Revenue / 03.02.22

Dealmaking, the Full Return of Live Events, and League and Team Business Up for Grabs Are Positioning Sports Ticketing for Years of Growth

Access Staff

Sports Business Journal (02/28/22) McCormick, Bret

Despite the disruption of the past two years, Ticketmaster, StubHub, SeatGeek and Vivid Seats are poised to profit from the 2022 global live events industry, which is worth a projected $126 billion, including nearly $48 billion in primary ticketing and $12 billion more in secondary. High-profile deals with the National Football League and Major League Baseball expire after the 2022 seasons, while SeatGeek's special purpose acquisition company merger investor deck calculated that 85+ ticketing deals with Big Five league rights holders are up for renegotiation through the end of next year. "It's like the search engine industry, it's so big that even if you grab 1% to 2% of it you have a great business," said Logitix President Greg Nortman. All four ticketing leaders should have abundant cash reserves for bidding wars, especially Vivid Seats and SeatGeek, both of which have either gone public or are on the cusp of an IPO. Experts anticipate all four companies reverting to pre-pandemic revenue and profit levels in the 2021 fiscal year, before surpassing them the following year. "My perception is there were various strategies going into COVID, and you could really see it play out," said Event Dynamic CEO Robert Smith. "SeatGeek, you could see they just kept blowing forward, continued to invest during COVID. Vivid's market share is up. Both of those played their COVID situation well."

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