SeatGeek is the official new ticket reseller for Major League Baseball (MLB), replacing StubHub.
Key Details
- SeatGeek has won a significant deal to be the MLB’s official ticket reseller, replacing other secondary ticket marketplace StubHub.
- The financial details were not released, but it is expected that SeatGeek will pay around $100 million a year for the next five years to be the official reseller, according to Forbes.
- MLB revenue was a record-high $10.8 billion for the 2022 regular season, with attendance accounting for around 40%, and the league is attempting to grow ticket sales and chose SeatGeek to help.
Why it’s news
SeatGeek has won a deal to be the official reseller of MLB tickets as the baseball league attempts to reach a broader audience, including those that use SeatGeek’s fully online platform.
Mobile ticketing platform SeatGeek has officially reached a deal with the MLB to be its ticket reseller taking the place of StubHub, which has been the MLB’s ticketing partner since 2007.
SeatGeek has a massive database of online customers, and the MLB now has full access to that database to help bring in a broader audience. The baseball league also did some testing to ensure that SeatGeeks technology could handle the extra volume of users that would come with the deal.
“We dug in and were happy with what we found,” says MLB chief revenue officer Noah Garden.
While StubHub is no longer the official ticket reseller for the MLB, the league expects to negotiate a smaller deal with the platform to keep selling some tickets on the resale app and holding on to its audience there.
“It’s like distributing content,” says Garden. “You used to distribute on your website. Now, you distribute on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Why? Because they have different audiences. And even though you’re distributing in all those places, you’re doing it slightly differently. No different from ticketing.”