Major League Soccer and SeatGeek announced on Wednesday that they have partnered on a new ticketing system that will allow fans to buy tickets on dozens of e-commerce apps and ticketing sites and also will be able to securely sell or transfer tickets on any resale platform of their choice.
As part of the agreement, SeatGeek becomes the official ticketing partner of MLS.
“We couldn’t have chosen a better partner for our first sports partnership than Major League Soccer,’’ SeatGeek co-founder Jack Groetzinger said. “Given its rapid growth and deeply engaged fanbase, MLS is the ideal partner to drive forward our brand new, open ticketing experience. We’re thrilled to work hand in hand over the coming years with MLS to bring fan-friendly, mobile-first ticketing to market and help allow millions more soccer fans to experience MLS.’’
SeatGeek’s ticketing platform will be built and optimized for mobile commerce. Two-thirds of SeatGeek’s transactions currently take place on mobile devices, and in the next year, SeatGeek and MLS will work together with the league's individual clubs to roll out the new ticketing system, which will make it easier for fans to buy tickets from their phones, have those tickets delivered to their phones, and then have the ticket scanned from their phones for entry into games.
“Our No. 1 objective when we set out to find a ticketing partner was to align with a group that would build an incredible fan experience,’’ said Kathy Carter, president of Soccer United Marketing, MLS’ commercial arm. “We selected SeatGeek because we believe that together we are going to build the best ticketing experience in the sports industry.’’
SeatGeek's software will allow for tickets to be sold on multiple sites, and allow for fans to re-sell their tickets on several sites. So someone selling something on a site like eBay, for example, could throw in tickets to an MLS game as part of the sale (or just sell the tickets separately on the site). Or an MLS team's fan club could sell tickets on its own site. And a ticketholder seeking to sell his or her tickets could post them on several different sites, with SeatGeek's software allowing the sites to verify the authenticity of the tickets and then instantly removing them from all the sites they're posted on once they've been sold. Such an open ticketing network is unlike anything that exists in any of the other major professional sports leagues.
