How ticketing platforms simplify the shopping experience (pt. 2)

This is the second installment in a two-part piece on how ticketing platforms reduce The Paradox of Choice and help users find the perfect seats for them. If you haven’t already I recommend you check out part 1 before you read this entry.

QUick Recap

In case you missed part 1, here is what it covered:

The Paradox of Choice describes how having too many choices can lead to anxiety, dissatisfaction, and decision paralysis. Ticketing platforms have thousands of active events in hundreds of cities at any given moment, each with potentially tens of thousands of tickets in various positions throughout the venue.

So how do these platforms reduce potentially billions of options down to just a personalized handful for each user? Through a combination of the following:

Onboarding: Learn about the user’s demographics, interests, and preferences right away to begin constructing their taste profile
Discovery: Curate the most visible events to match the user’s taste profile within their geographic location
Offerings: Reduce the universe of available options to a sampling of just the “best” ones
Presentation: Clearly communicate the the objective merits of the offered options, along with how they differ from one another

We discussed the first two of these steps in part 1. Now in part 2, we’ll dissect the remaining two to better understand this end to end process.

Helping users find the right tickets for them (continued)

Offerings

Once the user finds the event that captures their interest, they are advanced to that event’s details page. This is a step in the ticket purchasing flow that has seen a lot of convergence in the product experiences across the competitive landscape. The formula is as follows:

Present a map of the arena, usually with the price of a ticket superimposed above a select number of sections where tickets are avaialble
Simultaneously offer a list view of the ticket options, sorted by either by price or by “value” (more on value below)
Give the user access to several filter options so they can hone in on their ideal tickets
Display objective data about each ticket option (price, section and seat, number available), and often some subjective data about its quality

But as you can see in the comparison below, while the formula is well established, the execution differs greatly from platform to platform.

Let’s explore the examples seen here…

SeatGeek

SeatGeek presents a simplified arena map that uses a color to indicate sections of the venue with high and low value ticket options (green is good, red is bad). Above the maps is a smattering of ticket prices from around the arena, enough to give the user a sense of their options, but no so many as to overwhelm.

Each row in the list view contains a tall card with both objective and subjective data to help the user narrow down their choices. The design of the tall card means that only 2 ticket bundles are fully visible by default on most mobile devices, and no more than 6 are visible at once when the list is scrolled. The top of the screen contains a horizontal carousel of filter options that the user can call upon to further narrow down their choices to their ideal seats. SeatGeek will also limit the tickets in the list by section if the user selects one on the arena map.

All in all, the UI focuses the users attention to just a few options at a time and makes it easy to limit those them to just the most attractive to the particular user.

StubHub

StubHub offers a similar approach as SeatGeek, but differs in a few ways. The StubHub map displays a smaller selection of ticket prices above the maps, giving a cleaner look, which is further supported by the use of a single color for the sections with available tickets. The trade off is that the user gleans less useful information from the map, but StubHub makes up for this by providing more detail in its list view than its ticket reseller counterpart.

StubHub’s list view is similar to SeatGeek’s in structure, in that its tall cards limit the number of ticket options the user can view in any given moment. But StubHub further limits the user’s focus by keeping the arena map’s position static, meaning that no more than 2 ticket options are visible at a time on most mobile device, regardless of scrolling. Like SeatGeek, StubHub provides a horizontal carousel of filter options, and constricts the tickets in the list to a particular section if the user taps the map.

Overall, the StubHub UI reduces the user’s decision complexity to greatest extent possible.

Gametime

Gametime’s UI departs from the others in two key ways. First off, the map is far more cluttered, with some prices overlapping others in the UI. Some are accompanied by green stars of varying brightness, which correspond to the platform’s deal score - similar to the 1-10 value scale discussed above, but fully qualitative in nature.

While the map has clear differences compared to the other platforms, the more stark departure is Gametime’s list view, which combines several widgets into a scrollable modal. The first widget is a horizontal carousel that includes the best handful of deals. Below that is a vertical scroll of about 20 other higher scoring deals, while below that is an infinite scroll of the remaining available tickets.

Among the major ticketing platforms, Gametime chooses to prioritize providing users with a constant breadth of choice over simplifying the decision process like its competitors.

Ticketmaster

Ticketmaster is an outlier in its more minimalist approach. While the other products dedicate at least half of the screen to the arena map, Ticketmaster presents dedicates less than a third of the screen’s real estate to the venue’s visual representation. Ticketmaster also chooses not to display any ticket prices above the map, but does use a color scheme to indicate the sections of the arena where tickets are available, graduating from a light blue to a dark blue in sections where available tickets are abundant.

The remaining screen space is largely dedicated to its list view, which, like StubHub is contained to a static section of the screen. The shorter list rows, allow for upwards of 10 tickets to be viewable at once, which would perhaps overwhelm the user if the ticket UI was not so simple (more on that below).

A few words on “Value” before we continue

Value plays an important role in the ticket comparison experience in several of these ticketing platforms, and so it is important to understand the psychological effect it has on customers in buying decisions. Value significantly impacts buying decisions as consumers are more likely to purchase products or services that they perceive as offering good value for their money, meaning they believe the price aligns with the quality, features, and benefits they receive, often leading them to choose options that provide the most perceived value even if they are slightly more expensive than alternatives. Since value is inherently subjective, to make value more useful as a comparison tool, these platforms use an algorithm to assign value scores to each ticket and present those scores to users (usually on a 1-10 scale) so they can better compare unique seats using this singular metric.

Presentation

Let’s revisit those same product examples as above, but this time look at the how these platforms communicate the objective merits and differentiation of the offerings.

SeatGeek

The list view offers more information to those users looking to make a more informed purchase. A photo of the floor from the seat is visible so the user is aware of the experience they should expect. The ticket price, number of grouped tickets, and seat location (section and row) are listed, along with SeatGeek’s deal rating, which measures the price against the quality of the entertainment view on a scale of 1-10.

StubHub

Along with the basic ticket information (price, location, amount) and deal rating (also on a scale of 1-10), StubHub displays several tags on each ticket option where appropriate. Popular tickets - those that rarely go unpurchased - are given the “Best selling” tag, while the least expensive available ticket boasts a green “Cheapest” moniker.

Gametime

Ticketmaster

The remaining screen space is largely dedicated to its list view. However, despite this view’s precedence, the data presented in the list is far more limited. Some of the basics are present - price and location, but not amount - but Ticketmaster does not present any subjective data about each ticket (no picture of the view, value rating, or any other element to further inform the user).

Wrap up

Reducing billions of choices down to a small few is an enormous challenge, one that the teams behind these products have spent years working to tackle. Take, for example, the StubHub homepage; its incredible transformation over the past two decades from a list of links to a modern top-of-funnel discovery experience illustrates the efforts made to tackle The Paradox of Choice and make ticket shopping as easy, quick, and even sometimes fun.

Despite how far they have come, there is always room for improvement. As AI tools continues to surface and improve, how will they be used to enhance this flow? Can these products get to a place where their first recommendation to users are accepted more than 50% of the time? More than 90%?

Can other technology be embedded within these experiences to further simplify the decision, or instill greater confidence in the user’s ultimate choice? Perhaps instead of a photo of the view from the seat, video can instead be embedded to give the user a better sense of the seat’s experience? Or perhaps these companies can partner with SVOD platforms to enable at home views of sporting events to purchase tickets to future games through their Smart TVs?

Regardless of what comes next, one thing is clear. As the world continues to grow and our options along with it, talented people will continue to find ways to bring order, simplicity, and ease, to even the most expansive decisions.

TIcketingBrandon EvansMarch 26, 2025