Discount ticket outlet ScoreBig has struck a multiyear partnership with Ticketmaster in which it will become directly integrated with the industry giant’s primary ticketing system.
In the deal, ScoreBig will appear as a purchase option for events involving teams and event promoters that are clients of the two companies and that opt in. The partnership includes several cross-promotional, marketing and online traffic-sharing components, and the shared clients will receive additional data on customer ticket searching and purchase patterns.
ScoreBig, formed in 2009, essentially acts like an outlet mall for live event tickets, offering excess inventory below face value. Users select an event, a general category of where they want to sit, and how much they want to pay, and then ScoreBig seeks to match those orders with available inventory.
“This deal presents a really powerful yield management tool to our mutual customers, and that kind of thing really hasn’t existed in live entertainment,” said David Goldberg, ScoreBig chief executive and a former Ticketmaster executive vice president. “We’re not looking to cannibalize the primary, full-price market. Quite the contrary, this gives teams and promoters the ability to expand their view of the market and have an immediate tool to generate incremental sales.”
“This wasn’t a deal we could have done in our first year,” he said. “We first had to go out and prove ourselves.”
Financial terms were not disclosed, but the deal includes revenue-sharing components, the companies said.
In October, California-based ScoreBig closed on an $18 million round of Series D venture capital funding, led by Hearst Ventures. The investment brought Hearst, a traditional media player with deep ties to broadcasting and print media, further into the live event business, and brought ScoreBig’s total funding to date to $49.5 million. The latest round of funds was earmarked in part for strategic partnerships such as this one with Ticketmaster, as well as mobile product development and marketing.
For Ticketmaster, aligning with ScoreBig represents an additional channel partnership for the company.
Ticketmaster holds similar alignments with companies such as Groupon and Goldstar that help it reach other, less traditional outlets.
“This is a good extension for us, and gives us a fuller, more complete set of offerings to give the fan, as we really don’t do a lot below face value,” said Jared Smith, president of Ticketmaster North America. “And for [ScoreBig], it’s going to be a really good test of their model, as this partnership brings in a great deal of additional scale to what they’re doing.”
