Ticket Sellers Rankings Roundup 8/31/07
By Stacey Willets
Baseball may be known as “America’s pastime,” but it’s NFL football that has the highest per-game attendance of any domestic pro sports league in the world. With kickoff just around the corner, the TicketNews Top Primary and Secondary Live Event Ticket Sellers that have forged partnerships with these pro teams are sure to score a touchdown.
Although the waiting lists to get season tickets for teams like the Philadelphia Eagles are infinitely long, fans don’t necessarily have to pull a Hail Mary to get tickets. For the consumer that requires instant (or at least in-this-lifetime) gratification, there is the secondary market. Single game tickets and even season ticket packages can be found on most resellers’ sites. In addition, several Top Secondary Sellers have partnered with teams to become their “official resellers.” .
Unlike the StubHub! / MLB deal in which MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM) is a centralized company overseeing all the team websites, the NFL clubs control their own websites and create partnerships on an individual basis. Because tickets to the games are in such high demand, becoming the official reseller of a team is a great strategic move to establish a broker site as a safe, sanctioned marketplace for season ticket holders. In the past, teams have voided tickets of fans reselling tickets through the secondary market. You may remember last November when the New England Patriots sued StubHub! for facilitating the resale of season ticket holders’ seats, a case that some felt was more about trying to keep ticket resale on the Pat’s TicketExchange site than it was about the anti-scalping laws in Massachusetts.
Despite their rocky relationship with the Patriots, number one ranked Secondary Seller StubHub.com boasts eight NFL team partnerships, providing secondary ticketing services for the Cincinnati Bengals, Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, San Diego Chargers, Chicago Bears, Atlanta Falcons, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Washington Redskins. Second-ranked TicketsNow has partnerships with two teams, the Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonville Jaguars. Those sought-after Philadelphia Eagles tickets can be purchased through seventh-ranked RazorGator, as can Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers tickets. RazorGator is also the “Official Fan Travel Partner” of the Oakland Raiders, Carolina Panthers, and St. Louis Rams.
For Top Secondary Sellers TicketLiquidator.com at three, TickCo.com at four, GoTickets.com at five, ABCtickets.com at six, TicketsPlus.com at eight, EventTicketsCenter.com at nine, and TicketCity.com at ten, there are slim pickings left. They are competing not only against the other major players in the secondary market, including new competitor viagogo.com, which has entered the US ticketing industry announcing a deal with the Cleveland Browns, but they are also up against Top Primary Seller Ticketmaster.com.
Ticketmaster, which handles the NFL’s primary sales, is also responsible for the resale of tickets for half the NFL teams. The company leads the way for other primary ticketers, who are increasingly looking for ways to get a hold in the secondary market. Those other Top Primary Sellers for this week, whether football enthusiasts or not, are LiveNation.com at two, Tickets.com at three, TicketWeb.com at four, Telecharge.com at five, Etix.com at six, Tix.com at seven, GrooveTickets.com at eight, TicketsWest.com at nine, and UNLVtickets.com at ten.
The NFL-partnered sites also rank among the Top Overall Sellers chart with Ticketmaster.com, StubHub.com, and TicketsNow.com holding positions one, two, and three, respectively. RazorGator.com just makes the cut, appearing at number ten this week. The remaining rankings are filled by LiveNation.com at four, TicketLiquidator.com at five, Tickets.com at six, TickCo.com at seven, GoTickets.com at eight, and ABCtickets.com at nine.
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, or to download the application for inclusion in our rankings.
