The NFL and Ticketmaster have struck a deal that will make Ticketmaster the official reseller of tickets for the NFL. “We are pleased to partner with Ticketmaster, the world’s leading ticketing company, to provide our fans this service,” said Eric Grubman the NFL’s Executive Vice President and President of NFL Ventures.

Because of this deal, Ticketmaster will offer a secure and safe way to resell and purchase tickets. The seller will enter in the bar code of the ticket and if it is purchased, the seller’s tickets will no longer work. Ticketmaster will then issue a new ticket from their system to the buyer. This is a huge advantage because the seller will know they are getting guaranteed tickets. StubHub has a solid system for guaranteeing tickets but Ebay has nothing. On a side note Ebay did purchase Stub Hub earlier this year. Though StubHub system is good, someone could technically sell fake tickets through their system. “Fans expect and deserve to be able to resell their tickets in a safe, convenient and legal way,” said Eric Korman, Executive Vice President of Ticketmaster.

Now the real question is will this deal kill StubHub’s and Ebay’s NFL business since they are basically the leaders in the secondary ticket market of the NFL. Ticketmaster already provides their Ticket Exchange system for the Arizona Cardinals, Buffalo Bills, Carolina Panthers, Dallas Cowboys, Denver Broncos, Detroit Lions, Kansas City Chiefs, Miami Dolphins, Minnesota Vikings, New England Patriots, New Orleans Saints, New York Giants, New York Jets, Oakland Raiders, Pittsburgh Steelers, San Francisco 49ers, St. Louis Rams and Tennessee Titans. We went and took a look at the exchange system and we don’t think in its current existence it will hurt Stub Hub and Ebay now and into the future unless they make some changes. Here are their problems and the changes that need to be made:

• Marketing: When one knows a game is sold out and they need tickets and don’t know where to go, they go straight to Google and search. (Lets use the Dallas Cowboys as an example) Right now when we search “Dallas Cowboys Tickets” in Google, StubHub and other resellers show up at or near the top. When we type “Resell Dallas Cowboys Tickets” in Google the same thing happens. Where is the Ticketmaster Ticket Exchange? Does Ticketmaster think they can just live on their name?
• Inventory: In their press release, Ticketmaster says they have a ticket exchange for the Cowboys but there is nothing on Ticketmaster.com or on the Dallas Cowboys website for the next 2 games. If you go to StubHub, there are 100s of tickets.
• Pricing: When we go to the current Ticketmaster Ticket Exchange, we can’t find pricing until we upload tickets. They should be very upfront about pricing and the percentage should be the same across the board just like StubHub who charges 15% to sell their tickets.

For all we know Ticketmaster could have these plans in the works but at this point it seems like they wasted a great deal of money to be the official secondary ticket seller of the NFL.