Kim Damron, Spectra Ticketing COO; Kate Green and Steve Disch, StubHub; and Chris Celona, Univeristy of California, Berkeley.
StubHub receives over 20 million unique visitors per month, and over 50 percent of transactions are conducted on mobile devices. With that kind of exposure, over 45 Spectra Ticketing clients are now integrated partners with StubHub, up from just six years ago, racking up over 8,000 transactions in 2015.
“We partnered with StubHub about six years ago and did an integrated partnership for secondary, which most clients use now,” said Kim Damron, Spectra Ticketing COO. “It is a seamless integrated secondary experience where you can maximize revenue and get access to StubHub data. Ten years ago it was convincing everybody to get into secondary, now it’s developing into everybody needs to be in the secondary market, how do you participate?”
Last year, they launched the distribution model, which allowed clients to opaquely list inventory on StubHub.
“There was a lot of hesitation at first, no one wanted to be the early adapter, but as football started they realized when they were getting stuck with tickets and they could utilize us as another distribution channel,” said Steve Disch, senior team manager, Partnerships, StubHub.
Chis Celona, University of California, Berkeley, started listing with StubHub last year and has benefitted from the number of users that visit the site, as it is usually one of the first sites single game buyers check. The analytics tools, buyer info and ability to troubleshoot on game day were also valuable pieces. Using the data, Celona tracked a much higher sell through rate as compared to other Cal tickets being sold on StubHub.
“It’s been a great benefit to us to be able to dive down and look at our data to see what our tickets are selling for,” said Celona. “It gives you a better idea what to price your tickets on StubHub and your website.”
This year, the two companies have worked together to launch the blended inventory model with the Philadelphia 76ers. This partnership is the stuff of ticketing legend: a blurring of primary and secondary inventory, huge event discovery potential, mobile optimization and a white-label experience on one of the largest ticket marketplaces.
With the launch, StubHub offers the Philadelphia 76ers a reimagined rightsholder branded experience in conjunction with Spectra Ticketing. Through a series of integrations with StubHub, Spectra Ticketing will continue to provide the 76ers the box office tools, season ticket holder sales, account management and access control that will allow the team to manage its primary ticketing business and its fans as it always has, while taking advantage of the capabilities the new platform has to offer. The partner-branded, mobile-first experience will have all inventory, both primary and secondary, available with no designation, and both will be able to be purchased together.
Listing primary tickets on StubHub is also about to get easier for other clients with the introduction of the StubHub Integrated Platform, at the end of this year.
“What we’ve realized is though we have this massive channel, great sell through and a vast marketing reach, that we haven’t made it easy enough for you to get your inventory to our site and easy enough to change your pricing once it’s on our site,” said Kate Green, head of New Verticals, StubHub. “We need to move quickly, so we’re investing heavily in being able to offer more innovative products and options.”
Not only will the platform allows tickets to live on two channels simultaneously, but it can also maximize reach with no risk. Users will get all of the data from all transactions and will be able to take advantage of open access and open distribution.
“We understand we all have a vested interest in having a healthy primary market,” said Green. “We all want tickets moving in the marketplace with pricing that makes sense and is fair. We want users to have a good experience and be buying quickly. And we want rightsholders to have the best tools available to them to sell through and understand their customers.”
Interviewed for this story: Steve Disch and Kate Green, (310) 353-6498, Kim Damron, (949) 823-1636