

Why we built Deal Score: A concert ticket is not like an airline ticket - kessler
http://seatgeek.com/blog/seatgeek-news/save-money-on-sports-concert-and-theater-tickets-with-deal-score

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jessriedel
I feel a little uncomfortable with mysterious scores which essentially say
"buy this!". Kayak.com essentially has to lie to me to artifically raise an
airline's ticket in the search results (at least, lie by omission), but
SeatGeek seems like they could massage the rankings easily for a fee. I don't
really have a reason to trust them more than, say, Yelp!, do I?

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jack7890
Certainly a fair question. I can pledge to you that we do not (and never will)
alter our Deal Score based on fees or relationships with ticket sellers. Our
team has spent countless hours building the components of this thing to make
it hyper-useful, and it would be pretty awful for us if its integrity were
compromised. But I realize that doesn't mean the calculation is transparent.

Beyond that, two things that may be worth considering:

1) Any inaccuracies with Deal Score are in plain sight. If a calculation is
off and a ticket isn't given the Score it deserves, that's sitting out there
in the open on our site. So it would still be easy for people to "call foul"
if there were ever a problem.

2) You're welcome to ignore Deal Score and just sort by price. At that point
you're effectively getting the same experience as Kayak. Deal Score is
something we built to add additional utility.

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leviathant
Why we built Deal Score: Stubhub has an affiliate program.

[edit: opinion about brokers/scalping removed]

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leviathant
I'd appreciate some responses from those who downvoted the above post.

update: fair enough, and thanks for the replies. I shouldn't let my own bias
against ticket brokers get mixed into commenting on an application like this.

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ssharp
I didn't down vote but I could see issues with the comment.

I don't really see what is wrong with building a site based off of affiliate
revenues, especially when the site is adding value. Kayak built a pretty
substantial company off this model and there are plenty of other examples.

If the issue is with ticket scalping, is a secondary market that horrendous of
a thing when the primary market is so inefficient? Also, what about the
tickets listed and sold on Stub Hub and similar sites that sell below face-
value?

If I'm going to pay over face for a ticket, I'd rather have Stub Hub around
than the old way of dealing with ticket brokers. I'd venture to guess that
Stub Hub has forced more tickets to be sold for > face but has reduced the
margin between face and scalp price. I'd also guess that its value in reducing
scalping margins has outweighed the fact that it creates more tickets that are
scalped.

