MLB will pay $67m for Net ticket firm

Major League Baseball moved into the ticket business yesterday, agreeing to pay nearly $67 million for Tickets.com, one of three ticket companies currently servicing the league.

The parties said the acquisition is the first time a professional sports league has gone into the ticket business itself. Major League Baseball officials said the purchase was a recognition that the sale of more than 73 million major league and 40 million minor league tickets was too important and too lucrative to leave to third parties.

''We wanted to control our destiny a lot more," said Bob Bowman, chief executive of MLB Advanced Media, the league subsidiary entering into the deal with Tickets.com. ''We wanted to drive the car, not just sit in the back seat."

Bowman said Major League Baseball wants greater control over how its product is distributed and also wants to improve many aspects of the current ticketing experience. For example, Bowman said, fans should be able to check out all available seats for a game online before selecting which seats to purchase. Currently, fans can ask only for the best available seats.

The league already runs the websites of the 30 major league teams and aggregates their online ticketing operations through those websites, even though the actual business of issuing tickets is handled by three different companies. The league will also begin coordinating the websites and ticketing operations of minor league teams starting this year.

Tickets.com was the league's exclusive online ticket supplier until two years ago, when its agreement expired and other companies stole some of its business away. Tickets.com, based in Costa Mesa, Calif., currently handles ticket sales for 15 teams, including the Boston Red Sox, the Chicago Cubs, the San Francisco Giants, and the Oakland Athletics.

Ticketmaster, the West Hollywood, Calif., division of IAC/InterActive Corp., represents 10 clubs, including the New York Yankees and the Atlanta Braves. A third company, Paciolan, of Irvine, Calif., represents five clubs, including the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres.

League officials said they can't force teams using other ticketing companies to switch to Tickets.com, but they said they hoped to improve their product sufficiently to snare their business.

A spokesman for Ticketmaster, the dominant ticketing company for National Football League and National Basketball Association teams, declined to comment.

Major League Baseball officials said online ticketing is where the business is headed. The number of baseball tickets sold online has risen from 2.9 million in 2002 to 11.2 million last year, or about 15 percent of the total.

Tickets.com said it has deployed technology allowing fans to purchase and print tickets at home or the office. Several clubs, including the Giants and the Red Sox, are also using Tickets.com technology that allows season ticket holders to resell tickets on team-controlled websites.

Ron Bension, chief executive of Tickets.com, said his company's purchase by Major League Baseball shouldn't be viewed as strictly a baseball acquisition.

He said Tickets.com derives 20 percent of its revenue from Major League Baseball, with 80 percent coming from other ticket-selling ventures.

''They are not buying a software platform for baseball. They're buying a business," he said.

That business has been struggling, however. Tickets.com went public in November 1999 at $100 per share, adjusted for stock splits, and hit a high of $175 later that month.

But by 2001, a year when the company's losses were larger than its sales, the stock's value had fallen below $1 a share. Two years later the company was dropped by the Nasdaq Stock Market because of inadequate assets.

Major League Baseball is buying Tickets.com for $1.10 a share, approximately a 30 percent premium over Monday's closing price of 85 cents.

As recently as last week, the stock was selling for 70 cents a share. It closed yesterday at $1.08 a share.

Bruce Mohl can be reached at mohl@globe.com.