Two of the largest secondary ticket exchanges in the world have integrated, creating a powerful new alliance for ticket brokers and fans who purchase resold tickets.
Last week, TicketNetwork announced that it had integrated its point-of-sale system with StubHub, allowing brokers to list inventory on both sites in real time. TicketNetwork CEO Don Vaccaro estimates the deal covers about $3 billion in transactions — $2 billion on StubHub and $1 billion for TicketNetwork.
StubHub, which is owned by eBay, is the world’s largest secondary market and has exclusive ticket resale deals with a number of sports team- and content-providers, including AEG. TicketNetwork is one of the largest independently-owned secondary marketplaces in North America and utilizes a vast network of broker run sites and exchanges that facilitate the buying and reselling of tickets.
The integration was tied to TicketNetwork’s rollout of POS 11, an update to its broker listing service. StubHub maintains an open API feed granting access to developers to integrate with their system and TicketNetwork software engineers developed an integration to tie with that API. The new TicketNetwork feature allows brokers to upload inventory to both sites and automatically update inventory on both sites when a ticket is sold.
“By instantly updating inventory, the risk of double sales is decreased, making for a smoother ticket buying experience for both brokers and customers,” said Vaccaro.
The deal completes the integration of ticket brokers’ inventory to every major seller, including Ticketmaster’s own TicketsNow platform. TicketNetwork also has agreements with tertiary resale firms like viagogo, Razorgator, TicketCity and Seatwave. Vaccaro said the system only works in one direction — StubHub users cannot list their tickets on TicketNetwork through the StubHub platform, nor can any of the other exchanges. The distinction sets up TicketNetwork to be the go-to exchange site for ticket brokers
TicketNetwork will begin testing the new point-of-sale system on Dec. 15. The public release of the software is slated to roll out March 1. Alison Salcedo with StubHub said while TicketNetwork is taking advantage of the firm’s open API, the company has “no financial arrangement with TicketNetwork” covering the integration.
“We have over 1,000 brokers that use our software, and StubHub gets most of its inventory from users of our POS, so it makes sense to start integrating with StubHub and allow users to upload inventory, change prices and confirm sales in real time.”
Vaccaro noted many brokers list the same ticket across multiple secondary marketplaces and have to manually remove tickets from one site when they go on sale on another. The result is that the same tickets to high-demand events often get sold to multiple users, creating frustration for customers who are unable to fulfill their orders.
“It’s a huge customer-service issue,” Vaccaro said. “The biggest winners are consumers — now they get the information they need in real time. Once everything is in place, it’s a matter of seconds before inventory is adjusted across all channels.”
Interviewed for this article: Don Vaccaro, (860) 644-4000; Alison Salcedo, (310) 443-2323