Joshua oop North

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/boxing/article-3771154/Anthony-Joshua-defend-IBF-heavyweight-title-Manchester-promoter-Eddie-Hearn-reveals.html

Just a quickie (it's nearly home time). Nice to see AJ getting out and about. Shame no f*cker will be able to get their hands on a ticket for anything approaching face value.

DAVE667 wrote:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/boxing/article-3771154/Anthony-Joshua-defend-IBF-heavyweight-title-Manchester-promoter-Eddie-Hearn-reveals.html

Just a quickie (it's nearly home time). Nice to see AJ getting out and about. Shame no f*cker will be able to get their hands on a ticket for anything approaching face value.

BN pressed him on StubHub this week. A summary:

1. He never sells tickets above market value - it's us lot.
2. The inflated prices made him think he should have knocked them up higher to start with!
3. He will continue to work closely with StubHub.

The only card I can get near for a sensible price is Josh Taylor vs Dave Ryan in Edinburgh. And that's on C5!!

Kieran Farrell promotions, Manchester does tickets for 20 quid a pop and has had great crowds at his first 2 shows. Best way to do it imo, lets the punters buy the cheap tickets and helps build a fan base for his fighters

Hearn's stubhub links are a joke. Maybe he doesn't sell them above market value, but he doesn't release vaste swathes to the market just direct trades them to SH who go on to sell at inflated prices (and Hearn and/or Matchroom are shareholders or have a commercial relationship with SH).

I would suspect that Hearn does indeed sell them at face value to Stubhub who then sell them on at stupidly high prices. In return I see Stubhib sponsor Matchroom events so I would guess the fee they pay is ridiculously inflated compared to other sponsors.

This is how football teams get round FFP rules. They have a super rich owner who uses one of his companies to be the shirt sponsor at the massively inflate price. The team then claim its a sponsosrhip deal so they can spend it on what they like.

Prikcs the lot of them

Just in the interests of us not getting sued, what you are suggesting in your first sentence is illegal Melv. Officially Stubhub hold no inventory for these events other than those sold at face value. Where I do think they are remiss, is they are meant to monitor who is buying these tickets and have measures in place to monitor unusual buying patterns or possible criminality. Quite clearly they are extremely remiss in this, and the legislation to enforce this is laughably lax, it may as well not exist.

Where I think Hearn is culpable is in how few of his tickets make their way on General Sale. The fight pass idea is well intentioned enough but if we're being honest is a membership scheme for touts. It costs something like £30 a year to get priority tickets for his fights. It's chump change to guarantee you'll be able to scoop up tickets for fights like this weekend.

I recall reading on twitter something like 8000 tickets went on sale for Frampton Quigg. That is at the MEN, a 21,000 seat venue. I have done the maths on this every way I can and it does not make sense. If there are ten fights on the bill give each fighter 100 tickets and you've got two grand. This is generous, some of the TBAs and eastern European journeymen on the bill will not shift this and nobody needs more. I'm popular as hell and I don't have that many friends. Assume ten sponsors and give them 100 each that is another thousand, throw in another 1000 for various like sky and trainers friends etc. and you're still only at 4000.

Now it may be the case that fighters are permitted as many tickets as they can shift or likewise for sponsors, but if you're doing this you're just facilitating touting, because it is just inevitable plenty are going to fall into the wrong hands and end up on touting sites for fortunes, which is exactly that is happening for every major event.

Convenient ignorance.....

We all are guilty of it..

Anyone going to GGG v Brook and if so, what did they pay for their ticket?

A mate is travelling over from Dublin for it, ticket cost £100/€120. He said the seats are nothing special, just the bog standard ones.

£100 to watch the fight from the bogs??? FFS Hearn

DAVE667 wrote:£100 to watch the fight from the bogs??? FFS Hearn

Do you know what the cheapest ticket was at face value?

Pedro147 wrote:

DAVE667 wrote:£100 to watch the fight from the bogs??? FFS Hearn

Do you know what the cheapest ticket was at face value?

£20 to watch it through the window of someone who gets it via a dodgy stream?

Hearn normally goes down to £40 or £50.

Only difference was Wembley where the real gods seats were £15 or £20 from memory. Mine were £100 I think.

I refuse to believe Hearn hasn’t got a deal with Stubhub over these tickets. The fact they always have such variety of every ticket and abundant numbers is so suspect. If it was above board then why aren’t all the other resller sites doing the same? Some do but nowhere near the numbers Stubhub get. Viagogo for example is the same model so I will look to see how many they have next time.

Hearn is no idiot so I am sure he has something contractually in place to distance himself from any wrong doing but I just don’t believe he isn’t working with them in terms of providing them masses of tickets........in my opinion.

It just disgusts me that the ones who pay for this is the fan. It just shows a complete lack of respect and contempt for the people who makes the priks rich.

Be surprised if he is.......Both Hearns seem to be fairly straight forward guys who value reputation..

My guess is he just keeps out of it and plays dumb....

I like Hearn and I believe as well as a business man which inevitably comes first he is also a genuine boxing fan. However there was an interview with IFLTV where Kugan asked him about stubhub and according to Hearn all tickets are sold at face value and it is ordinary fans reselling at inflated prices via Stubhub. Think that was a bare faced lie. It can't be just coincidence that matchroom has such strong sponsorship links with them and they always have a shed load of tickets for the big fights.

Certainly a businessman first and boxing fan second and you can’t blame him for that. but Bellew v Cleverly 2 comes to mind when he put it on PPV. I saw what a quite an informal interview with him about it (I remember it was posted on here) and he said all the people who were complaining were Lemons. Take what you will from that but for me that shows what he really thinks about the fans who are forced to fork out their hard money to watch his events.

Also if he really was not involved at all with Stubhub then surely he wouldn’t stand for them selling tickets for his events at hugely inflated markups. He couldn’t stop it but he would certainly make a stance against it by at least telling people not to buy them. But he doesn't......hmmmmm I can’t think why

Agree Melv. The issue with Clev V Bellew stinkfest part 2 was that the first one did some of the best numbers ever for Sky paper view boxing if i am not mistaken. The mind boggles

Wasn't Cleverley v Bellew the first fight on Boxnation ??

Wasn't sure if Ex was being sarcastic. But the first fight definitely wasn't on box office.

melv500 wrote:I refuse to believe Hearn hasn’t got a deal with Stubhub over these tickets. The fact they always have such variety of every ticket and abundant numbers is so suspect. If it was above board then why aren’t all the other resller sites doing the same? Some do but nowhere near the numbers Stubhub get. Viagogo for example is the same model so I will look to see how many they have next time.

Hearn is no idiot so I am sure he has something contractually in place to distance himself from any wrong doing but I just don’t believe he isn’t working with them in terms of providing them masses of tickets........in my opinion.

It just disgusts me that the ones who pay for this is the fan. It just shows a complete lack of respect and contempt for the people who makes the priks rich.

Hearns has a partnership agreement with StubHub (make of that what you will). There's absolutely no way these shows sell out in 10 minutes - I've tried to buy tickets to a few now and there wasn't ever a sniff of actually buying a ticket at face value.

Hearn claims not to profit from this - then why go into partnership with them? Why use Stub Hub as a platform to sell "face value tickets" (which I've never seen on there)? It more or less forces fans into buying that fight pass thing to try and get first dibs.

The best way to get around this is to go to the fighters direct (they have an allocation they sell cash in hand). Should have thought of that when GGG vs Brook came about as Stuey Hall lives just down the road. Unless he whacked them on StubHub....

Makes no sense. If he doesn't profit then why let tickets to your events sell for much higher than you sell them for? Why use stub hub instead of a genuine ticket site like Ticketmaster? Also surely the fighters would be complaining if tickets were being sold way above their value and they don't see a penny of it.

Good shout on getting tickets from the fighters. I'll email David Haye as he's usually very responsive in there and see if he can sort me out.

melv500 wrote:Makes no sense. If he doesn't profit then why let tickets to your events sell for much higher than you sell them for? Why use stub hub instead of a genuine ticket site like Ticketmaster? Also surely the fighters would be complaining if tickets were being sold way above their value and they don't see a penny of it.

Good shout on getting tickets from the fighters. I'll email David Haye as he's usually very responsive in there and see if he can sort me out.

Just take your top off and start shouting "Let's Go Champ!" - he seems to get where draughts don't.

There's no way Eddie would let a potential profit pass him by - he'd sell them at the inflated price himself if he thought he was missing out to Ordinary Joes making their own profits off him.

I tried that in Wetherspoons last weekend and got my head kicked in. I'll stick to email I think

melv500 wrote:Makes no sense. If he doesn't profit then why let tickets to your events sell for much higher than you sell them for? Why use stub hub instead of a genuine ticket site like Ticketmaster? Also surely the fighters would be complaining if tickets were being sold way above their value and they don't see a penny of it.

Good shout on getting tickets from the fighters. I'll email David Haye as he's usually very responsive in there and see if he can sort me out.

If Hearn books a fight for a 20,000 seat venue he is at risk if there is only demand for 6,000 tickets as he will have obviously based the fighters purses on 20,000 or somewhere near it. By having a laissez faire attitude to touting he is allowing touts to absorb that risk. They pay him what he has priced them at, he gets the revenue he needs to make a profit and put up the sold out in 4 seconds signs. The touts then take on the risk. Terrible for us fans but a model that hugely reduces Hearn's exposure or the amount of effort or revenue he has to spend promoting the fight.

Good point but what about bills when he knows it will be a sellout? Also when he sees a sold out arena with 20k tickets sold and he knows 14k of them have paid at least double he's not going to be best pleased with his strategy. i can't see him doing that for any of his higher profile fighters.

Rowley wrote:

melv500 wrote:Makes no sense. If he doesn't profit then why let tickets to your events sell for much higher than you sell them for? Why use stub hub instead of a genuine ticket site like Ticketmaster? Also surely the fighters would be complaining if tickets were being sold way above their value and they don't see a penny of it.

Good shout on getting tickets from the fighters. I'll email David Haye as he's usually very responsive in there and see if he can sort me out.

If Hearn books a fight for a 20,000 seat venue he is at risk if there is only demand for 6,000 tickets as he will have obviously based the fighters purses on 20,000 or somewhere near it. By having a laissez faire attitude to touting he is allowing touts to absorb that risk. They pay him what he has priced them at, he gets the revenue he needs to make a profit and put up the sold out in 4 seconds signs. The touts then take on the risk. Terrible for us fans but a model that hugely reduces Hearn's exposure or the amount of effort or revenue he has to spend promoting the fight.

That model is only a fair/excusable one if Hearn is actually taking on that initial risk not immediately trading to SH for face value pre open market sale to general punters.

Depends how he chooses to look at it. If he prices them straight out of the gate at stubhub prices he will be accused of ripping people off, and rightly so. However if he prices them as he does and they subsequently go for silly money he has his excuses, I only sell them at face value, its an industry problem, nothing I can do to stop it etc etc. I am sure he does his maths and prices them at a price that when combined with the sponsorship, TV revenue etc they make him a living, and he has some cover to allow himself to still market him as a fan-friendly promoter.

Rowley wrote:Depends how he chooses to look at it. If he prices them straight out of the gate at stubhub prices he will be accused of ripping people off, and rightly so. However if he prices them as he does and they subsequently go for silly money he has his excuses, I only sell them at face value, its an industry problem, nothing I can do to stop it etc etc. I am sure he does his maths and prices them at a price that when combined with the sponsorship, TV revenue etc they make him a living, and he has some cover to allow himself to still market him as a fan-friendly promoter.

Spot on Rowley. Still bloody sucks for us lot, though.

Also why would stub hub take his risk for him? If he can't sell at face value to the public then how can stubhub sell them at a much inflated price. If Eddie doesn't want the risk then it's an even bigger risk for stubhub as they want to sell on for a profit.

Any way you look at something isn't right. Who's fault it is I don't know but I just can't believe doesn't have his hand in the stubhub honey pot somewhere down the line. Sad thing is rightly or wrongly they get there hands on loads of tickets and Mark them up at stupid rate which we end up paying for.

melv500 wrote:Also why would stub hub take his risk for him? If he can't sell at face value to the public then how can stubhub sell them at a much inflated price. If Eddie doesn't want the risk then it's an even bigger risk for stubhub as they want to sell on for a profit.

Any way you look at something isn't right. Who's fault it is I don't know but I just can't believe doesn't have his hand in the stubhub honey pot somewhere down the line. Sad thing is rightly or wrongly they get there hands on loads of tickets and Mark them up at stupid rate which we end up paying for.

It's just good old fashioned touting. They used to arrest people for doing that.

It should be illegal but that ain't happening under the current government.

Alas you are 100% correct. It annoys the fu^k out of me nothing gets done about it.

A promoter and a ticket tout in a business partnerships, and events where 30% of tickets make it to general sale. Hmmmmm......

Rowley wrote:Depends how he chooses to look at it. If he prices them straight out of the gate at stubhub prices he will be accused of ripping people off, and rightly so. However if he prices them as he does and they subsequently go for silly money he has his excuses, I only sell them at face value, its an industry problem, nothing I can do to stop it etc etc. I am sure he does his maths and prices them at a price that when combined with the sponsorship, TV revenue etc they make him a living, and he has some cover to allow himself to still market him as a fan-friendly promoter.

My point is I don't think he's doing EITHER of those options (both of which would be understandable). I believe he is directly allocating 'general sale' tickets to SH. It's not a case of general touts freakishly managing (using bots or whatever) to pilfer thousands of general sales tickets (ahead of fans wishing to actually turn up) before then uploading them to SH.

I think Hearn gives (at face value perhaps) several thousand straight to SH (not bought on the open market therefore) to indeed de-risk his exposure. His commercial relationship with SH then allows him to benefit from the upside of SH's profits from re-selling at inflated prices.

So, as with your maths, 18k tickets for a stadium, maybe 8k go to fighters. media & commercial sponsors etc, but of the 10k left only about 6k or something go on GENUINE general sale to real fans. Hence Hearn's instant sell outs.

He doesn't shift 18k in an hour, he shifts perhaps a third of that, because a third are given away and a third are 'de-risked' to SH.

Look at some of the sell-out sales in the US recently, they've typically taken 2-3 days. Brit sports fans are more voracious, but not that rabid.

TopHat24/7 wrote:

Rowley wrote:Depends how he chooses to look at it. If he prices them straight out of the gate at stubhub prices he will be accused of ripping people off, and rightly so. However if he prices them as he does and they subsequently go for silly money he has his excuses, I only sell them at face value, its an industry problem, nothing I can do to stop it etc etc. I am sure he does his maths and prices them at a price that when combined with the sponsorship, TV revenue etc they make him a living, and he has some cover to allow himself to still market him as a fan-friendly promoter.

My point is I don't think he's doing EITHER of those options (both of which would be understandable).  I believe he is directly allocating 'general sale' tickets to SH.  It's not a case of general touts freakishly managing (using bots or whatever) to pilfer thousands of general sales tickets (ahead of fans wishing to actually turn up) before then uploading them to SH.

I think Hearn gives (at face value perhaps) several thousand straight to SH (not bought on the open market therefore) to indeed de-risk his exposure.  His commercial relationship with SH then allows him to benefit from the upside of SH's profits from re-selling at inflated prices.

So, as with your maths, 18k tickets for a stadium, maybe 8k go to fighters. media & commercial sponsors etc, but of the 10k left only about 6k or something go on GENUINE general sale to real fans.  Hence Hearn's instant sell outs.

He doesn't shift 18k in an hour, he shifts perhaps a third of that, because a third are given away and a third are 'de-risked' to SH.

Look at some of the sell-out sales in the US recently, they've typically taken 2-3 days.  Brit sports fans are more voracious, but not that rabid.

I think 6k is massively overstating it. Barely any seem to hit general sale (even via that Fight Pass rubbish or O2 priority). Boils my Juan Manuel Marquez replenishment drink.

I thinks it pretty obvious that the Matchroom / Stubhub partnership amounts to a mutually profitable vehicle for inflating ticket prices. In terms of the big fights or the big name fighters, Matchroom know there is no risk of these events failing to sell so having Stubhub on board to hedge against that isnt neccessary. Its these high demand fights that only a fraction of tickets seem to actual make it out to general sale with Stubhub and the like seemingly holding them on mass mere minutes after they go on sale. No risk involved selling these events with or without Stubhub. This is how Matchroom are driving their operation. The want big overhyped events that they can make big profits off charging ppv and exploiting ticket sales at huge prices. They are not really interested in putting on regular, affordable and competitve cards on regular Sky because they cant turn the kind of profit on these that they think is worth their while. Matchroom and Sky are driving up a huge premium on boxing. Matchroom would like to do 6 or 7 really big boxing events a year - exploiting ppv, touting, extras like "fight pass" and getting plenty of free air time from Sky in between to hype the events up so they can make a killing on them.

If Hearn cared there are simple things he could do to stop this. First would be to cancel priority tickets through fight pass. That is cheap enough to set up multiple accounts and still turn a profit. Second would be to limit the amount of tickets fighters were allowed, 100 each is more than enough. Both of those things would assist hugely in ensuring more tickets made it to the general sale market.

He has no interest in doing either, as catchy says the harder tickets are to get the more driven the PPV market becomes.