At SeatGeek, we were sad to read this story in the Salt Lake Tribune that Karl Malone--a former Utah Jazz legend and NBA Hall of Famer--was forced to buy his own ticket to a Jazz game last February played in the wake of Jerry Sloan's dismissal as the Jazz coach.

According to the Tribune:

What happened to Sloan had festered inside Malone for long enough. In the immediate aftermath, he came to Utah to express concern, buying his own ticket to the next game at EnergySolutions Arena via a scalper because the Jazz had told him there were no tickets available for him, and spoke to reporters.

In light of this report that an NBA legend wasn't able to easily obtain tickets to see the very team he helped bring to prominence, we here at SeatGeek felt compelled to offer our assistance.

As such, we want to formally extend Mr. Malone the offer of four (4) lower-level tickets to any Jazz home game this season, as well as four (4) lower-level Jazz tickets to be donated to the charity of Mr. Malone's choosing.

At SeatGeek, we’re all about making sure that fans—from the layman to the Mailman—have easy access to the best deals on tickets to see their favorite teams, so we are serious in this offer and hope to soon send Mr. Malone and his favorite charity some great seats to see the Jazz in action this season.

Every day people comparison shop online for things like electronics, clothes, household products, and more, so why not event tickets?

Our goal at SeatGeek is to build a web app that helps fans quickly and easily find the best seats at the best price. When we launched SeatGeek in September '09, there were two primary means by which our site helped users find good deals: (1) meta-search and (2) price forecasting. Our meta-search aggregates seats from dozens of brokers and over 10,000+ events, and our forecasting technology has saved thousands of fans money by informing them of the best time to buy.

We recently added a third major money-saving feature: Deal Score™. Deal Score is a number from 0 to 100 that is assigned to each ticket listing indicating whether or not the listing is good deal based on its price, location within the venue, and the number of tickets in the listing.

How is Deal Score useful? I like to explain it by making a comparison to shopping for an airline flight.  If I'm looking at options for a flight, I can identify good deals by just sorting by price. The cheapest tickets are bargains, the most expensive tickets are rip offs. I may have to make some subtle adjustments to account for layovers or takeoff times but, fundamentally, price is an acceptable arbiter of value.

That isn't the case with event tickets. If I'm looking for Lakers/Heat tickets and I sort by price, the least expensive tickets are probably not the best deals, they're probably just seats that are right below the rafters.  That's because seat location is critical. A user comparing a long list of event tickets cannot effectively shop based on price alone; she needs a metric that also takes into account seat location. Deal Score fills this void. A $100 courtside ticket will likely have a higher Deal Score than a $90 ticket in the upper deck, even though the courtside ticket is more expensive. Tickets with a Deal Score of 100 are the absolute best value for that event; tickets with a Deal Score of 0 are the worst.

How is Deal Score calculated? SeatGeek assigns an "expected" price to every row in every venue. This expected price is based on a number of factors, including long-term historical prices for each section, the row location with respect to other rows/sections, the the distance to the field, and the angle to the field. Then, for each ticket listing, we compare the actual price to the expected price and look at the deviation as a percentage of the expected price. We apply several adjustments to account for nonrandom variance. The Deal Scores are then assigned by attaching the deviations to an appropriate distribution.

In addition to seat location, Deal Score also takes into account the number of tickets in a listing. Listings on the secondary market can offer anywhere from one to over twenty tickets.  For the most part, people don't like to go to events alone, so buying a single ticket is inconvenient. Therefore, a single-ticket listing will, on average, sell for less per ticket than a two-ticket listing, assuming both listings are in the same location and are for the same event. We have identified the discount/premium associated with every quantity of tickets, and we include this in Deal Score as well.

In other words, we do a bunch of math behind the scenes that you'll never have to worry about.

When it comes to buying tickets, we're aiming to build the most efficient way for fans to get the greatest deals out there. We'd love to hear what you think about our search, forecasting, interactive seating maps, and Deal Score and how you think we can improve our site to make your experience even better.

Let us know in the comments, in the Feedback tab throughout our site, or on Twitter @SeatGeek.

July 7, 2010 - SeatGeek (http://seatgeek.com), the only site that forecasts how sports and concert ticket prices move on the secondary market, announced a partnership with FanFeedr, a real-time personalized sports feed aggregator that provides 'Your Sports Fix'. The partnership will give sports fans an easy way to keep track of, and purchase tickets for, upcoming games in their area. FanFeedr's integration of SeatGeek's localized ticketing widget onto their site, allows fans browsing their MLB feed in New York, for example, to simultaneously view upcoming tickets for the Yankees with ticket prices and forecasts. Ty Ahmad-Taylor, CEO and Founder of FanFeedr, said "With SeatGeek’s real-time ticketing solution and FanFeedr’s real-time aggregation, we are able to provide fans in any city with the best options for getting local tickets for their favorite teams."

SeatGeek serves the sports and concert ticketing space by providing users with intelligence on when to buy tickets on the secondary market. They aggregate tickets from all the major secondary markets like StubHub, RazorGator, etc., and use a proprietary algorithm to forecast how those prices are going to move. The SeatGeek Widget combines all these benefits into a robust and relevant tool for websites and blogs who can in turn offer additional value to their users by surfacing upcoming events in their area and unique forecasting content. Website owners can customize the widget for a specific team, artist, or league and the widget will geo-locate to offer tickets only for the user's location.

FanFeedr's implementation brings in ticketing information for all the major sports leagues on to the respective FanFeedr pages and the widget does the rest by showing the upcoming events for each league in the geo-located area along with ticket prices and whether prices are forecasted to go up or down. If prices are forecasted to go up, users can come to SeatGeek to buy the tickets and save money in the process. According to Russ D'Souza, Co-Founder of SeatGeek, "this partnership is great for both SeatGeek and FanFeedr, but more importantly, it is great for sports fans. Now fans can keep tabs of their favorite teams all in one place with the integration of personalized feeds from FanFeedr and ticket forecasts from SeatGeek."

About SeatGeek

SeatGeek.com forecasts how sports and concert ticket prices move on the secondary ticket market. SeatGeek allows fans to search multiple sites, find sold out tickets, compare prices, view price forecasts, and buy tickets all in one place. SeatGeek offers MLB tickets, NFL tickets, concert tickets, as well as all major sports.

About FanFeedr

FanFeedr is a real-time personalized sports feed. Pick your favorite teams and players, and FanFeedr will give you the most-up-to-date collection of news, video, tweets, scores and information about them. FanFeedr is indexing over 3,000 sources and matching them against more than 50,000 athletes, 4,000 sports teams, including 1,700 colleges and universities across 15 sports.

11/29/2011 Update: Eminem Lil Wayne to go on world tour in 2012.

Tickets for the much-hyped Eminem and Jay-Z home and home concerts at Comerica Park in Detroit and Yankee Stadium in New York were so popular that the two artists had to announce two more shows, to meet the demand of their fans. Tickets sold on the primary market, and they sold fast. Now that most tickets are sold out, the prime place to buy tickets is on the secondary market.

At SeatGeek, we wanted to see how the tickets listed on the secondary market compared for the concerts in each city. Currently, tickets for the New York concerts are in higher demand, and are listed for more money than tickets for the Detroit concerts. Interestingly, in Detroit, tickets for the first and original concert on September 3 are on average cheaper than the tickets for the second concert that was added after tickets sold out fast. However, in NY, the opposite is the case; tickets for the original concert on September 13 are listing for more than the added concert. Both added concerts are occurring the night after the first concert in each city.

If you check out the listing page for these concerts and scroll down to the bottom, you can see the average listing price for that event, as well as the price forecast, which tells you either to buy now or wait for the price to decrease.

For the concerts in Detroit, the average listing prices are around $175, but that price is predicted to increase sharply. SeatGeek recommends buying now. In New York, tickets are aggregating at an average of $374 and $313 for the September 13 and 14 concerts respectively. These prices are forecasted to increase, as well, and fans are recommended to buy now.

The range of ticket prices for the concerts in Detroit is $8250, for tickets VIP General Admission tickets ($250 at face value) to $81, for upper level tickets in the 300 section ($49.50 at face). Yankee Stadium tickets are averaging more, so the range is a bit higher, as well. The most expensive seats are listed for $22,000 each, for Field Seats center stage ($298 face value), while the cheapest listing is $153 a ticket in several sections, including Terrace Granstand side state tickets (400 level, $52.50 at face, which is cheapest tickets for the NYC concert).

There are several reasons why the tickets in New York are listed for higher prices than they are in Detroit. Generally, New York has a higher mean income than Detroit, and NY fans are more willing and able to pay more than Detroit fans. Plus, the greater population in New York means that there is a greater demand for tickets for the New York concerts than for the Detroit concerts, and the greater demand further increases the listing prices on the secondary ticket market.

For all of your concert ticket needs, be sure to check SeatGeek, or check out our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter @SeatGeek!