Selling tickets on several marketplaces without selling twice

Why sell on more than one marketplace

Many resale buyers stick to the marketplaces they know. Some go straight to StubHub, others compare prices on SeatGeek or TickPick, many fans in Europe use Viagogo, and last-minute buyers open an app like Gametime on the way to the venue. Some marketplaces are strongest in North America, others in Europe; some live from sports, others from concerts and theatre.

A listing only reaches the buyers of the marketplace it is on. Put the same tickets on several marketplaces and more buyers see them, which usually means a faster sale, or a better price, because you do not have to cut it to find someone.

What makes cross-listing risky

A double sale happens in the gap between a sale on one marketplace and the moment you take the listing down on all the others. Busy events sell quickly, and a second buyer can find the same seats in that gap: at night, on a train, during a meeting.

You can only deliver once. The second order fails, and a failed delivery is expensive:

• the marketplace gives the buyer comparable replacement tickets or a refund and charges you for it, sometimes more than the original sale price,
• marketplaces charge penalties for cancelled orders,
• your seller rating suffers, and repeated cancellations can restrict your account.

That is why the speed of taking a listing down matters more than anything else in cross-listing.

How to cross-list by hand

If you sell on two or three marketplaces by hand, a strict routine keeps the risk low:

• Keep one master list. One row per listing with event, section, row, seats, price and every marketplace it is on. The list, not the marketplaces, is the truth.
• List identical details everywhere. Same seats, same delivery method, same split rule, so a sale on one marketplace means the same thing on all of them.
• Turn on sale alerts on every marketplace, on the phone you actually carry.
• Take the listing down within minutes, on every other marketplace, before you do anything else. Delivery can wait a few minutes, delisting cannot.
• Be careful close to the event. Sales speed up in the last days; that is when double sales happen.
• Check your listings daily against the master list, and remove anything that should not be live.

Past three marketplaces, or more than a handful of listings, the routine stops scaling: every sale means logging into each marketplace and finding the listing again.

Prices and fees across marketplaces

Buyers do not see the same total everywhere: most marketplaces add their own fees on top of your price, and they keep different commissions from what you receive. Compare what you take home, not the listing price.

With SyncSeats, every marketplace carries the same commission in the listing flow, and the SyncSeats fee is 5% of what remains. The payout calculator shows the result for each marketplace.

How automatic sync works

A sync tool keeps one inventory and treats every marketplace listing as a copy of it. When a ticket sells anywhere, the tool updates every other copy itself, without you having to remember it, and also at three in the morning.

With SyncSeats that looks like this: you create a listing once or import it by CSV, choose which of the 17 marketplaces it goes to, and our event team matches the event on each of them. When it sells, the listing comes down everywhere else; if only some seats sell, the rest stay live with the new quantity. The sale lands in one fulfilment queue with its delivery method and deadline.

How SyncSeats keeps every marketplace in sync

A checklist before you list

• Do you hold the tickets, or will you hold them in time to deliver?
• Do you know the delivery method: PDF, mobile QR or transfer?
• Have you chosen a split rule, so a pair is not broken up?
• Do you know the deadline? It is the marketplace’s in-hand date, and with SyncSeats never later than 24 hours before the event.
• Have you noted what you paid, so you can see your margin?

Delivery methods explained