Mar 29, 2018; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; The Toronto Blue Jays field staff prepare the field for the home opener against the New York Yankees at Rogers Centre. Mandatory Credit: Nick Turchiaro-USA TODAY Sports

In a CBC investigation, they revealed that within StubHub’s partnership with the Toronto Blue Jays, the team gets an unreported percentage of every ticket sold on the resale site. In addition, the team had been putting their own unsold tickets on StubHub and at times not only profit in marking up (scalping) ticket prices but getting a percentage of that sale.

Neither the team nor StubHub really wanted to elaborate on this part of the partnership but StubHub confirmed the Blue Jays have that part of the agreement and StubHub’s global head of communications Glenn Lehrman said, “They do very well. Let’s put it that way.”

To simplify what it is the Blue Jays are doing, they sell tickets to people and when they put their tickets on StubHub, the team gets a percentage of tickets that were sold. In addition, the Blue Jays also took the tickets that were unsold and just put them on StubHub themselves while marking up the price like any other scalper would do. So the team not only sold their tickets but also made a percentage in the transaction with StubHub and make more than face value on that ticket.

For a day like Opening Day, the Blue Jays can clean up. CBC revealed the following for their Opening Day game against the Yankees.

  • 20,519 tickets, 44.7 percent of all Rogers Centre seats, were posted for resale.
  • More than 16,085 seats were listed for at least 50 per cent above their face value.
  • The average resale markup was 205 percent.
  • 3,500 tickets were already posted on resale websites in January, a month before the box office opened.
  • The only tickets that didn’t seem to interest scalpers were those reserved for wheelchairs.

That might make for a profitable day on a day like Opening Day but for an 81 game home schedule, not every day is Opening Day. Unless you are a team going on a playoff run, chances are they aren’t selling out every game. And if you are able to, you can score some cheap tickets below face value depending on the day and whether or not that team is terrible. So chances are, for a half-full stadium, the team isn’t making any money on unsold tickets that they post on StubHub.

This may not be a problem if there weren’t laws about scalping tickets and in a situation like this, it would appear that the Blue Jays are profiting off a scenario that would normally be illegal elsewhere. There is a local law about scalping bots obtaining tickets and cap markups at 50 percent that goes into effect July 1. This could put a team in a situation where they wouldn’t want anti-scalping laws in place because that would lose a potential revenue stream even though it would potentially put fans at a disadvantage to obtain tickets and/or be unable to purchase tickets at face value.

 

[CBC]

About Phillip Bupp

Producer/editor of the Awful Announcing Podcast and Short and to the Point. News editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. Highlight consultant for Major League Soccer as well as a freelance writer for hire. Opinions are my own but feel free to agree with them.

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