Greetings!  This is my first blog entry on SeatGeek's must-read musings on everything tickets.  In fact, this is my first blog entry ever!  As SeatGeek's head of business development, I've been working to sign up affiliate partners for the better part of 2010.  Over that time we've grown tremendously due in large part to our awesome partners who include everyone from major sports sites, blogs, music sites, leading newspapers, and many more.  I want to thank everyone who made the past year so exciting as we look forward to an even better 2011!

I also wanted to take this opportunity to address our affiliate partner program in more detail.  We probably haven't done as good of a job as we'd like making the sign-up process easy and intuitive for those looking to monetize through ticketing, so I'm hoping to resolve that issue here.

About SeatGeek

First and foremost, for those who may be new to SeatGeek, we are the leading search engine for sports and concert tickets on the secondary market.  We wanted to build a product that helped fans navigate the ticket resale market in an easy and friendly fashion.  Through a powerful user experience we hope to make buying tickets as much fun as we had building the product.

What makes us unique is three-fold:

  1. Ticket Aggregation - we aggregate ticket listings from all the major secondary markets and over 35 brokers.  We make it easy for fans to shop and compare ticket prices all in one place.
  2. Ticket Forecasts - we have built a proprietary algorithm that forecasts how ticket prices move.  We'll tell you when the best time to buy tickets for your favorite team or band will be thereby saving you money and anxiety around your purchase decision.
  3. Interactive Seating Maps and Deal Score - this is my personal favorite.  We have built awesome interactive seating maps that makes it very easy to quickly identify the best deals in a stadium / arena.  Using our algorithm, we determine where the best deals are in a venue and assign a Deal Score to each seat where a ticket is selling on the secondary market.  Our team wrote a great blog post on this in more detail just a few weeks back that you can see here.

Partner Program

In addition to our web application, we have an affiliate partner program where bloggers and the like can take advantage of the compelling products we've developed.  Among them are a vertical widget, scores and schedule page, and the ability for partners to "affiliatize" links.  Each time a partner sends a referral to SeatGeek and they purchase a ticket, we will pay our partner 50% of the revenue earned on that transaction.
Widget - Signing up is as easy as 1-2-3!

  1. Create an account at http://seatgeek.com/partners/signup/ and accept the terms
  2. After completing the account registration click on "Get the SeatGeek widget embed code" or go to http://seatgeek.com/partners/widget.  Here you will find the widget embed code for the widget of your choice.  You can customize the widget by "Upcoming for Team/Band" or "In Your Area" (this will show upcoming events in a users area using geo-location technology), and also between a vertical widget whose width is adjustable or a horizontal widget.  If you choose the "In Your Area" widget you will have the option to show all events or choose between event types.  Lastly, and importantly, the embed code will have your Affiliate ID (AID) that is used to track your referrals and give you credit for transactions (note: you must accept the terms of the partnership during the registration process in order to receive an AID).
  3. Once you have the widget up on your site, you can track your revenue and transactions by logging into your account and going to http://seatgeek.com/partners/dashboard/

Sample Widget

(Click to Enlarge)

Scores and Schedule Page

If you'd like the SAS page, signup for a partner account as stated above.  Once you obtain your AID from the widget embed code, get the Scores and Schedule Page Embed Code.

Note: you must enter your AID and the team slug for the team schedule page you want in the embed code.  Team slugs are separated by dashes; for example, Boston Celtics would be "boston-celtics".  You can find a full list of team slugs for all sports teams and events here - Team Slugs

You can track your revenue and transactions as stated in 3. of the widget signup.

Sample Scores and Schedule Page

(Click to Enlarge)

Affiliatizing Links - Link to SeatGeek and earn more revenue!

One of the cooler features we think bloggers and writers can take advantage of is affiliatizing links to SeatGeek.

To affiliatize any SeatGeek link, append your unique AID (assuming you have signed up for the partner program and obtained you AID) to the end of any link in the following format: “?aid=xx” (xx being your unique AID)

For example, if you want to affiliatize the link to the New York Knicks page on SeatGeek, go to the that page on SeatGeek.com, copy that link, and append your tracking code - http://seatgeek.com/new-york-knicks-tickets/?aid=xx

If you’d like to link to a particular game or event, go to that page on SeatGeek.com, copy the link, and append your tracking code - http://seatgeek.com/event/show/482794/chicago-bulls-at-new-york-knicks-2011-04-12/?aid=xx

Whether linking in articles, creating your own schedule page, or putting links in your navigation bar, this simple feature allows you to earn additional affiliate credit.

Additional Partner Products

SeatGeek is always open to suggestions for new affiliate products and in some cases will be happy to customize affiliate products for our partners.  Additionally, if anyone is interested in our API we'd be happy to provide you with a link to our documentation.

I hope this has been helpful and as always if you have any questions, comments, feedback, or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact me at nihar@seatgeek.com.