Luann Lasalle, Canadian Press, Tuesday 10/28/08

This kind of electronic box office has been online since about the mid-1990s and has become a multibillion-dollar business with sites like TicketsNow, StubHub and RazorGator usually charging a fee for the resold ticket.

A new player called LiveStub.com is now in the game, trying to set itself apart from the competition by not putting a fee or commission on the resale of tickets by fans.

LiveStub co-founder and CEO Michael Hershfield said the secondary ticket market has always been based on a commission for reselling.

His company offers free transactions between individual buyers and sellers, either face-to-face or by mail.

There has to be an element of trust, said the Toronto-based Hershfield.

"There's no hiding on LiveStub," he said. "The market bears accountability. Your name is as good as gold here. If you sell bad tickets, you're not longer going to be able to sell on LiveStub."

Hershfield said fans who have used the site "can say this person ripped me off and the user is removed."

LiveStub allows ticket brokers, such as StubWorld, Barry's Tickets and Star One, to list their tickets on the site. Buyers contact these brokers through LiveStub and purchase their tickets directly from sellers offline. LiveStub doesn't charge sellers to list their tickets and doesn't take any commissions on these sales.

It also has a relationship that allows consumers to purchase tickets from competitor TicketsNow, because Hershfield said when LiveStub recently launched it had no ticket inventory and wanted to make sure users wouldn't leave the site without finding tickets to major events.

"Eventually, LiveStub plans to only display tickets listed by its users," he said.

So how does LiveStub.com hope to make money?

Hershfield said the plan is to put ads on the site, and to charge professional ticket brokers who use the site for a low monthly fee.

He estimated that LiveStub has about 20,000 tickets posted on its site and about 2,000 visitors daily.

"I believe we will have a million visitors on our site monthly by 2010."

U.S.-based Forrester Research said the ticket resale business was a natural one to move online.

"What's driving this growth? The web's democratization of ticket acquisition, rising consumer comfort with purchasing tickets online, and increased competition in the online secondary ticketing marketplace," said its report on the future of online secondary ticketing.

The dominant U.S. market of online secondary ticket sales is expected to reach $4.5 billion by 2012, with a compound annual growth rate of 12 per cent over the next five years, said Forrester, a technology and market research company in Cambridge, Mass.

Forrester retail analyst Sucharita Mulpuru said LiveStub.com has found a new way to resell tickets.

"If the focus is on Canada and there's no incumbent player, I think that they probably have a pretty open slate, they have a pretty good shot at achieving success," said Mulpuru, who co-authored the report.

"If they're planning on capturing the same American audience that a lot of these other ticket sites have, I think that's much tougher because how do you get traffic, how do you get a good supply of merchandise or tickets that are at the cheapest price? That's the challenge."

Mulpuru said the primary and secondary ticket markets will start to merge and ticket prices will likely go up for sought-after events as a result.

"You will start to see a decline in scalping and ticket brokers being able to handle that excess load and you'll even see venues and artists themselves controlling the trading of tickets and that will be a big shift in the market," she said.

LiveStub has eight employees in total and its development partner is Sixty Four Eights Group in Romania

He said one of the site's backers is Morten Lund, a key investor in Skype, the software that allows users to make phone calls over the Internet.

Steve Tilley, Toronto Sun, Edmonton Sun, Calgary Sun, Ottawa Sun, Monday 10/20/08

With apologies to the lyrical stylings of one Mr. Tracy "Ice-T" Marrow, scalpin' ain't easy.

Or maybe it is easy, but the cost of being a scalper -- a tolerated pariah, right down there with accidental injury lawyers -- is certainly high. Nobody really likes you, those who engage in business with you mainly do so out of necessity, and for every obscenely marked up Madonna ticket you peddle, you might get stuck with 20 Michael Buble ducats that you can't unload.

To add injury to insult, reselling tickets through an online broker can mean paying service fees and commissions as high as 20% of the selling price.

Enter LiveStub.com, a recently launched and Canadian-based competitor to established sites like eBay-owned StubHub.com and ticketing behemoth TicketMaster's TicketsNow.com.

LiveStub has two attractive hooks: You don't need to register in order to buy or sell a ticket, and it doesn't charge commissions or fees. So if you're reselling a hot concert ticket for $500, that 20% translates to $100 you don't have to pay to the online broker. Assuming your conscience is OK with selling a ticket for $500 in the first place.

Although LiveStub might make scalpers -- sorry, ticket resellers -- happy, it's also a boon to the average Joe and Jane who just want to quickly and easily unload extra tickets, especially if they're not looking to make a profit.

The site's reasonably intuitive interface makes it easy to search by city, date or specific concert, sporting event or show, choosing whether you want to buy tickets or sell them. If buying from a LiveStub-approved broker, you're sent directly to a purchase page; if it's from a private seller, you fill out a form that tells the seller how to contact you directly.

An extremely useful widget called LivePrice also lets sellers enter information about the tickets they're holding, right down to the section and row numbers of the venue, then spits out the optimal asking price based on current supply and demand.

Despite its ease of use, the site still has a few quirks. For instance, if you set your location to a city that doesn't have a ton of ticketed events coming up, LiveStub displays an odd hodgepodge of events from all over the continent. So if I'm in Edmonton, I can get tickets to New Kids on the Block at Rexall Place ... or Natasha Bedingfield in San Antonio ... or a Boise State Broncos college football game in Idaho?

Curiously, many of the tickets being offered for sale by LiveStub itself divert you to rival Ticketmaster's TicketsNow site when you click on the "Buy now" button (and we had problems getting that feature to work at all when using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer or Safari, though it could have simply been an issue with our browser's pop-up blocker settings.)

Still, the pluses outweigh the minuses, and it's nice to see a ticket reselling site with more of an of-the-people, for-the-people vibe.

http://www.torontosun.com/news/weird/2008/10/20/7141776-sun.html

Tim Kiladze, Torontoist, Wednesday 10/15/08

Fed up with Ticketmaster’s ticket monopoly and service charges? So are AC/DC fans and many other concertgoers and sports lovers. But while the ticket giant maintains its prominence in the primary market, a secondary ticket arena is quickly developing online. Contrary to Ticketmaster’s facilitation of ticket sales between artists and the public, secondary market players expedite the re-sale of tickets that have already been purchased.

This derivative market is no amateur operation: expected profits in the space are so high that eBay recently bought StubHub.com for $310 million and Ticketmaster acquired TicketsNow for $265 million. By simply providing an online forum that connects potential buyers and sellers with one another, these sites have flourished and are expected to continue growing. Unlike the scalpers standing outside of stadiums, though, some of the sellers on these sites are people who might have accidentally bought too many tickets because their friends bailed, or are ticket holders who can no longer attend their event. Unfortunately for purchasers, the sites require them to pay up for missing the original sale by charging service fees around 10% of the ticket price (sellers pay 15%).

Enter LiveStub. Co-founded by Torontonian Michael Hershfield and his Chicago business partner Levi Bergovoy, LiveStub is a secondary ticket start-up with a fresh vision for the online model. Most distinctively, LiveStub does not charge any commissions. Run out of a Soho Street office in Toronto, the firm has always strived to differentiate itself from its competitors. "I always thought," says Hershfield in a phone interview, "there was something missing in the secondary market space." Born and raised in Vancouver, Hershfield got frustrated whenever he tried to buy event tickets back home because "there was no way to connect with the seller other than Craigslist." His frustration also stemmed from sellers insisting on contact via e-mail because he had trouble getting a hold of them just hours before events started.

Although technology and other secondary ticket sites have developed since his time in Vancouver, Hershfield never forgot what he felt was missing from the market. Despite his law school degree and his Bay Street legal experience, he finally decided to give an entrepreneurship a shot in January of this year. Understanding he couldn't do it alone, Hershfield found a partner in Bergovoy, whom he met through a cousin in New York.

To this day, both men live in different cities and communicate incessantly via e-mail, Skype, BlackBerry pinning, and text messages. Each co-founder assumes a different role within the firm: Hershfield's legal background enables him to focus on the company's legal and administrative affairs while Bergovoy, a seasoned entrepreneur, focuses on strategy. To test the waters (of their relationship and the idea itself), the two men launched a sample site in January. To their surprise, the response was strongly positive. Taking the user feedback from this trial run into account, Hershfield, Bergovoy, and their out-sourced Romanian web developers eventually launched the final version of their site.

Unlike its competitors, LiveStub does not involve itself in the delivery of tickets. Once a buyer and seller find each other and they agree on a transaction, LiveStub sends a text message that contains a code to both parties that they must enter into the site. This allows the company to track the exchange and to hold the buyer and seller accountable. The site also includes a Google Maps application that allows buyers to enter their location and determine how far they are from sellers.

Because LiveStub doesn't charge commissions, the company has had to look beyond conventional revenue sources. In the words of Hershfield: "we believe the ticket shouldn't be the be-all and end-all revenue generator." So far, the co-presidents have identified three potential income streams. The first of these are power brokers. Although ordinary people do sell their tickets on the site, Hershfield doesn't deny that LiveStub will target North America's 4,500 ticket brokers who buy and sell en masse. Some of these brokers will likely become power sellers on LiveStub and the company will charge these big names posting fees. LiveStub also intends on expanding its advertising space as its popularity increases. Finally, Hershfield stresses the revenue potential stemming from relationships with music companies and buyers. He hopes that one day the site will be able to offer a buyer much more than just a ticket. As he sees it, "why don't you build a relationship with the buyer and sell a DVD of the concert when it comes out?"

From week one, LiveStub hit the ground running. This is in large part because of its seed capital from Morten Lund, one of the first investors in Skype. With Lund’s name came blog chatter, and from blog chatter came newspaper coverage. As the ball continues to roll forward, LiveStub appears well-positioned to take claim to a substantial portion of the secondary ticket market and it is getting mention from big names like Sports Illustrated. Sadly, a tanking economy may limit the demand for pricey entertainment tickets at this precise moment when LiveStub needs to establish its revenue streams.

On the bright side, falling incomes may not mean there’s no need for a secondary market—ticket prices may simply decrease to meet consumer demand. Luckily for LiveStub, this won't hurt its commission-adverse model. Further, the site’s intricate differences from its competitors and the company’s position as a first mover in the space will also help it to weather a near term storm. Because of this, the Toronto start-up might just become a North American powerhouse; at the very least, it’s certainly poised with potential.

http://torontoist.com/2008/10/livestub_plays_by_new_ticket_rules.php#more

Pablo S. Torre, Sports Illustrated, Wednesday 10/08/08

If you're a typical sports fan -- you know, the kind who worries about gas prices, tuition and the trade deadline -- New York's new stadiums might look as if they belong behind a boutique window.

In the Bronx looms the skeleton of Yankee Stadium 2.0, a coliseum with half as many bleacher seats as its predecessor but more than three times the luxury boxes. In Queens, the Mets traded Shea's 20,420-seat hull of an upper deck for Citi Field and its 54 suites, burnished by leases priced firmly in the six figures. Even the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, future home of the Nets, will have 118 luxury suites in a venue designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry. And across the Hudson River? The Jets' and Giants' new Meadowlands Stadium, opening in 2010, has incorporated personal seat licensing -- the process by which fans pay somewhere between $1,000 and $25,000 for the sheer right to buy season tickets. (It's an investment opportunity!)

So what about this economic downturn, you ask? How can these teams upgrade their arenas so strikingly amid government bailouts and a subprime mortgage crisis and the declining dollar?

The tough economic times are affecting the different leagues in different ways. The NBA and NHL have been proactive in trying to keep ticket prices affordable. College football fans have remained fiercely loyal to their teams, but schools are taking a hit with higher travel costs. Meanwhile, NASCAR and high school sports have felt the economic downturn the most.

Sports aren't recession-proof anymore, but all in all, the major pro sports have flourished while other sectors have atrophied. Last season, the multibillion-dollar NFL set an all-time attendance record for the sixth-consecutive year, while baseball also enjoyed its highest spring-training numbers in '08. Impressively, MLB and the NBA then followed up their '07 figures -- the leagues' third- and fourth-consecutive attendance records, respectively -- by effectively holding constant, dipping this past year by statistically insignificant marks of between one and two percent.

"If we look throughout history," Clemson economist Raymond Sauer said, "the relationship between attendance and the economy does not appear to be cyclical."

What makes these milestones even more historic is tickets cost consumers more than ever. Team Marketing Report calculates that it now takes $396.36 for a typical family of four to attend an NFL game, $281.90 for the NBA and $191.92 for MLB -- each mark an all-time high. (Gas not included, naturally.) And economists tell SI.com that the gate will continue to boom.

Why? A rise in popularity is only one reason. Despite today's wilting economy, the reality is that our most popular sports are also climbing the social ladder. Higher-end customers are gladly paying more and more to take middle class consumers' old seats at the game -- and for the time being, at least, they have the disposable income to keep the turnstiles spinning. Said Temple economist Mike Leeds,"Joe Sixpack is becoming a thing of the past."

A look in the stands

If you've recently heard a native Bostonian lament "Fenway isn't Fenway anymore," you're not alone. Though the charming 96-year-old edifice has survived amid rumors of a Yankee Stadium-type reconstruction (and yes, the prospective blueprint, abandoned in 2005, included twice as many luxury boxes), the atmosphere nowadays still seems palpably different from a decade ago. Less authentic, even.

At Fenway -- as elsewhere around the country -- surging ticket prices and the team's success have seemingly drained institutional memory, bringing in wealthier fair-weather fans and ushering out the diehards. The addition of Green Monster seats in 2005 was an endearing gesture, to be sure, but it also created some of the priciest tickets in the house. That's no accident: Ever since Baltimore's Camden Yards ignited the stadium-building revolution in 1992, the architectural designs of arenas have precisely targeted a demographic that wears pinstripes -- and not the ones on a replica jersey.

"If this downturn continues to have less of an impact on sports than previous periods," Leeds said, "it's in part because in terms of gate attendance, the business has hitched its wagon to the higher-end customer."

All of it adds up to a skewing of fans we might have expected to see at games. At law firms and banks, the pro sporting event has become a full-on social and networking experience that signals class and cultural currency. No franchise would eliminate the bleachers altogether, of course; that would be a public relations nightmare. But in replacing the multi-purpose, municipal ballpark with a breed of compact, single-use arenas, teams can raise prices and make cheap seats less plentiful all at once.

Consider the NFL season-ticket holder. For many teams, waiting lists for season tickets stretch for miles, ready to be bequeathed from generation to generation. But thanks to the one-two-three punch of tighter incomes, surging ticket prices and personal seat licenses, lifers like Jim Merritt, 45, now have a decision to make. The 23-year Jets season-ticket holder has been tailgating for decades, but now he wonders if he should buy the one-time PSLs (in his case, a projected $5,000 for each of his three seats) just so he can buy his tickets (for a projected increase to $120 per seat, per game, up from $80 this year) and required parking pass (another $20 per game).

"I'm not affluent -- I mean, I do fine -- but at what cost do I want to see these games?" Merritt says. "At some point, do I want to put that money toward something else? Should my family go to Europe on vacation for a month instead? My conscience may not let me buy these things. And what they're doing is pricing out the people who really care if the team wins or loses."

Merritt has yet to make his decision, which speaks, at the very least, to the singular love of sports that still drives this country. But for the middle class, the strategy behind season tickets has permanently evolved. If you keep them, you're being handicapped more than ever before; and with the institution of PSLs, which can also be sold off at their owner's whim, the net effect is to raise prices for everyone else in the primary and secondary markets.

"At first, I used to go to as many games as possible and take my friends for pure enjoyment, and I never looked to sell tickets or make a profit," Merritt said. "Now the Jets are essentially telling me that a PSL is an 'investment opportunity for the future.' Do I even want to worry about making money like that? Do I want to worry about needing to sell off certain tickets and boosting them to a certain price?"

What it takes to get there

Adding further to the pressure on fans is another cost on the rise: transportation. The peripherals surrounding sports, particularly in non-metropolitan areas, are becoming more and more expensive, from the climbing cost of gasoline to the price of food.

It's no coincidence that a number of baseball teams like the Texas Rangers responded to this reality in 2008, offering promotions such as $5 gas cards with the purchase of a ticket, all-you-can-eat seats and two-for-one specials. "It's a recognition by owners and league heads that sports for certain people is not really recession-proof -- even though it may be recession-resistant," said Leo Kahane, editor of the Journal of Sports Economics.

Economists say you should thus expect to see fewer families of four at the stadium. More people who are single and more fans who will go out with a group of eight-to-10 friends, spending more than $100 each and treating the game as a one-off experience.

"Already, if you turn on the television today, I don't think you're seeing the same families from 10 or 15 years ago," Colorado College economist Aju Fenn said. "With all the costs involved, they just may not go to as many games as before."

And if you can't afford to go? Good news. Luckily for the health of the teeming sports-industrial complex, fans priced out of the stadium might still spend to follow the action, whether it's on HD television, through a special cable package, on satellite radio, via cell phone or online. From the hot-stove to the preseason, corporations presently have more opportunities than ever to deploy tentacles that draw fans into the game and generate revenue, without ever giving them a seat. MLB's Advanced Media subsidiary, which runs its online and digital operations, is reportedly worth $450 million alone.

"People across the country are seeing their disposable income being whittled away," said UNC Charlotte economist Craig Depken. "So they're beginning to ask themselves: Do I really need to go? My guess is that if you stand out on some street corner and asked average people how many games they physically traveled to last year versus this year, you'd see a real difference."

Premier entertainment

We are far removed from the $6 tickets of Super Bowl I in 1967, a game played in front of 31,054 empty seats at the L.A. Coliseum and from the Yankees playing the Red Sox at Fenway in front of 11,000 people, as happened more than once in 1960. Nowadays, such scenes are unimaginable.

Last NFL season, for instance, advertisers competed to fork over $2.7 million for 30 seconds of Super Bowl commercial airtime. This year, with five months remaining until Super Bowl XLIII, NBC has already one-upped itself, selling 85 percent of its advertising inventory at a record-high $3 million per 30-second slot. Said NBC's head of ad sports sales, Seth Winter: "We see the end zone right now."

Regrettably, most fans can't say the same. The price for a seat at Super Bowl XLII was $700. On the online reseller StubHub.com, one customer actually traded $90,000 in February for 14 seats to watch the Patriots and Giants in Glendale, a mark-up of 918 percent per ticket. As Michael Hershfield, founder of the competing site LiveStub.com, once quipped, "You gotta mortgage your home to get into the game."

In that spirit, eBay bought StubHub for $310 million in early 2007 ($74 million more than J.P. Morgan paid for Bear Stearns in March and $60 million more than Barclays paid for Lehman Brothers' North American investment banking and trading unit in September). On StubHub's Web site, the World Series (average secondary ticket price: $1,036), BCS Championship ($1,362) and Super Bowl ($3,540) each sparked traffic in excess of 1,000 seats sold, with the latter two events setting all-time company records for sheer dollar volume moved. This July, StubHub moved its 15 millionth ticket (a Red Sox-Yankees ticket for July 4, if you were wondering).

But there's more. In perfect synergy, the Jets announced an unprecedented partnership with StubHub last month, wherein the best seats at the new stadium -- dubbed the "Coaches Club," complete with "private 20,000 square foot bar and lounge designed by Nobu architect David Rockwell" -- will be awarded via auction. It takes $5,000 per PSL to have the chance to bid.

The bottom line

The harsh truth is that only when those precious luxury suites start to go unclaimed -- thus portending a loss of corporate windfall -- will leagues truly begin to worry. For the time being, they have the audience, the revenue and an ever-visible, ever-popular product.

"A lot of us behave like we're addicted to sports. We live our lives through it," Southern Utah economist Dave Berri said. "Just think about the things we support with bumper stickers. No one has a car that declares that they're a fan of Starbucks or Tom Cruise."

Recently, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell warned of a potential slowdown in an internal memo. While he stressed that individual teams' bottom-line budget projections will be secure for the coming fiscal year, he conspicuously observed a simple detail that has long been true for other American businesses: "Costs are rising and ... revenues are under pressure."

If the economy doesn't recover soon, sports executives fear corporations will ultimately scrutinize shrinking margins and decide how important it is to have a physical presence at games, whether it be through advertising, naming rights, luxury boxes or corporate season tickets.

"While we have seen dramatic growth in recent years for things like corporate hospitality and sponsorships, we are worried about that continuing," Red Sox executive vice president Sam Kennedy told the SportsBusiness Journal. "We haven't seen any dramatic cut, although we have had some 2009 planning with sponsors who have told us stories about their business that aren't pretty."

For the time being, the turnstiles will continue to spin -- even if it's no longer the average fan who's coming through the gate.

Steve Pomeranz, National Public Radio (NPR), Monday 10/06/08

Andrew Huff, Gapers Block, Friday 10/03/08

Looking for tickets to the playoff games? Or maybe a concert? Ticket start-up LiveStub might be your best bet -- and they don't charge a service fee.

http://www.gapersblock.com/merge/archives/2008/10/02/got-two-or-hund/

Amy O'Brian, Vancouver Sun, Winnipeg Free Press, Regina Leader Post, Saturday 09/27/08

Charles Wilcox, NY Daily News, Saturday 09/06/08

Dealing ducats

Those having a hard time finding tickets to shows or sporting events without getting hit by extra charges have a new alternative.

A Web site launched last month, LiveStub, is offering to help ticketholders resell tickets without the commission charge of StubHub or rival services, or the clutter of craigslist.

The free site enables the user to sort tickets by price and location, according to company officials.

However, the site won't handle ticket transactions — buyers and sellers will have to seal the deal themselves.

http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2008/09/06/2008-09-06_moneyzone.html

Staff Writer, Thrillist, Tuesday 08/26/08

Websites improve by incremental but important steps -- Friendster was the premier people-connector, 'til its "Profile" was trumped by adultfriendfinder's helpful "likeitinthebutt?" tab. Continuing the march of progress with event tickets is LiveStub.

The next step in the StubHub/TicketsNow evolution, Stub's a Chi-based secondary ticket marketplace, stripped of annoyances (time-wasting online registration) and boned up with tools to help you accomplish everything from snagging Bears tickets, to scoring seats at the Lewis Black show, to selling back Lewis Black seats once the drugs wear off. Click a general tab (All Events, Sports, Concerts, Theater), winnow down (Most Popular, Newly Added, Events Happening Soon), choose an event, and then get to the frugal-minded good stuff: graphs showing total tickets listed, popularity, and average prices over upcoming days, which taken together'll let you to gauge the risk of waiting for you and your girl's Wicked tix to drop $40, or determine when they'll drop safely to "Unavailable". On the sell side, Stub's strongest tool is its "LivePrice" widget: enter the pertinent deets (event, date, seat/row numbers) and it'll quickly spit back a suggested average selling price based on supply/demand -- a term that would make you drive back to your college frat house and fall asleep on the couch out of habit.

Right now the majority of Stub's stash is sourced from other merchants, but they soon hope to source all their own tickets and make all sales commission-free -- a blessing if you left "likeitinthebutt?" set to "No".

Get your buying and selling on at LiveStub.com

http://www.thrillist.com/archives/2008/08/livestub_chi_chicago_culture_events_services_sports.html

Staff Writer, Hypebot.com, Tuesday 08/26/08

 LiveStub.com's goal is to change ticket resales with a free online service that also makes the transaction more transparent; and Morten Lund, the Dane whose early investment helped propel Skype, is putting his financial muscle behind it.

The success of a site like this comes with increased usage which thus far is light in some locales, but the potential is huge given the value that the sites functionality the site delivers.  And how long will it be before some smart artist (are you reading this Trent?) eschews kickbacks, pleases fans and makes LiveStub the exclusive official reseller, The site's features include:

Dan Kaplan, VentureBeat, Monday 08/25/08

However, LiveStub, a just-launched start-up out of Toronto and Chicago, hopes to take a blowtorch to all of them. The company has decided to do away with commissions entirely and make the exchange of tickets free. Morten Lund, an early investor in Skype, has invested an undisclosed amount of angel funding to get the company off the ground.

LiveStub’s site has a few advantages other than its price. Unlike its counterparts, it does not require users to register, making a one-time transaction significantly faster. Second, despite the occasional flaw, LiveStub’s interface is generally simpler and cleaner. It’s just a search bar and a list of tickets, which you can filter based on popularity, the date the tickets were added and how soon the event is coming up. Its process is also somewhat more transparent. When you search for tickets, LiveStub produces a graph that lets you see the event’s average ticket price or popularity over time. Another nice feature lets you quickly find out how much your ticket is worth.

But all of these features are easily imitable. The zero-commission is the only differentiator that truly threatens the competition, but it certainly seems like a big threat. Despite the fact that the site launched today, I was able to find tickets to Ice Cube’s show tomorrow on LiveStub but not on StubHub, and they were available on TicketsNow for the same price. After an unscientific few searches across all of the sites, it seems that ticket prices were lower on LiveStub, but not always and not by much.

Assuming LiveStub gets significant traction — and if the market likes cheaper services, it should — consistently lower prices and possibly even greater availability should become the norm. That being said, StubHub and TicketsNow have existing relationships with brokers and sports teams, plus they have the power of huge companies behind them. Craigslist also has a strong position, too, but I don’t expect most of these advantages to last.

The lingering question, of course, is whether or not LiveStub’s model will sustain itself. The company says at some point in the future, it will add premium services for power sellers and targeted advertising to buyers, but only after it has achieved critical mass, but this plan seemed a bit vague.

As it happens, Morten Lund seems to have a penchant for companies offering zero-commission transactions in industries dominated by commissions. He previously invested in Zecco, which charges nothing for stock trades and has gone on to raise $35 million over two rounds.

LiveStub, Press Release, Sunday 08/24/08

CHICAGO, Aug 25, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Morten Lund, the Danish investor who helped to propel the VoIP communications service Skype to worldwide success, has turned his sights on the business of reselling tickets by putting his financial muscle behind LiveStub.com, a new web site designed to revolutionize the secondary ticket industry.

When Levi Bergovoy launched LiveStub with Michael Hershfield in January, the duo wanted to simplify the secondary ticket market for both buyers and sellers. Other ticket resale sites tack on additional fees of up to 25 percent that cut into sellers' profits and raise costs for buyers. LiveStub allows users to post their listings for free, cutting out what Hershfield calls "glorified middlemen."

"We wanted to bring some order and make it as efficient and easy as possible for people to sell tickets," Hershfield said, adding that "Unlike other sites, LiveStub has zero commission on tickets posted by fans."

It was Bergovoy's strategy of making LiveStub efficient, easy, and free-to-post that attracted Angel investor Morten Lund, who in the past invested in the zero-commission online stock trading site Zecco.

"It is time for a 'fan driven ticket site' that was truly created with the needs of the fans, both buyers and sellers, in mind," stated Lund, who has been described in business circles as an "archangel investor," startup "ideologist" and "visionary." "By offering a platform that quickly and efficiently connects buyers and sellers based on location, and does not attach inflated fees for either party, LiveStub will help grow the secondary ticket market amongst the general public," Lund said.

Lund has co-invested in 80 high-tech start ups in the last decade. Skype, bought by eBay for $2.6 billion in 2005, is the most famous of his ventures. Lund's investment in LiveStub will quickly propel it to the top of a secondary ticket market that sees almost $5 billion in annual sales.

"Morten Lund is recognized as one of the premiere angel investors in the world," Hershfield said. "We are lucky to have him onboard and can only grow from here."

Bergovoy and Hershfield have built LiveStub on four principles to simplify the secondary ticket market and separate LiveStub from its competitors:

Cost: LiveStub allows sellers to list their tickets easily and quickly at no cost.

Transparency: LiveStub will provide the intelligent tools to ensure that sellers list their tickets at the best prices.

Functionality: features make it easier for buyers to quickly find the best tickets at the best prices and LiveStub will ensure that fans find additional events both now and in the future.

Communication: LiveStub will provide buyers with the best tools to connect with sellers directly.

Visitors will find a host of features that set LiveStub above other ticket sites. The site's geo-location feature tracks each user's IP address to tailor each visit for that specific user, as well as remember preferences and recent searches for future use.

Using a formula based on the number of searches, number of tickets posted, and number of user inquiries, LiveStub can determine the most popular events in each user's area, making the site an invaluable resource for people to find out what events are coming to their communities.

A feature that will save buyers time and money is LiveStub's LivePrice/Ticket Evaluator, which allows users to find out what their tickets are actually worth on the secondary market.

All this is part of Bergovoy and Hershfield's goal to make the secondary ticket market "Fast, efficient, and transparent" with LiveStub.com and the help of its new Angel investor.

SOURCE LiveStub

 http://www.LiveStub.com

Copyright (C) 2008 PR Newswire. All rights reserved

Petrina Crockford, TicketNews.com, Monday 07/21/08

According to statistics from Forrester Research and Ticketmaster, which were discussed during a May meeting with Ticketmaster, TicketsNow and brokers, only 14 percent of people participate as buyers on the secondary market. Opportunity to reach this demographic is ripe.

Enter LiveStub, a new online ticket brokerage launching this week that hopes to take advantage of these opportunities through a unique platform that connects buyers and sellers directly and free of charge. LiveStub President and co-founder Levi Bergovoy told TicketNews that LiveStub grew out of "personal experience and frustration" with ticket resale websites, many of which charge fees for their services or lack accountability clauses to police sellers. "It occurred to us there is a better way to connect buyers and sellers," he said. So together with CEO Michael Hershfield, Bergovoy founded LiveStub with an eye towards creating an easy, intuitive platform that offers a fast and free direct connection to tickets and ticket sellers.

Though linking buyers and sellers directly and without a fee is not a new business model, Bergovoy said that LiveStub will differentiate itself from similar web sites by providing unique features and tools. "It's an evolving marketplace and we'll be there to meet the needs," he said. "We're trying to use technology to make this a much easier experience. Subtle touches can make all the difference."

Some features unique to the website are data modules on every events page that will display ticket volume and popularity; Google Maps that locate sellers in relation to the buyer's location; and IP recognition that tailors the website to the visitor's location. Registration on the site will be optional and free, though all transactions will require the input of a cell phone number. LiveStub will send a text message containing a code to the cell phone; the buyer or seller then inputs this code before buying/selling tickets, enabling LiveStub to track the transaction, ensure quality, and hold both buyer and seller accountable. LiveStub will also use this unique tracking method to reward top sellers. These tools will be available to everyone, and this, said Bergovoy "will allow the efficiency of the marketplace to win."

Though originally conceived as a business that connects individual buyers and sellers, Bergovoy said that the business has branched out beyond its original concept to include brokers. Toward this end, the site will provide brokers with tools to connect directly to buyers. Registered users, for example, can create their own storefront on the LiveStub web site. According to Bergovoy, this feature has small brokers—especially those without web sites—excited. Other capabilities aimed at brokers are bulk uploading tools and easy-to-access data and statistics.

Bergovoy is quick to stress that LiveStub is free. Revenue will be generated by reselling inventory and, in the future, by offering premium accounts and features.

LiveStub first launched in January—"quickly and cheaply," said Bergovoy. (Among the initial investors was Morton Lund, a key Skype investor.) Almost immediately, the site received a large amount of traffic, especially from brokers. Fueled by the success of the test run, Bergovoy and Hershfield decided to tinker with the site and add more unique features to better situate it in the market.

"The secondary market is still growing rapidly," Bergovoy said. "Most individuals have not gotten involved in the secondary space; some are not even aware it's legal, for the most part. We feel very confident there is huge room for growth on the individual level. We want to grab a lot of market share, grab the individuals that haven't participated in the secondary market."

John Klotz, Thatradio.com, Monday 06/23/08

Matt Simmons, Financial Post / National Post, Monday 05/05/08

Vinnee Tong, Associated Press, Tuesday 01/29/08

Asking prices for the Feb. 3 game range from $2,450 to $19,446 at StubHub, a unit of eBay Inc. and the biggest of the online resellers. Officials there say the average price so far is $4,300 for tickets that the National Football League originally priced at either $700 or $900.

“It appears our face value is underpriced based on demand and what people are willing to pay,” said NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy, who seems resigned to the fact that the league is mostly powerless to stop the profitable turnover of tickets.

Marcel Nadeau of Rehobeth, Mass., said he paid $29,385 to reseller RazorGator for a package that includes three hotel nights and breakfasts, transportation to and from the game, a gift package, and tickets for him and his two sons.

“I’m confident the Patriots will win,” Nadeau said in explaining why he is willing to shell out the big bucks. But even if they don’t, his next stop is already lined up: “On to Vegas we go.”

As many states have repealed laws banning ticket scalping and buyers like Nadeau seem immune to sticker shock, corporate America is jumping on the bandwagon in a big way. One of StubHub’s competitors, TicketsNow, is being acquired for $265 million by Ticketmaster, owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp, the New York-based Internet conglomerate controlled by media mogul Barry Diller.

Resellers bear little risk if tickets they offer don’t get sold. Instead, they make their money by requiring both buyers and sellers to pay commissions of between 10 percent and 15 percent.

The matchup between the New York Giants and the undefeated New England Patriots is a clash of big-market teams from the chilly Northeast. The game-day forecast for the Phoenix area is for a high of 68 degrees. But even that doesn’t matter because the teams will be playing indoors in University of Phoenix Stadium, the 63,400-seat home of the Arizona Cardinals that will have its seating expanded to about 75,000 for the Super Bowl.

“You gotta mortgage your home to get into the game,” said Michael Hershfield, a former lawyer who recently started the ticketing Web site LiveStub.com. “There’s this recipe that’s been spiced up for a very exciting, very hot event. With all the changes in the industry, this combination has created this current wave of supply and demand.”

RazorGator Chief Executive Jeff Lapin, who is predicting total sales will set a record, is amazed what buyers are willing to pay. Tickets on his Web site are listed between $2,700 and $7,200. “I’m telling my friends to buy now because it looks like it’s going to be tight,” he said.

Doug Anderson, a Giants fan for almost all of his 71 years, never attended a Super Bowl. But his team’s win over Green Bay got the retired truck driver from Mansfield, N.J., thinking.

When he saw a StubHub ad in his local newspaper, he and his wife Barbara rearranged their vacation plans and bought tickets for $2,800 each. Come game day they’ll be in Section 435, which is on a corner of the end zone on the upper tier.

Another enthusiastic Giants fan named Marc, who asked that his last name not be used because of how much he is spending, paid more than $40,000 for a package through RazorGator’s Prime Sports. It includes four tickets on the 50-yard line, hotel stays and pre- and post-game parties to take his three sons, who are 9, 11 and 14.

Born and raised in Manhattan, Marc now lives in Denver and works as a mutual fund manager. Within minutes of the Giants’ playoff win, he got online and started looking for the tickets.

“I see it as a once in a lifetime event, so the stars aligned and we’re off,” he said. “It’s not something I’m going to do on a regular basis.”

His wife and 16-year-old daughter, who is uninterested in football, are throwing a Super Bowl party at home while the boys go to Phoenix. They have, at least, agreed to wear their jerseys in support of the family team.

StubHub figures show the march higher of scalped tickets in recent years. Tickets it handled for last year’s game between the Bears and the Colts averaged $4,004. That was sharply higher than the Steelers-Seahawks in 2006 at $3,009, the Eagles-Patriots in 2005 at $2,659, the Patriots-Panthers in 2004 at $2,290, and the Raiders-Buccaneers in 2003 at $2,767.

StubHub spokesman Sean Pate said prices tend to drop as the game draws closer, and a local law in Glendale could work to the advantage of procrastinators: Ticket scalpers will be allowed to ply their wares in the north preferred parking lot, about a two-minute walk from a stadium entrance, according to stadium marketing director Scott Norton. But Gary Adler, an attorney for the National Association of Ticket Brokers, said he did not recommend that fans try to buy tickets outside the stadium.

So where are all the tickets coming from?

The NFL league office controlled 25.2 percent of the tickets and distributed 17.5 percent shares each to the Giants and Patriots for their own use and sale to their season ticket holders. The Arizona Cardinals got 5 percent and each of the other 29 NFL teams got 1.2 percent allocations.

NFL spokesman McCarthy said coaches, players and team officials are reminded every year that they can be fined if the league finds out that they scalped Super Bowl tickets they received or bought at face value. Minnesota Vikings head Mike Tice was fined $100,000 in 2005 for doing so and two of his assistants were fined $10,000 each.

But given this year’s demand for tickets at almost any cost, the temptation to cash in is there, he acknowledges: “This year we do have a perfect storm — the pursuit of perfection of the Patriots, the wonderful story of the New York Giants, the desirable location in Arizona and rabid fans around the world — all working together.”

Dan Dorfman, NY Sun, Monday 01/28/08

Robbie Lofredo will celebrate his 13th birthday Sunday in grand fashion. His aunt and uncle, who is a New York hedge fund trader, are taking him to Super Bowl XLII, and he'll be sitting in a prime seat, the kind generally reserved for the rich, the famous, and the powerful.

The three tickets, which together cost $29,350, are being paid for by a West Coast brokerage firm that does a substantial business with the hedge fund.

Robbie, an avid New York Giants fan, will be one of 73,000 attendees at the crown jewel of 2008's sporting events, which will be held this year at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., and be seen by an estimated 1 billion people worldwide.

Tickets to this year's Super Bowl, the most expensive ever, have gone through the roof. Depending on the thickness of your wallet, tickets range from $2,500 for a single seat to $379,000, or about $21,000 a person, for an 18-person luxury suite on the 25-yard line. Most of the available tickets are controlled by a rapidly expanding $2.5 billion industry that was once known as scalping but is now a perfectly legal online secondary market. This new business model, where consumers can go online and pay a premium for hard-to-get tickets to desirable events ranging from sports games to Broadway shows, is steered by some established companies, as well as many fly-by-night firms. Literally thousands of online companies are making a market in this year's Super Bowl tickets, of which about 10,000 were originally offered for public consumption, largely through lotteries, and sold initially for between $700 and $900 a ticket. Most of the companies offering these tickets, as might be expected, charge a service fee, which is generally 10% and up.

Currently, online companies own about 7,000 of the remaining Super Bowl tickets, the founder of LiveStub.com, Michael Hershfield, says. His firm has about 300 tickets priced between $2,500 and $12,500. With demand far outstripping supply, he estimates that by Friday his firm's remaining tickets will increase in price to $3,000 to $14,000. By kickoff, he says, all the tickets will be gone.

Calculating the economics of going to the Super Bowl, Mr. Hershfield figures you can do it on the cheap for about $4,200, which would include a $2,500 admission ticket, a flight with plenty of stopovers, and a stay at one of the cheapest hotels in the Phoenix area. Or, if you're willing to loosen the purse strings, a trip could cost $18,000, including a better seat at the game, a direct flight, and a good hotel room in Glendale.

The industry's biggest player, StubHub.com, an eBay subsidiary with annual sales of more than $500 million, has about 3,500 tickets for sale ranging from $2,500 in the cheapest sections to $11,000 in a suite along the 10-yard line. It has only 60 tickets left that are priced below $3,000. StubHub's average ticket price is $4,329.

Another industry biggie with a $250 million annual volume, TicketsNow.com, owned by Ticketmaster, offers some of the most expensive tickets to this year's Super Bowl, including that $379,000 18-person suite. What do you get for about $21,000 a person? Aside from being there at the big game, a premium open bar, a high-end buffet, including steak and lobster, and private bathroom facilities, a spokesman tells me.

Luxury suites from TicketsNow with similar offerings are also available in the end zone for 24 people ($276,000), 20 people ($207,000), and eight people ($185,150). Its sales of individual tickets — which range from $2,782 to $18,725 — are selling at a very good clip, a company spokeswoman, Joellen Ferrer, says.

Who's going to win the big game? The latest Las Vegas odds quote the New England Patriots a 12 1 /2-point favorite over the Giants, although I'm told the odds could change dramatically if there's any substance to reports that Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is injured.

LiveStub, Press Release, Thursday 12/20/07

Matt Alderton, Nielsen Business Media , Thursday 12/13/07

• Commit to change. If you want to pursue your dream of owning your own business, the first step, according to Hershfield, is acknowledging that tomorrow looks different than today does. "The first and most important step is to decide that what you're doing now is not for you," he says. "When you decide that—when you realize it—then your outlook on your future opportunities is different." In other words, you've got to be honest with yourself. It's a scary proposition, he admits, but an important one in every entrepreneur's development.
• Get inspired. After you've changed your perspective, Hershfield says, you've got to find an idea on which to focus it. "It could be anything," he says, careful to add that it's got to be something that you love. "You'll never succeed if you're not passionate about the thing that you do. It doesn't matter if you're an entrepreneur or a professional. If you don't enjoy it, you're not going to be the best; you're barely going to be mediocre. You've got to enjoy and be inspired by what you're doing."
• Save, save, save. Like it or not, business requires capital, Hershfield points out. So before you jump ship from your current career, make sure you've got the cash to get you from point A to point B. "You can't live off nothing," he says. "When you make the decision to leave your job, you want to create enough of a nest egg so that you have a few months to build your idea." If you're averse to risk, living for six months to a year with little to no income is a hard proposition to chew; if you're serious, though, the risk is worth your while.
• Find a sounding board. Hershfield isn't a one-man show. He has a partner with different skill sets and has sought the advice of many a mentor on his way to start-up success. "It's really important that you have somebody that you can turn to," he says. "You need multiple people in order to work through your challenges."
• Trust yourself. When it comes to taking the leap from 9-to-5 to small business uncertainty, the last ingredient is faith, according to Hershfield. "You have to believe in yourself and in your business model," he says. "It sounds cheesy, but it's true."