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Will an open ticketing framework boost attendance across the NFL in 2018?
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES |
After more than a year of internal league study, the NFL last fall signed a pair of deals poised to reshape what it means to attend a pro football game. Ticketmaster, the league’s ticketing partner since 2008, signed a five-year extension to retain preferred status for primary ticketing. But the new deal contemplates an open ticketing landscape in which other companies will also be official NFL partners. Indeed, StubHub within days of the Ticketmaster agreement being announced signed its own deal as the league’s authorized secondary ticketing partner. Both agreements will cover the 2018 through 2022 seasons.
The two deals call for a historic level of coexistence and integration between the two longtime and often bitter rivals. This will be seen particularly when purchasing an NFL ticket on StubHub, which will lead to the creation of a new digital ticket, similar to how Ticketmaster’s TicketExchange has operated within its own system and how StubHub has integrated at numerous colleges through an alliance with Paciolan. The agreement will see the installation of Ticketmaster’s new digitally based Presence system, yielding a bevy of new consumer data, at each NFL stadium.
But numerous questions remain as the new agreements take effect later this year:
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Can the NFL’s newly open ticketing framework — and the sales data StubHub and Ticketmaster provide — produce a material boost to league attendance that sank in 2017 to its lowest level in six years?
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Will Ticketmaster’s TicketExchange, already lagging behind StubHub in sales and consumer relevance in a variety of NFL markets, slip further in relevancy?
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And with the deals believed to be collectively worth far more than the $200 million Ticketmaster committed to the NFL for the 2013-17 seasons, will that money represent an overpay as other companies begin to get their own pieces of NFL ticketing (see No. 2)?
