The core principle of SB Nation is that it caters to sports fans. Everything it does is geared towards that central idea from the bloggers it selects to the technological platform to the partnerships that it creates. Up until now the focus has been on helping revolutionize the communication aspect of being a fan. Today, with TiqIQ, we're going to get to work on changing the way that you go to Leafs games.
Our community is lucky enough to be one of the ones selected to be part of testing this new partnership out. That means that it's important to let us know if you have any feedback, problems, or comments. Having had a chance to sit in on a conference call explaining the partnership and to play around with the tools last night I'm pretty excited to unveil the PPP Maple Leafs Tickets Centre.
More details on what this means for you guys after the jump.
There are a couple of reasons that I decided to participate in this pilot program. The first is that while in a perfect world there would be no scalpers we don't live in that world. So rather than allow you guys to head out onto the streets to deal with possible members of the mob, you can research tickets that are being sold through reputable ticket re-selling sites that Chemmy and I have used before. The second is that I'm a stats nerd and love the idea of the information that TiqIQ compiles to help make purchasing decisions. The third is that Maple Leafs tickets are notoriously hard to get. Our preference is to allow fanposts and fanshots to facilitate the sale of tickets between community members for face value.
Unfortunately, there aren't enough tickets to go around to all of the community members that want to go to any particular game. With help from TiqIQ, we're able to present a pretty unique destination for those of us looking for Maple Leafs tickets whether the game's at any of Toronto's home arenas such as the ACC in Toronto, HSBC in Buffalo, or Scotiabank in Ottawa, or anywhere on the road.
The PPP Maple Leafs Tickets Centre offers aggregated listings from four different online ticket re-sellers: StubHub, eBay, Ticketsnow, and TicketNetwork. It provides one stop shopping for Maple Leafs tickets. Once you find tickets that you want to buy you go directly through to the re-seller's site. Note: Right now ticket prices displayed by TiqIQ do not display shipping costs or extra fees. This is the next feature they are trying to implement.
Beyond being able to compare prices the Ticket Centre breaks the arena into sections called "TiqZones," or basically, the different areas of the arena. After breaking the arena down into these areas, the PPP Maple Leafs Tickets Centre gives us access to a multitude of data, such as:
- The current average price of tickets in any given TiqZone of the arena
- The complete pricing history, from the day tickets went on sale to today, of tickets in any given TiqZone, allowing us to look at trends and figure out when the smartest time to buy tickets might be
- The weekly change in the price of the tickets in a given TiqZone
- The percentage above or below face value a ticket is currently selling for
- The percentage above or below the average ticket price a ticket is currently selling for
- A simple little icon, color-coded to easily note if a ticket is a good deal, a bad deal or a neutral deal, and more./
Most importantly, you can buy tickets right through the PPP Maple Leafs Tickets Centre. I would recommend playing around to see the amount of inforamtion that TiqIQ compiles. It will hopefully help ensure that if you do need to buy tickets that you get the best value possible.
I think it's a pretty cool feature for the site and hope that you guys agree. Obviously we get a cut (miniscule) so if you don't use this a lot you'll be taking food out of our mouths. I probably don't need it but SkinnyFish tells me that Chemmy's nearing starvation thinness. Do you want to kill Chemmy? No? Then buy some tickets so he can live. If you do want to kill him then buy lots of tickets so he'll overeat and explode like that guy in Se7en.
We'll also be using some of TiqIQ's data, including stuff like that chart above, to discuss the trends surrounding tickets to Flyers games and the like. We can scrounge up and discover how things like rivalries and certain players and how well the Maple Leafs are playing impact ticket prices, and we'll drop in that stuff amidst our usual daily conversation around here from time to time. Here are a few examples of how other sites have used the information provided.
To access the PPP Maple Leafs Tickets Centre, click one of the thousand links we dropped in this story, or better yet, click the "Tickets' button that you can see on the blue navigation bar on any page at PPP.
