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MLB and StubHub.com signed a deal that makes the eBay spinoff the official secondary ticket reseller for all 30 major league teams, according to a story in the New York Times.
The deal caps a growing trend over the last several years to legitimize the secondary ticket market. Most of the league’s teams participate in ticket resale from their own Web sites and within rules and regulations dictated by teams and state laws. The deal not only embraces the activity and validates the secondary ticket market, but gives Major League Baseball a share of the revenue from sales.
“The taboo of the secondary ticket market has been all but eliminated,” said David M. Carter, assistant professor of sports business at the University of Southern California’s business school. He said that baseball and other professional sports franchises are asking: “Why not capture some of the revenue that for years has been left on the table to scalpers?”
Won't this drive up the ticket prices in order to absorb the additional cost?
Anyway, my point wasn't so much surprise at this deal so much as the obstacles StubHub overcame to get here from point zero. Because if I was a VC, and you told me that in order to succeed, you're going to have to both beat EBay at an auctioning game and beat pro sports leagues plus Tickets.com at selling tickets, I wouldn't have thrown very much of my money at you. But they did it, so huzzah for them.
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