Tickets Anyone?
To me, the month of March means one thing - March Madness, the basketball crazed time of wall-to-wall college basketball with hours spent fretting over filling out multiple NCAA championship brackets. The NCAA basketball tournament is a magical sporting event, and especially so for those lucky enough to score tickets. Getting tickets to an NCAA Final Four game is reputed to be one of sports toughest tickets. You get entered into a lottery for tickets a year in advance
For years, if you wanted tickets to a high profile or sold out event you had to deal with shady characters who camped outside the arena selling tickets to a wary public. Known as scalpers, or vendor guys in some circles, it was buyer beware. The experience was fraught with haggling and uncertainty, always on the look out for police - in uniform or plain clothes.
Just ten short years ago all this changed. Ticket reselling became a channel game changer through the introduction of StubHub. Started by Eric Baker and Jeff Fluhr, two Stanford MBA graduates, they reinvented the channel in the form of ticket reselling. They were upfront in their "scalping" fees - 10% from the buyer and 15% from the seller. Sellers, most notably season ticket holders, had a place to unload unused tickets and the public had an online marketplace to search for tickets. Need meets opportunity, all without the unsavory scalper shakedown in the shadows of ballparks and arenas across the country.
The ticket reselling industry has gone through a tremendous growth spurt this decade. Rather than fight the shear magnitude and reach of StubHub, many professional sports teams and college sports programs have formal programs with them. The ticket reselling market is estimated to be well over $25 billion. Everyone wants in to claim their share of market.
I did an on-line search for Red Sox tickets, a tough ticket, as they've sold out every game since back in early 2003 and going strong into 2010 at 550 straight sellouts. Yes, the channel giants StubHub and TicketsNow have strong natural and paid search positions, but it is the channel wannabes that catch your interest. Want to sit close to the field? Vivid Seats or TicketZoom are great choices. Want to follow your team on a road trip? Check Out of Town Tickets or Coast to Coast Tickets. If you're feeling lucky, go to Ace Tickets who is a strong regional player in the New England market. They've carved out a niche in Boston against the behemoth StubHub.
It's another lesson that business opportunities are all around if you look hard and deep enough. There is always a new channel to be discovered or improved upon. For years, scalpers had the ticket reselling market pretty much to themselves. They haven't been eliminated, but their presence has been diminished. Ebay and Craigslist haven't helped them either. It's all about finding a market niche and securing your place. A quote by the aforementioned Eric Baker sums it up best. "I'm probably the one person from business school who decided to take his MBA and become a ticket scalper." That's certainly an education that paid for itself. Anyone can be the next StubHub. It's a matter of finding the undiscovered or underserved channel.
