StubHub is eyeing partnerships with Australia’s major sports leagues as it prepares to launch in the country in the first half of 2017.
The company is already a partner of North American franchises such as MLB baseball’s New York Yankees and NBA basketball’s Philadelphia 76ers.
Now it is in the process of moving into Australia, following owner eBay’s purchase of Ticketbis, which is already present in the market as well as almost 50 other countries. The group plans to rebrand Ticketbis as StubHub late in the first half of next year.
In an interview with Australian Financial Review, Glenn Lehrman, the company’s global head of communications, identified deals with sports properties such as the AFL Australian rules league, NRL rugby league, Test cricket and the Australian Open tennis tournament as a vehicle for expansion.
However, Lehrman conceded that Australia will be a different proposition to North America. In particular, the reselling of many AFL tickets is illegal, while the actual demand for StubHub’s traditional service is questionable considering that many AFL and NRL games do not sell out.
Lehrman added that StubHub sees its role more as a partner helping AFL and NRL achieve greater ticket sales rather than the upstart ticket reseller it started out as in the US in 2000.
“With AFL we'd love to show them that we can be a distributor and we can help them to increase their audience, and over time we can have a conversation about the resale market," Lehrman said. “For NRL it's 'how can we work with [NRL] to build out their audience?
“We'd have multiple points of distribution. Join with our distributors and have those distributors bring more people to you and build your market."
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