My Love/Hate Relationship with Stubhub

Let me get one thing out there right now. I love Stubhub. It's singlehandedly revolutionized the secondary market for event ticket sales. I no longer am forced to endure the unpleasant experience of haggling with nefarious characters in dark alleys for overpriced tickets that may or may not allow me entrance into the stadium when I walk up to the gate. In this day and age of electronic ticket scanners, I'd go as far as to say the security of Stubhub is an absolute necessity for the baseball traveller that has journeyed sometimes thousands of miles to attend a sold out game.

I know Stubhub has allowed me to attend sold out events that I never would have dreamed of attending ten years ago. It's a true open marketplace that cannot be easily manipulated by a handful of "ticket brokers" who conspire together to buy up all the tickets they can and keep supply artificially low. Because of this open marketplace, I've attended a World Series game, NLCS games, Home Run Derby, All-Star game, and NHL playoff games for prices not much above face value. If you know when to wait, and when to buy, you can often do better on Stubhub than through individual team websites.

With that being said, I hate Stubhub as well. Two of my life goals were to attend a World Series game and an All-Star Game , and I made those happen in the space of less than a year by attending Game 2 of the 2011 World Series in St. Louis and the 2012 All Star Game in Kansas City.

Stubhub made that possible. My greatest tangible memories of those events should be encapsulated in my ticket stubs. The ticket stub, to me, is the highest form of sports memorabilia. It proves you were there...right down to the row and seat. Yet, because of Stubhub, I don't have a true ticket stub for either event, and I have to live with that. Instead, I have two pieces of computer paper to show for it, and to a ticket stub snob like myself, it could just as well be toilet paper.

The lengths that I've gone to to try to make up for this, to me, major issue with Stubhub are severe. I've tried everything really. First, I thought I could live with buying a top of the line printer, printing the Stubhub passes on computer paper, and using a paper cutter to make them look like real ticket stubs. It's just not the same.

So, the next step was to start buying an extra seat, usually the cheapest seat in the house so that I had an actual ticket stub as a momento of my travels. Try explaining to your wife why you need to buy an extra ticket to a game that you will never use. She's learned to accept my eccentricities, but it took some doing.

Still, I know that isn't my actual seat. No matter how much I try, I know I didn't sit there, or even in that section. I ended up buying ticket stubs for the World Series game off of ebay, but I'll always know that I didn't sit in that seat.

Luckily, I found someone sitting next to me at the All-Star game who were more than willing to part with their ticket stubs for free. It was like they were giving me pure gold. Somehow, it seems more palatable to have the stubs for the seats that were right next to mine (if I can't have my own).

Maybe this is nitpicking. Like I said, because of Stubhub, I've been able to attend truly world class events at a fraction of the relative price they would have cost me 10 years ago. Considering MLB's partnership with Stubhub, I would even pay good money if the teams ticket offices would offer a service where they'd reprint the tickets for you on actual tickets. One has to think there could be a solution that would keep the ticket stub from going the way of the Dodo. I just wish that my most cherished souvenier didn't have to be collateral damage in this new world for sports fans that Stubhub has created.

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Comment by Michael J. Torson on April 18, 2013 at 3:35pm: agreed.

Comment by Jim Wood (46 MLB) on April 18, 2013 at 3:33pm: Actually the quality of the Print at Home tickets is superior to the Ticketmaster style stubs of the past. I have several old games where virtually all of the pertinent information has faded away. In the end any stub is better than no stub so if the future is StubHub I can live with it....

Comment by Michael J. Torson on April 18, 2013 at 3:29pm: I had no idea that turning them into hard tickets was even a remote option. I never asked because I figured the ticket office people would stare at me like I had lost my mind, and then have a good laugh after I walked away. Interesting. May have to try that sometime. I think I'd be ok with printing out the stubhub electronic tickets on better paper if they made any attempt to make what you print out look like what you get from the ticket office both in size and design. The Stubhub tickets are so bland and boring. I guess I get it, they dumb it down for people who may not have very good printers, but honestly, the ticket design they put on the sheet is only decoration. As long as the bar code works, they could put anything they want on the rest of the page. I suppose my only other concern about printing the stubhub tickets on a home printer is the longevity of consumer level printer ink. I take really good care of my ticket stubs, but I still have this fear that one day I'd find that even with the best of care, my home printed ticket stubs had faded to nothing. I think weighing everything, my best choice going forward would be to see if the ticket office would convert them, continue to scour the rows after games or ask people sitting around me for theirs, or if all else fails, buy an extra seat vs. risking print at home options. Very interesting feedback though, and I agree sports venues would like everything to be all electronic within the next 10 years. I'm sure one day most people will just whip out their smart phones and the ticket takers will just scan the screen or something. That's not a world I want to live in.

Comment by Robert Beans(39MLB/32MiLB/28ST) on April 18, 2013 at 3:13pm: Michael, I have the same passion as you regarding ticket stubs. We have recently completed our QUEST to see every MLB ballpark last July. During this adventure we ran into a couple instances where we had purchased our tickets on stubhub and wondered how we were going to get hard tickets. On 2 occasions (Wrigley and Target Field) we were able to go up to the window and have the tickets turned into hard tickets. At first we were told no at Wrigley Field until someone in the background heard our request and sent us to the stubhub window and he was able to print us hard tickets. At Target Field we explained to them that this was part of our tour of all of the ballparks and after about 20 minutes or so someone agreed to turn our tickets into the box office version. On other occasions we were turned down because we had bought stubhub tickets. My guess on this is because you could print duplicates and get them converted to hard tickets and the someone else could try using the paper tickets. I don't think this would work though as they usually change the bar code once reprinted. We have also searched for people in the stands that have season ticket version stubs and have asked for them, most people just hand them to you. It is getting frustrating as a stub collector as I also collect Homerun stubs from Giancarlo Stanton, Bryce Harper and Mike Trout. Not sure what to do going forward.

Comment by Thequesters Too on April 18, 2013 at 12:06pm: Unfortunately in a few years, if ballparks have their way we might be going completely electronic anyway. I agree with you but I don't like where they are going with it.

Comment by Jim Wood (46 MLB) on April 18, 2013 at 11:51am: Katie makes a good point. You could also visit a team's customer service kiosk- usually they're extremely helpful with things like this....

Comment by Katie (30) on April 18, 2013 at 9:07am: Hi Michael- Great post! I actually ran into some guys at PNC Park last season that were doing all 30 ballparks during a single trip. I shared my love for this hobby. We exchanged stories about getting tickets to the sold out game on StubHub. At the end, they mentioned that I should go to the box office and request the hard ticket. Apparently they had done that at all of the parks that they had visited and the box offices apparently printed the tickets for them. I didn't try it, but I suppose that would be worth a try.

Katie

Comment by Jim Wood (46 MLB) on April 17, 2013 at 10:07pm: Good article. Yes in the recent 2-3 seasons with SH it's taken away a lot of the aesthetic look of the ticket stub. What I do is print out the paper ticket at full size; then I'll reprint the ticket on a heavier card stock at about 40-60% of the original size. That allows me to have a ticket stub to put in my books.

It's not ideal but at the very least I'll always have that memento....