Michigan Athletics switches from StubHub to SeatGeek
I (along with many of you, I'm sure) got an email from the athletic department this morning announcing that SeatGeek is now the official ticket marketplace for Michigan Athletics. I'm assuming that they offered Michigan a better deal than whaever we have with StubHub, though I have no idea what those deals look like.
My question for this board is if this will affect us fans, whether buying or selling.
My impression is that SeatGeek and StubHub are basically the same--both have easy-to-use websites, both charge exorbitant fees, StubHub maybe has a few more listings--but I figured folks here might have a better sense of what, if anything, will be different under the new regime.
Good. Loved StubHub for many years but that place has been going way downhill the last few years. SeatGeek is more trustworthy these days imho.
It's all the same. You select two tickets that show a price of $79/ea on the stadium map page, then you go to your cart to checkout and the total is $974, but you can save $5 with promo code "RAPEME" for first-time users.
Now that's funny!!
The few times I've needed to sell my tickets, StubHub has worked out OK. Anyone have thoughts about SeatGeek for selling?
And what is the problem if U-M isn't officially endorsing StubHub any more? What issues will there be for transferring tickets to or from? Certainly quite a few people will not have seen this announcement (OSU fans?) and will venture to StubHub.
This is a win for fans. Stubhub has gone way downhill in the past few years in terms of fees and ease of use. It used to be that you could pick a game, pick seats, confirm the price w/ fees and then buy. In the past few years, their app has implemented a series of 4-5 click-through screens you have to get through before you even know what the final price is. It makes browsing ticket prices super inconvenient. Seatgeek is much more user-friendly.
I believe SeatGeek only charges 10% of ticket sales, whereas StubHub charges 15%. Since I'm going to The Game this year, none of the games I'll be selling will make a meaningful difference, but it's better to pay less in fees than more.
If you have two side by side seats for the Indiana game, I am all ears.
If you’re all ears, you’re probably better off saving some money and just tuning into the radio broadcast.
I’ve never had a problem with stub hub or Ticketmaster, I can’t say the same for seat geek!
Immediately after our win against Ohio St. in 2021 I went online to buy my seats for the BIG10 championship game. Found reasonably priced tickets pretty quickly. Snatched them up, let my friends know we were going and the price. On Tuesday seat geek sends me an email that they can’t fulfill my order. I was beyond mad. So I go looking they had seats in the same section still for sale except this time they were $215.00 more a ticket. I called them but just got the run around. I was able to find 3 tickets on Ticketmaster but was still $180 more a ticket than originally planned and not the same quality.
I’m not sure I would ever use seat geek again.
Your call is important to us
Secondary ticket brokerage is such a weird market I'm not sure what would make it work best. On one hand, monopolies are generally bad so you want as many different players as possible to drive down prices - SeatGeek, StubHub, and others should all have to compete against each other on fees, customer service, etc. like any other industry.
On the other hand, consumers shouldn't have to compare ticket prices across different sites. A monopoly case could be made where all tickets sold go through a single place so buyers can easily compare prices and selection. That's basically where we are with the AD granting SeatGeek the monopoly over resale. The same way NYSE and Nasdaq have basically a monopoly over trading the securities listed on their exchanges.
On the other, other hand, each seat is unique, and there is a hard deadline when the price drops dramatically (gametime, obviously). And usually a relatively small number of tickets are available. So it's hard for any market maker to keep it liquid enough and protect both buyers and sellers. There is no single clearing price, since some tickets are more valuable than others based on location and other factors.
I basically think the fees are not really exorbitant, but necessary insurance to cover the cost of insuring all buyers and sellers are served well. When StubHub facilitates a transaction, they're taking on the risk that a) the seller won't deliver a ticket and/or b) a buyer won't pay. I'm sure it's hard for big events, maybe even harder at smaller, less liquid events (like a small concert hall).
The seller has to upload the ticket and the buyer has to use a guaranteed payment like PayPal or credit card. Where’s the risk to the broker?
I'll be open minded about the change. I've used Stub Hub to buy and sell tickets (Michigan and other events) for 13 or 14 years. I had no problems until last year when I didn't receive my money for a game. Stub Hub customer service was horrendous and after hours on the phone and multiple calls (their customer service was located out of the US), I turned to the Michigan Ticket office for help. They resolved the matter for me in about a week and the guy I talked to at the Michigan office told me that my problem was not unique. Therefore I was not at all surprised by the change. I'm not that upset by the fees in part because of the reasons noted above and in part because it is a significant convenience which has a value.
Great question. The answer is different for Sellers and Buyers. Seat Geek has half the audience that StubHub has. This means Sellers will find it more difficult to command a premium for their tickets. Buyers on the other hand should pay less given the decreased competition.
You could argue that a portion of the UofM fanbase will flow over to Seat Geek because they have to....and that's certainly important to selling UofM tickets. Ultimately losing half the buyers can only hurt demand, and you can only put so much make up on that pig.
I live out of state and went to several games per year and sold the rest of the games on Stubhub. I hope that the fanbase buying tickets will get the message and look for tickets there. The best advantage of Stubhub for buyers was that they could get instant download guaranteed tickets without worrying that the seller was trying to sell on multiple sites and may not fulfill the order. I hope that advantage will be obvious to the buyers on Seatgeek. I hope it won’t be harder to get a reasonable price on Seatgeek because I really like having season tickets.
Should I still expect to pay transaction fees that are basically the same price as my ticket?
I had a terrible experience on StubHub (basically $700 in tickets that were mailed/lost hard copy to Alaska the weekend before the show, despite buying/paying for said tix 8 months prior) so I've been going thru Seatgeek. But the guy with all the upvotes said it all...fuck the ticket resellers.
SeatGeek’s TV commercials with the “talking glutei” were really creepy, but I guess it worked because I can’t seem to unsee them…