Matchroom & Stubhub

Not sure if this has been covered here before but can anyone explain what the relationship between Matchroom & Stubhub is?

I know Frank Warren was critical of this relationship in a recent IFL  interview, whilst i have my own opinion of FW and his reported business dealings i do think he has a point.

FW made the point that some Matchroom shows are selling out quicker than is physically possible, when he says 'physically possible' i'm assuming he is referring to the system that handles the purchasing of tickets, phone lines, websites etc.

Whilst some of these shows are 'selling out',  a lot of tickets then show up on stubhub for much more than face value. I've just checked stubhub and there appears to be an abundance of tickets for sale for Frampton v Quigg despite it being a sell out.

So what is going on?, i'm particularly peeved at this as i had planned to go to this fight but missed the boat on face value tickets and i'm not prepared to pay through the nose for lower tier.

FW made the comment that not only is something going on between Matchroom and stubhub but Matchroom are then allowing stubhub to advertise on matchroom shows therefore rubbing the fans of boxing noses in it.

Professional sellers use automated software to buy up large groups of tickets.

Scottrf wrote:Professional sellers use automated software to buy up large groups of tickets.

so thats it?, they get in there with their software and bulk buy tickets? And matchroom effectively support this by advertising stubhub on fightnight, does no one else think this is shady?

Well, the sellers are willing to take all of the risk away from Matchroom. They have no incentive to crack down on it, and fans keep supporting these types of sites by paying over the odds.

There is no incentive all round to crack down on this. Most of the secondary sites are owned by the regular on line ticketing sites such as Ticketmaster, so the current model works for them. They get their booking fee on the initial sale and their commission on the hugely inflated second sale. The promoter, as Scott rightly says mitigate their risk and also get the positive publicity of being able to say the event sold out in 15 minutes or whatever. The government have little inducement to crack down either, they get tax on the initial sale and the secondary sale. Pretty much a win, win for them.

The only people the system does not work for is the fans who get royally shafted. Should say this is not exclusively a Hearn or boxing problem, it is an entertainment industry problem, as anyone who goes to gigs will confirm. Would add though that as someone who bills himself as a fan friendly promoter Hearn would do well to explain his relationship with StubHub. Posted on a related thread he said on Twitter only 8000 tickets for Frampton Quigg were available to the public. When 14,000 tickets do not go on general sale and your major sponsor is a secondary ticketing website (who have seemingly plenty tickets available) I would suggest it is not difficult to come to some pretty unsavoury conclusions about the relationship.

Be funny to dig up some of those 606 articles from 2/3 years ago when posters claimed Eddie was "the fans promoter" and derided Warren as the anti-christ...

Said all along they are all the same these people...

Rowley wrote:There is no incentive all round to crack down on this. Most of the secondary sites are owned by the regular on line ticketing sites such as Ticketmaster, so the current model works for them. They get their booking fee on the initial sale and their commission on the hugely inflated second sale. The promoter, as Scott rightly says mitigate their risk and also get the positive publicity of being able to say the event sold out in 15 minutes or whatever. The government have little inducement to crack down either, they get tax on the initial sale and the secondary sale. Pretty much a win, win for them.

The only people the system does not work for is the fans who get royally shafted. Should say this is not exclusively a Hearn or boxing problem, it is an entertainment industry problem, as anyone who goes to gigs will confirm. Would add though that as someone who bills himself as a fan friendly promoter Hearn would do well to explain his relationship with StubHub. Posted on a related thread he said on Twitter only 8000 tickets for Frampton Quigg were available to the public. When 14,000 tickets do not go on general sale and your major sponsor is a secondary ticketing website (who have seemingly plenty tickets available) I would suggest it is not difficult to come to some pretty unsavoury conclusions about the relationship.

exactly this, i don't particularly believe one promoter has the moral high ground over the other but truth is Hearn is a snake and no matter how many strawberry stories he tells he's out to fleece boxing fans for as much as possib

Shock horror Irishbrads but that's capitalism. Hearn has a duty to his investors, stakeholders... Not 'fans' other than provide a well organised event.

As Scott said it's the touts that are the issue. Or at least the main one. Would any businessman be overly concerned as to who is paying ££££ for his tickets? eBay promote ticket reselling in the same way to a much larger audience. And as rowls says it's the same across all industries.

Give me Hearn over Warren any day of the week.

Coxy001 wrote:Shock horror Irishbrads but that's capitalism. Hearn has a duty to his investors, stakeholders... Not 'fans' other than provide a well organised event.

As Scott said it's the touts that are the issue. Or at least the main one. Would any businessman be overly concerned as to who is paying ££££ for his tickets? eBay promote ticket reselling in the same way to a much larger audience. And as rowls says it's the same across all industries.

Give me Hearn over Warren any day of the week.

yeah but as Rowley said he portrays the 'fan friendly promoter' image which is all BS, at least FW doesn't even try that one.

I was actually watching Joshua v Whyte (no i never paid for it) and was wondering why or how matchroom thought it was acceptable to advertise what is effectively a ticket touting website on one of their shows, personally i think the sheer arrogance of it is disgusting

For me it is too glib and easy to just say he has a duty to shareholders and his investors. In any business, and I don’t care if you’re HSBC, ICI, Matchroom or your local corner shop without customers you are out of business, as such you have a duty of care to treat those customers with some degree of respect and some level of care. Now as I have little interest or intention of getting myself sued so I am not suggesting Hearn is doing anything illegal through his association with Stubhub, but putting on a fight in a 22,000 capacity venue and then saying only 8,000 of those were available to fans on general sale is enough indication that something is seriously flawed in the way that Matchroom distributes tickets for their fights. The least he needs to do is clarify the nature of the relationship and how tickets are allocated, in reality that is not enough and as an exercise in customer care he should find a method by which he can ensure more tickets are available to genuine fans through ticket selling platforms (not resellers) at the initial stage. Stating the obvious but if real fans can get them at this stage the market for secondary tickets is radically reduced.

I was on here the days after Frampton Quigg tickets went on sale and to see genuine hardcore boxing fans, some of whom had booked hotels in advance missing out, or being presented with the option of paying five times face value to some faceless rip off merchant is something that absolutely does not sit right with me. With things such as PPV, fights not happening and late withdrawals boxing fans already get shafted in ways fans of other sports don’t have to suffer, adding in an inability to attend decent fights for sensible money is plainly wrong.

Rowley wrote:For me it is too glib and easy to just say he has a duty to shareholders and his investors. In any business, and I don’t care if you’re HSBC, ICI, Matchroom or your local corner shop without customers you are out of business, as such you have a duty of care to treat those customers with some degree of respect and some level of care. Now as I have little interest or intention of getting myself sued so I am not suggesting Hearn is doing anything illegal through his association with Stubhub, but putting on a fight in a 22,000 capacity venue and then saying only 8,000 of those were available to fans on general sale is enough indication that something is seriously flawed in the way that Matchroom distributes tickets for their fights. The least he needs to do is clarify the nature of the relationship and how tickets are allocated, in reality that is not enough and as an exercise in customer care he should find a method by which he can ensure more tickets are available to genuine fans through ticket selling platforms (not resellers) at the initial stage. Stating the obvious but if real fans can get them at this stage the market for secondary tickets is radically reduced.

I was on here the days after Frampton Quigg tickets went on sale and to see genuine hardcore boxing fans, some of whom had booked hotels in advance missing out, or being presented with the option of paying five times face value to some faceless rip off merchant is something that absolutely does not sit right with me.  With things such as PPV, fights not happening and late withdrawals boxing fans already get shafted in ways fans of other sports don’t have to suffer, adding in an inability to attend decent fights for sensible money is plainly wrong.

i had booked a flight from the middle east to fly back for it, i wasn't for paying through the nose for tickets either so changed the dates on my flight and used it go home for Christmas instead.

So basically when a fight like Frampton v Quigg is made the chances of a true boxing fan getting a face value ticket are pretty slim? add this to the fact that Hearn constantly contradicts himself as to whats PPV and whats not i despair considering he is the go-to man for Sky. Hearn has said in the past that its a PPV when either all the names are on one show or its a PPV when the main event has to be paid, so what was Joshua v Whyte?

Wish people would stop calling them STUBHUB and refer to their real name EBAY...

Think it says it all when they were scalping people who wanted to go to the Hurricane S andy benefit concert....

Going to take Political action to stop this and these corporations give plenty to the current administration like fellow scum Wonga..

I thought I read that matchroom gave stub hub 11,000 tickets to sell for the quigg fight. I figured they were going to sell them at face value, I'm not surprised they are scalping.

Think the idea behind it was to stop fans getting ripped off with fake tickets...

Like Truss has sais there is no political will to solve this, because if there was it is really not that hard an issue to solve. All you need to do is one of two things. One is you can say that when a person buys tickets they have to give the names of who is attending, and at the event these people have to turn up with photo ID. Believe Glastonbury have introduced this with some success. If a person then discovers they can't attend they can get a full refund up to a few days before from the seller who can then resell the ticket at full value under the same conditions.

If this is considered too difficult to implement for whatever reason put a rule in place that secondary ticketing websites cannot sell any ticket for more than 10% of face value. This is probably too low a margin to interest criminal gangs but still allows fans who can't attend events to sell their tickets on with some level of consumer protection and fans who missed out to buy tickets without paying through the nose. Easy to do and police and allows the websites to actually do what they were meant to do, allow fans to sell to other fans securely.

Rowley the wide eyed dreamer...no doubt this plan will come to fruition at the same time the Government forces Starbucks and Amazon and Vodafone to cough up all that tax they owe.

Rowley wrote:Like Truss has sais there is no political will to solve this, because if there was it is really not that hard an issue to solve. All you need to do is one of two things. One is you can say that when a person buys tickets they have to give the names of who is attending, and at the event these people have to turn up with photo ID. Believe Glastonbury have introduced this with some success. If a person then discovers they can't attend they can get a full refund up to a few days before from the seller who can then resell the ticket at full value under the same conditions.

If this is considered too difficult to implement for whatever reason put a rule in place that secondary ticketing websites cannot sell any ticket for more than 10% of face value. This is probably too low a margin to interest criminal gangs but still allows fans who can't attend events to sell their tickets on with some level of consumer protection and fans who missed out to buy tickets without paying through the nose. Easy to do and police and allows the websites to actually do what they were meant to do, allow fans to sell to other fans securely.

Glasto actually requires photo registration in advance of purchasing which needs updating every 5 years from memory. So pretty tough to tout. Only get one chance/window to return, a few months before th event though.

iTunes festival, or whatever it's called these days (the free one at the Roundhouse), does something similar - register by name and, I think address, and you have to give ID on arrival to convert your ticket to a stamp. Tickets can be handed back right up until the day and walk-ins are allowed to queue until event start for unused or day return tickets. Great system, though not really focussed on profitability.