TicketIQ chief executive Jesse Lawrence believes the new ticketing regime for this year’s Super Bowl could herald an end to speculative selling for sport’s biggest events.
Lawrence, writing for the TechCrunch website, said it was too early to assess the long-term implications of the arrival of the NFL-owned On Location Experiences (OLE) to manage premium tickets and experiences for the event.
However, he noted TicketIQ was tracking just 1,500 tickets on resale sites after the Super Bowl teams were confirmed last week. That was less than half the previous lowest number of resale tickets available at the same stage over the last five years. As many as 6,500 tickets were on offer for the Seahawks and Broncos game in 2015.
OLE has been selling premium packages since last September, while Ticketmaster is the NFL’s official ticketing partner.
While Lawrence expects the new system to drive prices up, he said there was less chance of fans arriving at Houston’s NRG Stadium only to find out that their purchased tickets did not exist. That was the nightmare predicament that thousands experienced in Arizona two years ago, he wrote.
“Much of the mayhem of SuperBowl markets past have been the result of something called speculative selling, by which brokers list tickets for sale on major marketplaces without actually knowing what seat they are selling,” Lawrence wrote. “These ‘zone-based listings’ have uncertain names like ‘Upper Level EndZone, N/A’ and ‘300s Level Corner, TBD’.
“This year, many of the tickets that get sold in ‘open’ marketplace sites or apps will be zone-based listings.
“To avoid the kind of market blow-up that I covered in 2015, speculative selling needs to be eliminated entirely.”
As for prices, Lawrence said that high entry fees for one of world sport’s biggest events should not be a surprise.
“A functioning ticket market means ultra-high demand events will have ultra-high prices,” he wrote.
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