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eCommerce - Thursday, November 8, 2007

StubHub Rival Flash Seats Buys Vertical Alliance

Cleveland-based FlashSeats is another specialist in the secondary ticket market (scalping). Today it bought a specialist in the primary ticket market -- Dallas-based Vertical Alliance. It operates a CRM platform for sports sales that includes everything from ticket to merchandise so that team owners can better target those most likely to buy. By combing the two companies they will be doing a bit more than the likes of eBay's Stubhub which just does the secondary market.

Flash Seats is owned by an investor group led by Dan Gilbert, Chairman and Founder of Quicken Loans. He is also majority owner of the the Cleveland Cavaliers and operator of Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena. Needless to say, Flash Seats provides secondary ticket services to the Cleveland Cavaliers and Quicken Loans Arena. (Additionally, Gilbert owns the and Fathead, which if you watch ESPN it runs the ubiquitous ad for life-sized wall graphics of sports star.)

Vertical Alliance clients include the Houston Rockets, the Houston Toyota Center, Boise State University and Texas A&M University.

View - vertical alliance site
View - flashseats site