Last week, we interviewed Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard right after the company's announcement of dynamic ticketing. Since tickets are such a big part of being a sports fan, we're continuing that series today — an interview with the CEO of StubHub

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[EBAY  Loading...      ()   ], Chris Tsakalakis.

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Darren: The ticketing business is so volatile right now. How would you evaluate StubHub's position?

Tsakalakis: StubHub is well positioned in the ticketing industry. We continue to offer the highest levels of customer satisfaction of all ticketing companies and we lead the market in the resale of tickets. We continue to serve fans by offering a safe and reliable means for tickets to change hands. We offer the largest ticket marketplace where sellers set prices based on market demand. This means that some StubHub buyers end up getting great deals on tickets below face value while others get unheard of chances to see sold out concerts or playoff games. Sellers setting prices based on market demand also means that average ticket prices have come down this past quarter versus last year, albeit not as dramatically as they have in the past three years. Despite the price decreases, however, we continue to see double digit sales dollar growth.

Darren: How concerned are you about the power that teams have in regards to their restricting of selling on their own marketplaces only? Is that a legitimate threat to your future business?

Tsakalakis: StubHub’s whole business is about giving fans access and choice. That means giving fans choices about where they can sell or buy a ticket. Given that, we do not support any system where tickets can be resold in just one marketplace, as it restricts fan choice. In sports, the ability to resell a ticket is a real benefit to season ticket holders as it allows them to recoup the cost of their investment in season tickets, especially when they cannot attend a game. Most sports teams know and appreciate that. They also know that giving their fans only one choice about where to sell a ticket will not be well received. After all, the most hated consumer companies are real or virtual monopolies. You can just look at the Consumerist annual worst company in America competition to see that. An open marketplace encourages competition amongst marketplaces and sellers, ultimately benefiting buyers by offering the widest selection and driving down prices.

Darren: A team executive told me that the future is team's creating their own separate businesses with you so that they could share in the secondary profits. Do you see that? 

Tsakalakis: We currently partner with a number of sports properties across the professional and college ranks. Some of these partnerships include revenue sharing and it wouldn’t surprise us to see additional deals like this in the future. 

Darren: What's your reaction to Ticketmaster's

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[LYV  Loading...      ()   ] new dynamic pricing model? It obviously keeps more inventory away from StubHub. 

Tsakalakis: It’s great to see Ticketmaster offering tools for their customers to more dynamically price their tickets. We’ll see which of their customers actually use them. In the meantime, our sellers will continue to dynamically price their listings on StubHub as they have for over 10 years. As teams have experimented with dynamic pricing over the last two years, we’ve seen virtually no effect on our business. Fans will always need a means to resell their tickets and have continued to do so under dynamically priced conditions. The only thing that has changed is the price. For high demand tickets that command a premium in the primary, secondary prices rise even higher. On the flip side, low demand tickets dip even lower because there are no price floors on StubHub. The irony of the dynamic pricing discussion is it isn’t the initial price point that drives prices up on the secondary market, it’s the lack of supply, especially in the concert arena.  Within the concert industry, there is a prevalence of tickets being held back from the general public with the best tickets often being sold to ticket brokers at a premium.  As a result, there’s often not enough supply to the general public to keep up with demand, and that’s what’s keeping prices high. The fact that the number of tickets being offered for sale is not transparent to the general public means that fans have to speculate as to why they can’t get the tickets they want.