Viagogo, the global secondary market ticketing platform, has announced the launch of its new AI-powered ‘Distribution Manager’ tool, which may change how partnered sports properties manage sales.
The tool allows properties to list tickets directly on Viagogo’s platform, with neither intermediaries nor API integration necessary, capitalizing on the firm’s ‘open distribution model’.
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Viagogo’s open solution can also support pricing and consumer demand projections, drawing from its historical ticketing database.
That model, Viagogo claims, brings the sports ticketing industry much closer to the airline industry, as opposed to the current system of platform-exclusive ticketing via restrictive individual partnerships.
Crucially, Viagogo partnered properties and teams utilizing the open distribution model on the site retain 100% of revenue from sale transactions due to the direct nature of the listing process.
The ticketing company, meanwhile, generates its revenue from additional charges and offerings on top of the base ticket cost, allowing partner firms to recoup what was previously lost revenue.
Owned by US company StubHub, the platform is partnered with several major sports properties, including English soccer side Manchester City, motor racing team Alpine, the European Handball Federation, and the Major League Baseball competition.
On the prospect of the new AI-powered offering, Alpine head of ticketing and event sales Alex Bailey said: “Our fans follow BWT Alpine across continents and time zones. The partnership with Viagogo puts race day tickets in front of those fans wherever they are, through a platform they can trust.
“For us, open distribution isn't just a sales channel. It's how we make sure the people who care most about this team can actually be there."
Viagogo boasts a reach of over 125 million registered users spanning more than 200 countries and 33 languages.
Speaking to Sportcal, Viagogo vice president of open distribution Shaun Stewart discussed open distribution, the distribution manager platform, and the future of the ticketing industry.
What is open distribution, and how is it changing the ticketing landscape?
“In the UK, 94% of tickets are sold on the primary side versus 6% on the secondary side. And these primaries developed exclusive paths to market where, if they did a deal with a venue, a team, or an artist, the agreement was that you could only sell through that direct consumer interface.
"What's been changing over the last couple of years, and StubHub has been key at leading this change, is what we call open distribution, which is allowing teams, venues, rights holders, artists, and promoters to directly distribute beyond just their primary, and use their primary to integrate with as many different demand chains on the planet.
“The rightsholder still has control over pricing and inventory and how it moves around the world, but these are connecting their primary system to anywhere fans would like to search and buy tickets, and so the result of this is a massive change in how you can shop in a single place and see the entire scope of tip off options that exist in the market for a fan.
"So, with StubHub and Viagogo, we've traditionally had tickets on the platform from fans who are reselling their tickets, or from intermediaries like brokers or consolidators. But now we’re adding this third source of ticket supply, which is directly from the venue or team, and so, overnight, we’re making a much wider selection of inventory available for fans to pick from when searching on platforms.”
How would you categorize the uptake of open distribution among competing ticketing platforms?
“It’s a seismic shift that's happening across the whole industry, and as much as Viagogo and StubHub would love to claim credit for this initiative and shift in distribution approach, it's industry-wide and certainly not just focused on what we're doing. But because of the size and scale of our market share, we're helping shift the industry towards what we see as a much stronger future of distribution.”
How can rightsholders such as sports properties benefit from open distribution and the distribution manager?
“When we meet with rightsholders, we show them three options of how they can work with us.
“The first option is they can consign inventory to us, just like any intermediary, as they may already do with brokers to distribute tickets around the world, except in those models, those brokers have to keep a percentage of the ticket revenue, their revenue stream for their business.
"They don't earn anything else on the ticket other than what the ticket is sold for, and so they have to take a portion of the team's or venue's revenue. In our model, if they work directly with us, they keep 100% of the ticket proceeds because we have a ticket booking fee that's added on top. That's our portion of the revenue of the transaction.
“The second option is to integrate with the primary. So we can integrate into their ticket system and just mirror the primary, so whatever is for sale on their website is also for sale now on StubHub and Viagogo, immediately, giving that [event] reach to 100 million customers around the world that they traditionally haven't had access to. So, immediately, their distribution can change, which is very positive.
“But also, with the integrations we develop, we can send those tickets to our competitors if they would like, if the rights holder would like. So we can not only help sell the inventory on StubHub and Viagogo, but we can also show it on other secondary sites to help the rights holder open up its distribution globally as much as possible.
“The third, the launch of our self-serve tool, [gives them] the ability to come to our platform and actually develop events on the platform, upload tickets, manage their inventory, and distribute their inventory without an integration into their primary. So, in some cases, they sign exclusive primary arrangements that prohibit them from integrating primary into secondary, but this gives them the ability to actually manage their inventory directly, so they can access our fans globally through our own interface.”
How important is the historical market data aspect of the distribution manager tool to rightsholders?
“It's incredibly powerful. One of the hidden weaknesses of the exclusive primary path to market model is that they don't own the customer data. The primary [ticketing partner] is the one capturing the contact details of the customer, and as a result, is the one who's able to re-market them. They also don't have as much data to make pricing decisions. That can be very impactful.
“So, when they partner with us, we try to resolve a lot of those gaps that have formed over the last couple of decades in the industry. We have more than 20 years of pricing data on how people shop and attend events, how far out from the event they book, and what type of activity happens on the same day as the event. And then we work with partners like Manchester City to help them improve their pricing strategies.
“That may mean, in some cases, you're lowering prices further out for the loyal fans who are shopping early, and then last minute, the available tickets you have the day before may be the higher price tickets you're driving. So we understand what type of strategies they want to deploy, and we help them with it, and can inform their decisions.”
What feedback have you had from partners on open distribution?
“Just in a year of offering this, we have nine of 32 baseball teams in the US that are using this model to distribute directly to fans, [alongside businesses] like Man City, Alpine, the ATG theatre group. And all of them find that they are now able to access a huge amount of global demand that they were restricted from in the past. That this wall between primaries and secondaries is finally cracking and opens up their distribution power.
“They also find that distributing through us is very cost-efficient for them. We pay the cost of credit card processing, we pay the cost of fraud, and we run customer support on the ticket purchases in question. That makes it very cost-efficient for how they distribute tickets globally. And typically they don't see what we call ‘cannibalization.’ These aren't the same customers who are shopping on the primary sites. We access a global fan base that may not even be able to read the language of the primary site, so we're able to ensure those fans have a good experience buying and identifying tickets."
How do you alter your offering between commercial partners in different sectors?
“We have to tailor and customize partnerships to meet whatever kind of financial or marketing objective the team has. I wish there were one size that fits all, but the beauty is we're incredibly flexible. Our goal is to connect your tickets to your events, to our fan base globally, and, if you want, also to the fans who search on our competitors. And then we hand it over to the team and say, ‘How would you like to access this fan base? And how would you like access to this fan base to change the performance of your business?’
“There's, there's always optimization. ‘Are there countries you wish were a larger percentage of demand? Do you wish people booked further [in advance]? Are there sections of the stadium that were harder to sell than others? Are there ancillary products you wish people bought?’
“These aren't teams that are struggling for demand. What we're helping to do is optimize and expand their demand, take it to more global markets, where they may not have access to different demographics.”
