US American football’s National Football League (NFL) has announced that its “open” ticketing system, NFL Ticket Network, is expanding to a new licensed sale channel through the formation of a partnership with Sports Illustrated Tickets.
The new deal expands the avenues through which NFL fans can secure official NFL gameday tickets, adding another officially licensed option.
Sports Illustrated Tickets is the online ticket marketplace venture of US sports publication Sports Illustrated, operating across a number of sports such as American football, ice hockey, baseball, college basketball, soccer, and golf.
NFL Ticket Network now has three officially licensed sales channels, with official ticketing partner of the league Ticketmaster, and recently renewed partner SeatGeek (which boasts a number of other NFL partnerships) already on board.
Speaking on the expansion of NFL Ticket Network, the league's senior vice president of club business development, Bobby Gallo, stated: "With long-time partners Ticketmaster and SeatGeek, and now with Sports Illustrated Tickets onboard, the NFL Ticket Network becomes an even more well-rounded ecosystem that will continue to provide value for our fans and closest partners."
David Lane, chief executive of Sports Illustrated Tickets, added: “The addition of our global ticket marketplace strengthens and expands the NFL Ticket Network, but also reinforces our commitment as a Sports Illustrated company to improving the fan experience, offering fully transparent, no fee pricing and collaborating with NFL teams to give fans a new option to purchase tickets and support their team on gameday.”
The NFL first teamed up with Ticketmaster in 2008 to create a website where fans could resell tickets for games.
Subsequently, the partnership between the pair has been renewed multiple times, most recently in 2022 in an extension running through the end of the 2025-26 season.
That latest extension helped the NFL evolve its “open” ticketing system, which allows fans to “find verified NFL tickets across multiple ticket marketplaces.”
NFL franchises also have the option to utilize Ticketmaster services through the partnership, which most recently saw the New York Giants, New York Jets, and their shared MetLife Stadium, all renew their joint partnership with the ticketing platform.
