Ticketmaster Inks Deal With NFL; Will Launch Ticket Service

Ticketmaster has signed a multi-year deal with the NFL, making it the league’s official online ticket exchange provider. Ticketmaster for ’08 will launch and operate an NFL Ticket Exchange service that will be accessible from both the Ticketmaster and NFL Web sites. Ticketmaster already provides primary ticket services, including advance and onsite single game ticket sales, season ticketing and group ticketing for 31 NFL teams. Ticketmaster’s TicketExchange secondary ticketing service is already used by 18 NFL teams, with four others set to use the service in ’08 (Ticketmaster).  The AP's Alex Veiga noted resales are a "growing slice of the ticket market for sports, concerts and other events, but Ticketmaster lags behind other online ticket resale outlets such as StubHub ... and auction sites such as EBay."  Ticketmaster Exec VP Eric Korman said, "It's fair to say we're an underdog in the category right now. We need to really aggressively compete to win dollars and grow ahead of the competition" (AP, 12/18).