MLB marries Stubhub

Well, kinda any way.

Stubhub, a subsidiary of eBay, announced a five year deal last week that makes it the official source of secondary tickets for MLB. The two will share in the revenue generated from the venture. The agreement is set to begin in 2008.

MLB currently sells tickets to the secondary market via two means
MLB.com
Each team’s individual site

It is up to the individual teams to participate with Stubhub. It is unknown at this time how many individual teams will participate.

Ticketmaster has yet to weigh in on this. They currently have contracts with a dozen MLB franchises to be the secondary ticket marketplace.

We are overall positive about this.

Baseball attendance is up. 2007 is on course to be another record year. Any record it sets will quickly fall while stadiums are on their farewell tour and new stadiums are coming online. Both of these events will lead to increased sales.

There are still many people opposed to “scalping”. These included individuals who claim they are looking out for the consumer and the teams themselves. Both of these just ignore the principles of supply and demand. The ticket resale market is forging ahead regardless of any entity trying to coral it. Trying to coral it has been harder and harder.

The Yankees have been at the forefront of trying to contain the market. They have revoked season ticket holder licenses and there are stories about people who were harassed by Yankee Stadium personnel for carrying a Stubhub envelope. A recent New York law now makes it illegal for the Yankees to revoke season ticket licenses. All of the other states removing or loosening ticket resale laws are also making it harder to contain the market.

Stubhub is a primary place for us to sell our MLB tickets. It is convenient and low maintenance. For each team that signs up with Stubhub to be the funnel for MLB tickets, that just drives that many more people to our own inventory. Good for us.

For more information see the following:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/FunMoney/wireStory?id=3439394
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070802&content_id=2125070&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

To learn how to make money being a ticket broker, visit www.MyTicketBiz.com.