Features
SeatGeek Grabs Naming Rights For Chicago MLS Stadium; Promises More ‘Live Programming’
– Toyota Park
soon to be SeatGeek Stadium
After the Chicago Fire Major League Soccer Team’s final home game in 2018, its home stadium will be known as SeatGeek Stadium, as the ticketing platform appears to be picking up steam.
While terms were not disclosed, the partnership is said to be a long-term deal that will see the SeatGeek oversee ticketing at the venue for all events starting in 2019 and work with venue operator Spectra to “bring more live programming” to the facility. The venue is currently known as Toyota Park. The venue has no upcoming concert dates on the books for 2018, but in recent years the 30,000-capacity venue has hosted festivals like “Chicago Open Air” and “Freaky Deaky”.
SeatGeek is an official partner of Major League Soccer and is official ticketing partner of individual MLS teams such as Sporting Kansas City, in which fans can use SeatGeek to buy and sell tickets across multiple sites and apps.
It also boasts of “worry-free verified tickets through multiple sources.”
SeatGeek was recently selected as ticketer for the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, and handles other NFL and NBA teams including the New Orleans Saints and New Orleans Pelicans.
The SeatGeek stadium isn’t the first or only ticketer to have its name on a venue, as StubHub Center in Carson, Calif., is another Major League Soccer venue, with sporting events the bread and butter of the secondary ticketing market.
The recent moves seem to signal SeatGeek’s emergence as a real contender in the sports and music primary ticketing world, as it announced in 2016 wanting to be a competitor to Ticketmaster.
“We want to compete with Ticketmaster and other legacy ticketing companies,” SeatGeek co-founder Jack Groeztinger told MarketWatch at the time. “The platform allows teams to make more money and it allows fans to get tickets anywhere.” The company recently announced its own distribution partnership with Facebook, and in October announced SeatGeek Enterprise, which it called the “biggest disruption to ticketing in decades.”
While Ticketmaster by and large still dominates the primary ticketing market, Ticketmaster President Jared Smith cited SeatGeek as one of the many competitors growing and said the market is more competitive than ever.