FanSnap News

LeAnn Rimes tickets are on sale now for her upcoming fall tour. The starlet will hit 20+ cities, starting in Redding, CA and wrapping up in Jackson, MI on November 20.

Rimes is fresh off an appearance on NBC-TV’s “America’s Got Talent,” where she performed the song “Swingin’.” The hit is a cover of a John Anderson song from the 80′s and will be on her new album, “Lady & Gentlemen,” due in stores Oct. 5.

Performing since she was just 13, Rimes is already a country-music veteran. Her debut album, “Blue,” reached #1 on the Top Country Albums chart and went “multi-platinum” in sales. Over her 15-year career, Rimes has won many awards, including Grammys, ACMs, CMAs, Billboard Music Awards, and one American Music award.

LeAnn Rimes 2010 Fall Tour

9/10 – Redding, CA – Redding Convention Center

9/11 – Madera, CA – Madera District Fair

9/12 – Murphys, CA – Ironstone Amphitheatre

9/17 – Cincinnati, OH – Cintas Center

9/18 – Naperville, IL – North Central College, Pfeiffer Hall

9/19 – Columbia, MO – University of Missouri, Jesse Auditorium

9/23 – Philadelphia, PA – Union Trust Steakhouse

9/24 – Lexington, KY – Applebee’s Park

9/26 – Conway, AR – Reynolds Performance Hall

10/1 – Grand Rapids, MI – Forest Hills Fine Arts Center

10/2 – Clinton Township, MI – Macomb Center for the Performing Arts

10/3 – Benton Harbor, MI – Lake Michigan College, The Mendel Center

10/9 – Rancho Mirage, CA – Agua Caliente Casino

10/16 – Snoqualmie, WA – Snoqualmie Casino, Snoqualmie Ballroom

10/21 – Niagara, Ontario – Fallsview Casino Resort

10/22 – Niagara, Ontario – Fallsview Casino Resort

10/28 – Augusta, GA – Bell Auditorium

10/29 – Charlotte, NC – Blumenthal Performing Arts Center

10/30 – Ashland, KY – Paramount Arts Center

11/6 – Bradford, PA – Bradford Area High School Auditorium

11/7 – New Albany, OH – Jeanne B. McCoy Community Center for the Arts

11/12 – Sheboygan, WI – Weill Center for Performing Arts

11/14 – Shawnee Mission, KS – Carlsen Center

11/18 – Indiana, PA – Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Fisher Auditorium

11/19 – Tiffin, OH – The Ritz Theatre

11/20 – Jackson, MI – Jackson Community College, Potter Center

Search for LeAnn Rimes tickets with FanSnap!

We noticed we were blogging a lot about live events in Boston and New York. That’s not a surprise given that the amount of events going on in both cities throughout the year. Fans in these cities have to choose what they want to do on any given night: sometimes its between a baseball game in the Bronx, a concert at PNC, or a show on Broadway. Or its sitting atop the Green Monster at Fenway versus a country music festival at Gillette Stadium. Tough life. We make it easier.

We’re creating new FanSnap blogs for Boston and New York. Each blog will be the go-to resource for all things sports, tickets, and theatre related within each respective city. We will provide you with the best possible tools to help guide you towards the events you want to see.

For example, weekly FanSnap 60 Index’s on in both Boston and New York rank the “hottest” concerts in each given metro area. We follow closely each professional sports team home and away appearances, and we can help point you to the best valued ticket available on the secondary ticket market. Each specific blog is also a great place to find any sort of breaking news on anything ticket related, as well as commentary from bloggers within each city’s home crowd.

So, for Bostonians, check out:

FanSnap Boston Blog: How to Get the Hottest Tickets

And for New Yorkers, follow:

FanSnap New York: How to Get the Hottest Tickets

Although it feels late in the season to be talking about a player returning to visit his former team’s home stadium, that will be the narrative in the Bronx later this evening. Because of MLB’s strange scheduling, those with Yankees tickets for tonight’s game against the Tigers will have the opportunity to enjoy Johnny Damon’s first visit to Yankee Stadium in 2010.

Johnny Damon signed a four year deal with the Yankees after the 2005 season as a Red Sox hero. Just a year removed from bringing Boston their first championship in 86 years, it was hard to fathom Damon ever becoming a Yankees fan favorite. In four years with the club, however, he did just that.  He not only helped to change a clubhouse culture in dire need of change, but he also performed on the field.  In fact, many Yankees fans are hard-pressed to recall a more successful signing by long time General Manager, Brian Cashman.

From 2006-2009, Damon only finished in the top 20 in MVP voting once (in 2006), didn’t make any All-Star appearances, and slowly declined in the field (going from noodle-armed center fielder to noodle-armed left fielder/DH). However, he was as solid as a rock offensively, compiling an OPS+ of 113 (an on base plus slugging average 13% better than the rest of MLB). He saved his best season for his last in pinstripes, defying age with a .282/.365/.482, short-porch aided triple slash line. He topped it all off with a heroic two-base steal in the pivotal game five of the World Series, helping to lead the Yankees to their 27th World Championship.

After the 2009 season, the path seemed to be paved for Damon to return to New York and finish his career in pinstripes.  Hideki Matsui quickly saw the writing on the wall and bolted to Anaheim, leaving an open DH slot.  Unfortunately, Damon was represented by super agent Scott Boras, who refused to budge on multi-year contract demands.  There was a lot of he-said/she-said back and forth between the Yankees, Johnny Damon and Scott Boras, but the end result was Johnny Damon signing a one year, 8 million dollar deal with the Detroit Tigers, significantly less than what the Yankees supposedly had offered initially.

In the eyes of some Yankees fans, this forever sealed Johnny Damon’s legacy as a mercenary. Back in 2006, it had seemed to be a bit of an overreaction by Red Sox fans to boo Damon so vociferously in his return to Fenway park, four years later, Yankees fans were finally able to understand their frustration. There was no better of a fit for Johnny Damon than the Yankees heading into the 2010 season. They had a spot for him, they wanted him back, he was a well-liked teammate and the fans loved him. Unfortunately, he wasted that opportunity by being a puppet to a money-first, happiness second agent.

All of that leads us to tonight in the Bronx. Johnny Damon will likely receive his 2009 World Series ring, but what will the reaction from fans holding Yankees tickets be? Will they remember him as the fun-loving winner with the unorthodox but wildly successful swing, or will they remember him as the former Red Sox mercenary who spurned the team because they didn’t want to overpay him?

If you want to be there to witness the reaction to Johnny Damon’s return to Yankee Stadium firsthand, FanSnap has you covered. There are 8/16 Yankees vs. Tigers tickets available all over the stadium, and the best value tool is zeroing in on some great deals.

Ross Sheingold is a Yankees season ticket holder, the creator of the Yankee Stadium blog NYY Stadium Insider and a contributing writer at FanSnap’s blog.  You can find him on Twitter @StadiumInsider

Need great tickets to a hot live event?  There’s now an app for that.

We are excited to announce the launch of the FanSnap Application for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.  Our live-event tickets iPhone application is free in the iTunes app store [link] just in time for the NFL and NCAA football seasons, the approaching MLB playoffs, the concert and Broadway seasons, and the announcement of the new NBA schedule.

Perfect for fans who are looking for hot, even sold out, events, while they are on the go, the FanSnap tickets app puts 15 million sports, theater and concert tickets in your pocket!  With the FanSnap app, fans who want to catch a nearby game, concert, or show – even the same day – can find and buy tickets from their iPhone.

With the FanSnap tickets app, you can:

• See a list of the hottest live events nearby using the iPhone’s built-in location finder.
• Access local sports teams, concert and theater events via one-touch icons that the app automatically generates.
• Refer to FanSnap’s detailed venue maps, including row level labeling.
• See photos of the view from sections of the venue (available for many venues).
• Access previous saved searches for their favorite teams, performing artists, or shows.
• Click through to buy online, or even call to buy tickets with quick one-touch dialing.

No matter where you are,  you can find the best sports, theater, and concert tickets for less with the FanSnap app. The mobile ‘web app’ version of FanSnap.com was recently named one of Boston Globe Magazine’s ‘15 Must-Have Local Apps.’  We have improved upon that with the addition of the maps and venue photos with the goal of making the FanSnap app an indispensable resource for fans.

The FanSnap app is particularly useful for spur of the moment ticket buying, business travelers, and vacationing fans.  FanSnap search results include tickets from dozens of the most trusted ticket companies in the U.S., so a search, for example, for tickets behind home plate to tonight’s game, or for concerts playing locally this weekend for less than $50 a ticket, is a snap.

Here are a few screenshots:

We’ve got some exciting news from FanSnap global HQ. We’re adding Tickets-for-Charity® to the FanSnap 60. TFC has hard-to-find seats and unique VIP experiences for top sports and entertainment events while benefiting some of the nation’s most respected charities.

Tickets-for-Charity works with over 100 leading performing artists and professional sports teams nationwide to offer fans some of the most sought-after concert, theater and sporting event seats, for the same or better price they can find elsewhere, while benefiting nearly 100 national and local charities that fans can choose at checkout.

Through this partnership, FanSnap ticket search results will now feature exclusive Tickets-for-Charity Charitable Sale™ inventory, including high-demand and sold-out locations for top artists such as Brad Paisley, Justin Bieber, Sting and Tim McGraw as well as one-of-a-kind VIP Charity Packages for some of the season’s most popular tours, including Carole King and James Taylor, John Mayer and upcoming David Gray and Ray LaMontagne tour.

Hard-to-find Broadway seats for acclaimed TONY Award winning shows such as Billy Elliot, Jersey Boys, The Lion King, A Little Night Music and Wicked, will also be available through Tickets-for-Charity results.

In addition, FanSnap baseball search results will feature a variety of Boston Red Sox Charitable Sale seats for perennially sold-out Fenway Park locations, from the Bleachers to the Green Monster, to benefit the Red Sox Foundation.

We are proud to support Tickets-for-Charity, giving fans access to extraordinary sports, theater, and concert tickets and experiences while providing this incredibly unique social benefit. This partnership advances our goal of becoming the indispensable resource for passionate fans who can create lifetime memories and support worthy causes at the same time.

Tickets-for-Charity has generated over $10 million in charitable sales and donations for more than 90 partner charities, including Autism Speaks, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Feeding America and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Adding Tickets-for-Charity will offer fans the opportunity to conveniently and safely access fantastic live event seats while benefiting the causes they care about most.

Check out the official release.

Read more about Tickets-for-Charity at www.ticketsforcharity.com.

There’s been no shortage of debate as to whether Stephen Strasburg should be named to the N.L. All-Star team. True, Strasburg hasn’t had enough starts. His .500 record in 5 start isn’t stellar. Strasburg has a solid 2.27 ERA in 31.2 innings pitched. But wait a minute. What is the All-Star Game, really? It’s for the fans. Fans want to see the most exciting and electric ball players out there on July 13th. And because it is a fans game, shouldn’t the players the fans most want to see get the nod? We say yes!

FanSnap is the most comprehensive ticket search engine in the U.S., displaying ticket data from every major ticket marketplace and every major ticket broker who sells direct online. Of the 60+ most trusted ticket sites online that FanSnap searches, we created the “Fansnap 60 Index.” FanSnap Tickets Reports are based on data gathered from the FanSnap 60.

FanSnap is able to see that demand very clearly in the ticketing market, and from our data, it is clear that not only should Steven Strasburg be in the All-Star game, but he should be a shoe-in. His ticket numbers and therefore the demand to see him is simply extraordinary. When Stephen Strasburg pitches, tickets increase by an average of 123%. That’s well above the other top pitchers in both the National and American Leagues.

Tickets to games that Strasburg starts average $58.10. Tickets to the other games in the series average $25.99.

In this category, if nowhere else, he blows away the competition. So, particularly with a game that is based on fan enjoyment, we say, give the people what they want!

In order to responsibly suggest who should or should not be in the All Star game, Fansnap first compiled a list of the best all around starting pitchers in the Major Leagues. They were chosen based on the common baseball statistics. We took into account, wins, strikeouts, ERA, and walks plus hits/ innings pitched (WHIP) just like we do in fantasy baseball). We then evaluated the average ticket price of all home starts by these pitchers, and compared them to the average ticket prices of the games in the rest of those specific series.

For example, when evaluating Tim Lincecum, Fansnap took the average ticket price from his home debut against the Atlanta Braves and the average price from the other two games in that series. The same was done for his other 8 starts. From there, an overall average of home starts by Lincecum was compared to the combined average of all other games in those series.

Aside from Strasburg, the two highest percentage change in ticket prices came from John Johnson of the Marlins (+24%) and Tim Lincecum of the Giants (+24%).  Other pitchers of note were Jared Weaver of the Angels at +15% and Roy Oswalt of the Astros at +13%. For the most part, these are small market teams who have fans that seem to get more excited (and are willing to pay more) to see their stars pitch.

Remember: for all tickets to Major League Baseball this summer, including All Star Game tickets and Home Run Derby tickets, visit Fansnap to find the best possible values on the best possible seats.

TicketsNow is among the largest ticket marketplaces in the world. Adding TicketsNow as a ticket search partner means FanSnap now displays the latest ticket-level detail results for 16+ million sports, theater, and concert tickets. FanSnap’s ultimate objective is to work with every ticket provider in the U.S. to provide fans unparalleled choice and the best value for their entertainment dollar.

We are pleased to welcome TicketsNow, a leader and pioneer in the industry, to what is rapidly becoming the most extensive accurate view of the available live event tickets on the market. The timing couldn’t be better.  We’re approaching one of the hottest times of the live event calendar, when fans are buying MLB tickets, NBA tickets, NHL tickets, NCAA Tournament tickets, and gearing up for the big concert ticket season.

We look forward to making it fast and easy for fans to see the wide selection of high quality tickets available on TicketsNow.com.

Many, many thanks to the FanSnap and TicketsNow teams that made this possible!

The National Championship game is set and it is huge. Alabama and Texas face off in this year’s BCS National Championship game (BCS National Championship Game: Alabama Crimson Tide vs. Texas Longhorns tickets. Tickets for the January 7 game are averaging $1,376. The get-in price (lowest price ticket) is currently $800.

Here’s how the major bowl ticket picture is looking right now. BCS National Championship tickets average =1,376 (get-in = $800)
Orange Bowl tickets average = $233 (get-in = $63)
Fiesta Bowl tickets average =   $285 (get-in = $110)
Rose Bowl tickets average =     $455 (get-in =  $238)
Sugar Bowl tickets average =  $206 (get-in = $107)

For BCS National Championship tickets, Texans are outsearching Alabamans more than 2:1. People from 36 states and five countries have already searched for National Championship tickets.

Here are the states with the most BCS National Championship tickets searches:

Texas
California
Alabama
New York
Florida
Georgia
New Jersey
Tennessee
Connecticut
South Carolina

See also:

• Texas vs Alabama Tickets to the BCS Championship Top College Bowl Tickets
• Fiesta Bowl Tickets: Boise State Broncos vs. TCU Horned Frogs
• Orange Bowl Tickets: Georgia Tech vs. Iowa Hawkeyes
• Rose Bowl Tickets: Oregon Ducks vs. Ohio State Buckeyes
• Sugar Bowl Tickets: Florida Gators vs. Cincinnati Bearcats
• Meineke Car Care Bowl Tickets: North Carolina Tarheels vs. Pittsburgh Panthers
• The Capital One Bowl Tickets Available: Penn State Nittany Lions vs. LSU Tigers
• Alamo Bowl Tickets Available for Texas Tech Red Raiders vs. Michigan State Spartans
• Las Vegas Bowl Tickets now Available for Oregon State Beavers vs. BYU Cougars
• Other Bowl tickets

Christian

Fall 2009 introduced us to a few great new shows, Fox musical comedy Glee being a favorite of some FanSnap team members. What’s not to like about a group of not-so-cool high school kids singing their hearts out in their glee club? Good news for you fellow fans, the Glee cast will be singing the national anthem at Game 3 of the 2009 World Series, currently scheduled for October 31.

For those of you who remain unsure, yes, the Glee cast actually sings and many of them come from Broadway. The glee instructor, Will Schuester (real name Matthew Morrison), was Link in Hairspray. The star of the high school glee club, Rachel Berry (real name Lea Michele), played starring role, Wendla, in Spring Awakening. Glee soundtracks have also been very popular in iTunes for the past several weeks.

Singing at the 2009 World Series Game is a sure sign that Glee has made it mainstream. If you want to be sure to catch the Glee cast live, you can hedge your bets on where the World Series will be held this year (Game 3 will be held either in Los Angeles or Philadelphia) and buy tickets now!

Otherwise, continue to tune in to Fox on Wednesday nights at 9 pm Eastern. One a final note, we predict that a Glee tour will be announced in the next 6-9 months. Stay tuned to FanSnap for updates!

Find Glee Live tickets.

suzanne

The FanSnap Map team has been a juggernaut, continuing to create our patent-pending interactive maps for more and more venues at a stunning pace.  The latest milestone blown by?  500 maps!

Our newest FanSnap Maps now bring the joys of the pricing heat map and best value stars to fans on the prowl for college football tickets (with a special shout out to Pac 10, Big 10 and SEC fans).  Check out some great examples:

• USC Trojans @ Ohio State Buckeyes tickets
• Navy Midshipmen @ Notre Dame Fighting Irish tickets
• Syracuse Orangemen @ Penn State Nittany Lions tickets
• Oklahoma Sooners @ Texas Longhorns tickets
• Tennessee Volunteers @ Florida Gators tickets

Also, check out our new FanSnap Maps, designed especially to help you find Broadway tickets, built out for more of the top current and upcoming shows, including:

• Wicked tickets
• Lion King tickets
• Billy Elliot tickets
• Jersey Boys tickets
• Memphis the Musical tickets

Have fun!

Mike

On FanSnap, searching fans rarely select a single sports, concert, or theatre ticket.  They pick two, four, …or more tickets.

Of course this makes sense – the best thing about going to events is sharing the experience with your family, friends, or colleagues.

Equally obvious, when several fans go to an event together, they don’t each buy a ticket.  One buys them all.  The “organizer.”  The most trusted member of the group (maybe the designated-driver as well?)  Often this person checks out the options and gains approval from the group before buying.

One day, if a track record of outstanding seat recommendations has been built up, this paragon of fandom is given the proxy for the group.  Yes – they are authorized to buy on behalf of the group.  Post-purchase, they let the group know where they will be sitting.  Now that’s trust.  (For family purchases, it goes without saying that mom usually handles everything.)

Which are you?  The organizer.  The “empowered” organizer?  Mom?  Or are you the lucky beneficiary of the efforts of one of these wonderful people?  It doesn’t matter.  FanSnap has a great feature to make life easy for you all.

Sharing!

Just by clicking on the icons, you can share a single ticket set, your “short list” of tickets, or all the tickets for an event.  And on FanSnap you have lots of ways to share – Facebook, Twitter, Email, MySpace, and Digg.

Need a group “thumbs up” for your selection?  You can click on any of the sharing icons at the top right of the ticket selection page to share all of the ticket choices you see for an event, or just your narrowed list of tickets.  You will also find sharing icons next to each individual ticket set, in case you would like to share a particularly high potential listing.

After you have found the perfect tickets on FanSnap, and purchased them from one of our dozens of ticket partners, we give you one final opportunity to share that information as well.

As one of the other fans in the group receiving this information, you can easily click on the link and see the ticket information!  No confusion.  No more asking “where are the tickets again?” or “did you get good ones?”

The FanSnap team is hard at work, making it as easy as possible for you (and your group) to find – and share – the perfect tickets. Let us know how we are doing, and what you want us to work on next!

Mike

As if seeing the amazing variety of great sports, theatre, and concert tickets available and getting the most value for your money (not to mention saving lots of time) aren’t enough reason to use the FanSnap search engine all the time (and to tell all your friends and family about us) …

During May, all fans who sign up on FanSnap will be eligible for our “Fans Welcome” drawing.  On June 1, the winner will be randomly selected, and will be able to select $1,000 worth of FREE sports, concert, or theatre tickets from any of the dozens of ticket companies FanSnap searches!  The second and third place winners will be able to select $500, and $250, worth of free tickets, respectively.

BONUS: Have family, friends, or colleagues who are also fans?  After you sign up, every time you use the share feature on FanSnap, you will receive an extra entry in the drawing!

This is the time of year to be a fan looking for great tickets!  Concerts.  Baseball.  Basketball and hockey playoffs.  Football tickets available already.  Broadway and the national theatre tours.  There are over fourteen million ticket listings available in the FanSnap ticket search results!

Check out the site and sign up!

Many thanks to the brothers (literally) over at AllMyFaves for naming FanSnap to their latest “weekly faves” list.  AllMyFaves is a pretty cool site that highlights the latest and greatest on the web in a really quick and easy format.  Over the years, we have discovered several great entertainment, kids, shopping, and travel sites on their recommendation.  If you get a minute, check it out.

Mike

On September 23^rd last year we opened www.fansnap.com and told you our goal was to create “a “fast, easy (and free) way for you to find your perfect tickets.”   In announcing our beta site, we told you it was big job and asked for your help.  We asked you to tell us how to make it better.  You did.  We did.  We especially appreciate your feedback on the interactive maps.

We are pleased to announce that the FanSnap ticket search engine has officially launched, and today we unveiled a new version of the ticket search engine.  We are also happy to announce:

• FanSnap’s ticket results now include more than 13 million tickets to 40,000 events from 57 ticket companies, with the addition of newest partner eBay tickets;
• FanSnap’s dynamic FanSnap Maps have been created for 215 of the top venues in the U.S., with many more on the way;
• FanSnap’s new “best value” feature, which highlights at-a-glance those ticket offers that are priced significantly lower than surrounding offers;
• FanSnap’s new “view from seat” feature for many venues (e.g., try Dodger or Angel stadiums, Fenway or AT&T parks, or Wrigley or US Cellular Fields) that will be rolled out over the next month.

Our goal was to launch in time for you find great March Madness tickets, MLB tickets for opening day, and concert tickets to all the new tours being announced daily it seems.  Check it out; the choices and values are really fascinating.

Even though we are out of beta, please keep sending us your thoughtful suggestions using the feedback link on the site.   We have learned a lot through this process, and we know we still have lots of work to do.  In fact, we have a number of great new features already in development!

The FanSnap team is working hard, and the journey remains exhilarating.  The path to being as comprehensive, accurate, fast, and easy as possible never ends…   You have played a critical role on our launch team.  We could not have launched today without you.  Feel free to put this experience on your resume.  Put us down as your reference.

Thank you for telling so many of your friends and colleagues about FanSnap.  Please keep sending them our way.  Going to events has always been a great escape from the news of the day.  Especially in these economic times, we want to help you get the best value for your entertainment dollar.

We remain focused on fans.

Mike

The map team has been working around the clock and we are pleased to announce that FanSnap now has more than 210 of our patent-pending interactive maps for your viewing pleasure.  We have built them out for MLB, NBA, NHL, concerts – we even have the NFL ready for when football tickets go on sale.

So many choices!  Cubs fans will want to use a FanSnap Map to check out the first Cubbies-Cards game of the year.  North-siders can check out the first White Sox-Twins game.  We have a little something for fans in pretty much every city.

Have fun checking out our comprehensive selection of ticket results from 57 ticketing companies (all at once!) in this easy-to-use way.  One day, sooner than you think, you will tell your kids about the old days when you used to have to look for tickets from a list!  Then you can tell them about walking to school in the snow, uphill, both ways.

Mike

By popular demand, FanSnap’s ticket results now include tickets from our newest partner, eBay.

Fans have been buying and selling tickets on eBay almost from the moment the pioneering web site launched.  Many ticket sellers only sell their tickets on eBay, so this announcement means lots of new ticket choices for you.

This brings us to 57 ticketing companies who have integrated with our FanSnap TicketData^sm system, giving “fans of FanSnap” by far the most comprehensive, accurate view of available tickets and prices from the best of the web.  Many, many thanks to the FanSnap and eBay teams that made this possible!

Mike

Eric Fisher of the SportsBusiness Journal wrote today about FanSnap and our great new partners, Bleacher Report and YardBarker, which display FanSnap results in really useful ways to their amazing sports communities.  In the article, our partners said of our relationship:

““This is another important step in our providing an all-around experience,” said David Nemetz, co-founder of Bleacher Report. “This fits with what a user expects to see on a sports site, but the great thing is that it’s not just a limited stream of inventory from one provider but an open range of options, which fits in directly with our philosophy.”

Said Pete Vlastelica, Yardbarker chief executive, “Aligning with FanSnap was about more than just offering a ticket solution to our users. We can do that with any number of partners. … We think FanSnap has solved some of the hard problems related to searching for tickets on the Web, and they do it with an elegant user interface that delivers satisfying results.””

Thanks Dave, Pete, and Eric!

Mike

Fortune editor/writer Stephanie Mehta put together a nice article today chronicling the state of the live event tickets market. In it, she outlines how the ticket resale market has gone online, gone ‘legit,” and is rapidly growing.

When we launched the public beta of FanSnap this past Fall, we started with about twenty dynamic FanSnap Maps (patent pending). The plan was that fans could take them for a test drive, and we could learn a bit more, before we rolled them out.

Fans told us how much they appreciate being able to using the colored “heat map” markers to see ticket price ranges at a glance. Fans still can’t believe that when you ZOOM into our maps, you can actually see specific ticket offers from multiple providers with specific row labeling. Quickly spotting those light-colored low price tickets among the pricier tickets on the map appears to be among many fans’ “top three” delights, along with scoring a backstage pass, and catching a fly ball.

We learned a lot from how you used the maps, and from your thoughtful suggestions. We made some improvements (stay tuned for more surprises very soon). Then we unleashed our map team, who have been absolutely on fire! I am pleased to say that, with today’s release, we now have more than 160 FanSnap Maps live on FanSnap. … and many more coming!

If you haven’t already, give FanSnap Maps a spin.  We made them just for you.

Mike

p.s. Can’t wait?  Here’s a few hot upcoming events:

SUPERBOWL tickets

NBA

3/15/09 Mavericks @ Lakers tickets

4/10/09 Heat @ Celtics tickets

4/12/09 Celtics @ Cavaliers tickets

NHL

4/4/09 Ducks @ Sharks tickets

4/4/09 Rangers @ Bruins tickets

4/9/09 Flyers @ Rangers tickets

MLB (Opening Day)

4/3/09 Red Sox @ Mets tickets

4/3/09 Cubs @ Yankees tickets

4/6/09 Royals @ White Sox tickets

4/6/09 A’s @ Angels tickets

4/6/09  Rays @ Red Sox tickets

4/13/09 Rockies @ Cubs tickets

CONCERTS

3/19/09 Fleetwood Mac tickets (New York)

4/1/09 Springsteen tickets (San Jose)

4/24/09 Britney Spears tickets (Glendale)