. They accept over a million dollars per year combined from the largest local scalper and a known liar (Ace Tickets’ Jim Holzman – you still owe me $200 plus years’ worth of interest) and from the largest national scalper – StubHub.
And speaking of bull crap, I doubt that post from a broker saying that small brokers should rally around Ace is from anyone but Holzman or one of his employees. EVERY broker I’ve talked to, from small-time street guys to people with long-established companies, despises Ace. This will tell you what kind of guy Ace is – prior to having a storefront he did the car/classifieds/cellphone thing. He was doing well, driving a Porsche 911. Meanwhile, this guy who I’ll call Always late and always talking (ALAT from now on) was driving a beat up VW with no brakes. The drivers door wouldn’t open, so ALAT had to get in and out through the passanger door. ALAT had no money. He was behind on his rent. Yet Holzman squeezed him relentlessly for every nickel he could, paying him chump change for the tickets ALAT got from constantly hustling for tickets in those pre-internet days.