Economic Instability Leads Properties and Brands to Embrace Corporate Ticket Resale
August 24, 2022A recent TicketManager blog post urged sports and entertainment rights holders to find responsible ways to be flexible and provide additional assets and benefits to brand partners as a hedge against those sponsors rethinking their investments in the light of recessionary fears and potential budget-tightening moves.
In addition to the sweeteners and incentives mentioned there, a new partner-friendly practice that can quickly shore up a relationship is gaining traction with an increasing number of properties: encouraging and supporting the resale of unused suite or sponsorship tickets.
Case in point: the Philadelphia Eagles have signed a partnership with TicketManager to provide complimentary ticket management services to all of the team’s corporate season and premium ticket holders, corporate partners and corporate suite holders, including assistance leveraging official Eagles re-seller Ticketmaster’s tools to capture value from tickets that would otherwise go unused.
As Brian Napoli, the team’s vice president of corporate partnerships, said, “We are always searching for new ways to further strengthen our relationship with Eagles fans, corporate partners and ticket buyers.”
While the Eagles are the first NFL team to sign a ticket management partner, they join the MLB Texas Rangers and the MLS Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC) in agreeing to similar deals with TicketManager this year.
Although the practice of reselling corporate tickets may once have been frowned upon, rights holders and businesses are waking up to the reality that unused inventory is a fact of life for companies with sports tickets. Even those most efficient at managing tickets are unable to use 25 percent of their inventory, while for most others that figure is nearly 50 percent.
Flipping the switch on corporate resale has allowed numerous corporate partners to ensure tickets that can’t be used don’t go to waste. For example:
- Anheuser-Busch, a company with millions of dollars in tickets, increased its ticket utilization rate from 71 percent to 97 percent when it began using TicketManager’s All Access platform to resell unused inventory
- In just one instance, a last-minute scheduling conflict left A-B with 300 tickets to a Dodgers-Giants midseason match-up. In less than two hours, those tickets were sold for $22,000.
- Within five months of using All Access for resale, a company recouped enough money to pay for all of its ticket management costs for an entire year.
- As the Detroit Tigers entered a rebuilding year in 2021, it was difficult for a company to find guests who wanted to attend early-season games in chilly Michigan. With the funds earned from selling those tickets, the company was able to purchase four tickets to take top customers to Super Bowl LVI.
Giving corporate partners the ability to earn back tens of thousands of dollars—and in some cases hundreds of thousands—by selling those tickets in a responsible manner would be a smart move in the best of times and may be a partnership-saving maneuver when times grow tough.