Ticket scalping has been a practice that was never highly regarded and involved many risks for buyers. However, the Internet may play a major role in altering the face of ticket reselling. Two sites offer answers to the problems involved with the conventional process of buying and selling tickets in a secondary market.
TicketsNow.com and StubHub.com are trying to clean up this market for buyers. They are promising to exclude unreliable sellers, offer straightforward pricing, and guarantee on-time delivery.
Estimates of the exact size of the market run from $2 billion to $25 billion a year. What is known is that the market is driven by season ticket holders who are unable to attend every game. However, now they are not limited to reselling the tickets themselves or selling their tickets to an individual broker.
The Internet is already familiar with the concept of ticket resale. Ticket holders and even some sports teams have been taking part in this process for years, and sites like eBay and Craigslist naturally propagate the practice. However, with the emergence of two leading sites devoted exclusively to the secondary market for tickets many teams, music venues, and ticket companies are warming up to the idea of either getting into the business themselves or developing relationships with one of these companies.
Last August, AOL unveiled Ticket Marketplace, an online secondary market for the resale of tickets. Prior to the release of this service AOL had been partnering with StubHub. On the same day that AOL announced Ticket Marketplace’s launch the company also announced its partnership with TicketsNow, whose inventories were to be made available on Ticket Marketplace.
Last week, TicketsNow publicized that it had become the official seller of secondary tickets for the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens. StubHub also has comparable deals with seven NFL teams and a handful of NHL and college teams.
Sites like TicketsNow and StubHub have simplified the process of purchasing secondary tickets. While buyers used to fret over whether or not they were purchasing tickets from an individual that was charging much more than another, TicketsNow, StubHub, eBay, and similar sites enable users to see dealers’ prices side-by-side, making it much easier to find the most desirable deal.
In response to fears of shady brokers finding their way onto their site, TicketsNow CEO Mike Domek says that each of their 600 brokers have undergone a screening procedure to ensure their credibility. Domek also added that if a company does not comply with their listed price of a particular ticket on the site they would be banned from doing business on the site forever.
StubHub allows anyone to buy and sell online, and in order to make sure that frauds will not be able to get away with ripping buyers off, the company will withhold the money paid for a ticket until after the buyer receives it. Then, and only then, will the seller receive the money for the ticket purchased.
The market, though appealing, does face hurdles. Carrie Johnson, an e-commerce analyst for Forrester Research, points out the fact that tickets are still mostly in paper form, which means that they are relatively easy to replicate. Also, antiscapling laws and bans on reselling tickets by certain sports teams and event locations may present problems for the young industry.
Johnson also suggests the idea that musicians and performers may not be so accepting of a secondary market. “An artist runs the risk of alienating fans if tickets are sold above face value. It can create a perception that the artist is greedy,” she said.
The Internet has presented challenges for lawmakers and governments to deal with, and this case may not be any different. The success of these ticket resale companies will depend on compliance with regulations, the willingness of teams and venues to work with them, and the ability of these sites to continually weed out the bad apples and guarantee quality service to its customers.
Sources:
http://news.com.com/Can+the+Net+make+ticket+
scalping+legit/2100-1032_3-6079684.html?tag=nefd.top
http://news.com.com/AOL+buys+into+ticket-
resale+business/2100-1038_3-5841910.html?tag=nl
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