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August 02, 2007

An Approved Secondary Yankees Ticket Market

From the Times - with a hat tip to The Griddle:

Major League Baseball once frowned on scalping, the resale of tickets among fans and sidewalk entrepreneurs. On Thursday, professional baseball will announce plans to get into the business.

In a nod to the growing strength of Internet ticket exchanges, the league has entered into a revenue-sharing agreement with StubHub, an online market owned by eBay that acts as a middleman in the resale of tickets to entertainment events. Under the five-year deal, all 30 baseball team Web sites and MLB.com will direct fans who want to sell their tickets or buy tickets from other fans to Stubhub.com.

The deal caps a growing trend over the last several years to legitimize the secondary ticket market. Most of the league’s teams participate in ticket resale from their own Web sites and within rules and regulations dictated by teams and state laws. The deal not only embraces the activity and validates the secondary ticket market, but gives Major League Baseball a share of the revenue from sales.

“The taboo of the secondary ticket market has been all but eliminated,” said David M. Carter, assistant professor of sports business at the University of Southern California’s business school. He said that baseball and other professional sports franchises are asking: “Why not capture some of the revenue that for years has been left on the table to scalpers?”

Several teams have also openly criticized the use of StubHub in the past. Last season, the New York Yankees revoked season tickets of fans who used StubHub, saying it violated the contract that the ticket holders had with the team. The Yankees even went so far as to ask its flagship radio station, WCBS, to turn down ads from StubHub, and security guards at Yankee Stadium regularly questioned fans arriving with StubHub envelopes.

A New York state law passed in 2005 essentially legalized reselling by allowing ticket holders to sell their seats for a maximum of 45 percent over face value.

Fewer than a dozen states still have antiscalping laws on the books. StubHub itself has lobbied extensively to repeal such provisions.

So, in a way, it looks like Pinstripe Marketplace is now a reality - finally. Meanwhile, more than 100 Yankees season-ticket holders had their privileges revoked in 2006 after they were caught reselling tickets online. Those people must be feeling somewhat steamed today. And, I would not blame them.

Posted by Steve Lombardi at August 2, 2007 01:05 PM

Comments

Posted by: MJ at August 2, 2007 05:13 PM

Posted by: Steve Lombardi at August 2, 2007 11:53 PM