FAYETTEVILLE — The University of Arkansas is entering the secondary ticket market.
The athletics department on Tuesday announced it is starting an exchange program that will allow season ticket holders and prospective single-game buyers to sell and buy from the university, instead of through other secondary vendors like StubHub and TicketMaster.
Through the new platform, called Razorback Ticket Exchange, season ticket holders can sell back tickets to SEC games they are unable to attend and receive cash for up to face value. Those tickets will then be resold for market value to buyers who have reserved their place on a waiting list.
The Razorbacks promise to resell the tickets for less than the price they are being resold through other ticket exchanges. Arkansas has partnered with Lyte, a New York-based ticket exchange company, to operate the platform.
Prospective ticket buyers can begin making reservations Tuesday and season ticket holders will be given the opportunity to begin selling back their tickets on Sept. 22. Arkansas is scheduled to play its first SEC home game on Oct. 8 against Alabama.
Tasked with getting the Razorbacks into the ticket exchange game was Chris Freet, Arkansas' senior associate athletics director for external operations and strategic communications. Freet said the project has been in the works for about a year.
"As opposed to putting it on the secondary market and waiting two days, two weeks, two months, whatever it may for a transaction to happen, this transaction will happen immediately and they have 24 hours to accept our offer," Freet said of season ticket holders. "Based on our schedule it will probably be face value for every game this year."
Unlike some professional teams with similar partnerships, Arkansas will not require its season ticket holders to use the new platform. But those who do use it will be guaranteed a legitimate transaction.
Freet said fans are turned away from every major football and basketball event at Arkansas because of fraudulent tickets.
"We really feel like our fans are going to win on both ends," Freet said. "There's something about the backing of the institution saying we guarantee that if you sell back one of your tickets, you're going to get face value. You know the institution is going to pay you back.
"And then the opportunity to go out and get our fans the best value on the resale market is exciting."
At least 38 college athletic programs have partnered with StubHub, but Arkansas was a holdout because "we were not comfortable with the high prices being charged primarily to maximize profits for a third party," Razorbacks athletics director Jeff Long said.
Freet said Lyte uses an algorithm that will allow Arkansas to offer tickets for about 20 percent less than the median price for which they are being sold on websites like StubHub.
Professional sports organizations have adapted a similar selling method known as dynamic ticket pricing. Prices fluctuate like stock depending on the performance of one or both teams from game-to-game, and are sold at real-time value.
"At the pro level, dynamic is used to try to maximize revenue," said Nels Popp, an assistant professor for sport administration at the University of North Carolina. "That would be one of the goals for Arkansas, but my guess is it is...not entirely revenue-driven, but aimed at controlling the market a little bit better."
Not only could the new platform give the Razorbacks the ability to have more control over how their tickets are sold, but it will also give them valuable data about their ticket buyers, Popp said. Arkansas can monitor ticket-buying trends, such as who is interested in which game.
"If I'm Arkansas athletics, I'd love to know who is actually buying those tickets," Popp said, "because I would like to approach them to buy more tickets. From a marketing standpoint, the professional teams are much more sophisticated in this manner, but we're seeing it trickle down to college now as well."
Freet said the platform may be added for nonconference football games, as well as basketball and baseball in the future, depending on how successful it is during its inaugural football season. The data collected from the platform can also allow the Razorbacks to be more proactive during the season by tracking when season ticket holders use their own tickets and contacting them to learn if there are reasons they are not attending games.
Arkansas has sold 50,643 season tickets this season, which is an increase of 7 percent over a year ago. Nationwide, however, ticket sales have been declining for a few years.
"There's much more noise in the marketplace - much better TVs, harder to travel, rising costs, down economy, all those things," Freet said. "Our approach is that we've got to grow every year and that's really hard in sports where you can't control (what happens when) they put the ball up in the air.
"We want to figure out what the motivation is instead of waiting until January when the season is over and we truly begin our renewal process. Is there something we can do to get people to come out?"