Marlins Ask Fans to Name Their Price in Ticketing Experiment
For the remainder of the Miami Marlins’ season, the team is letting fans set their own prices for tickets in partnership with buyer-driven marketplace startup TicketRev.
No, this doesn’t mean you can catch the fish for $1. Fans will be shown a recommended price target based on their seat location preferences. No matter what they enter as their preferred price, the team will eventually respond by accepting or declining the proposal. Higher-priced offers will receive better seats within each location, Miami said. The recommended range for Tuesday night’s game against the Mets starts at $19, while fans have the ability to offer anywhere from $12 to $65 in a program the team has called “Make Your Pitch.”
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In addition to filling a few extra seats before the Marlins close out the regular season (at 78-73, they currently sit a half-game out of an NL Wild Card spot), Miami VP of analytics and strategy Christian Lowe said he’s keen to get his hands on the data this experiment generates, such as where Marlins fans come from and the prices they’re hoping to spend on a night at the ballpark.
“It allows for fans to be able to basically speak to the organization,” Lowe said. “It’s actually really a conversation between the organization and individual fans, so that to me is pretty exciting for us.”
Launched last year, TicketRev operates both a white-label product for teams like the Marlins and its own marketplace where sellers can accept requests for tickets. Its investors include 500 Global, Soma Capital, Groove Capital and Techstars. The company is based in Miami.
“Ultimately it’s helping fans get seats in what I believe is a more fair and convenient way,” TicketRev CEO Jason Shatsky said. “We recognize that the ticketing space has been notoriously challenging on fans … We believe this is a really significant first step in professional sports for helping with that burden for fans and giving them the opportunity to have more power and freedom and control in the process of buying tickets.”
Lowe and Shatsky said they’re already discussing ways the partnership could expand, including through in-venue activations, for 2024. Ticket pricing as a field has evolved greatly in recent years, with static prices becoming variable and ultimately dynamic, changing based on numerous factors in an attempt to maximize sales. Franchises also look for creative ways to offer unsold seats at relatively low prices, without affecting existing season ticket or secondary market interest.
But Shatsky believes there could be a simple way for teams to get even smarter with how they manage their most prized inventory.
“Professional sports teams and organizations obviously spend a lot of time and resources in trying to predict the value of their tickets and set accurate prices,” Shatsky said, “and our mindset has always been, ‘Why spend all this energy trying to run these predictions when you can literally just ask [fans]?’ “
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