The NFL is keeping Ticketmaster as its top ticket resale partner, but the company is losing its exclusive hold on the league’s biggest pool of resale seats. Under a new multiyear agreement the league and Ticketmaster announced on Wednesday, Oct. 21, and owners approved at the fall meeting in New York, every NFL-authorized resale marketplace will get access to the season-ticket resale inventory of all 32 teams.
The league calls the new model “Ticketing 3.0.” Season-ticket holders will be able to list eligible tickets once and have them shown across all participating marketplaces, instead of listing them separately on each site. Until now, the full season-ticket inventory of every team was available only on Ticketmaster, while other authorized sites carried a limited number of seats.
Ticketmaster stays on top
Ticketmaster remains the league’s only “platinum” secondary ticketing partner and will keep running the NFL Ticket Exchange. The deal covers resale only. It does not change primary ticket sales for the games the league runs itself, such as the Super Bowl and most international games, and it does not change the deals teams have for selling their own tickets.
“The best partnerships don’t stand still; they evolve,” said Bobby Gallo, the NFL’s senior vice president of club business development. “Ticketmaster has been with us through every chapter of how fans buy and use tickets, and this next chapter is our most ambitious yet. Together, we’ve created more value through less exclusivity, while building a model that starts with our fans and delivers the experience they expect from the NFL.”
Gallo said the inventory “will get broadcast out across the entire network,” giving season-ticket holders “wider distribution, bigger reach” and fans access to more seats on more sites. He also said the package of deals will bring the league substantially more fee revenue than the expiring contract. Financial terms were not released. The new agreement runs longer than the old four-year deal, but Gallo did not give its exact length.
“Fans should be able to easily find and buy verified tickets with confidence,” said Ticketmaster president Saumil Mehta. “That’s the experience we’re delivering with the NFL.”
SeatGeek moves to a “gold” tier
SeatGeek had bid against Ticketmaster for the top spot, and at times this year some team executives expected it to win. Instead, it has agreed in principle to join the new structure at a lower “gold” level, Ben Fischer reported, although that deal has not been finalized. Gallo would not discuss the bidding but called the process “very, very, very competitive,” which he said “further justifies the model we’ve landed on.” Tixr, which joined the league’s ticketing network in May, is also one of its licensed sellers.
The result matters to teams because a club can only sign a primary ticketing deal with a company that is part of the league’s system. Ticketmaster sells primary tickets for 26 teams and SeatGeek for the other six, and several teams have reportedly lined up moves to SeatGeek that were waiting on the league’s decision. Had either company walked away from the program, those clubs could have been forced to change course. Before the meeting started on Tuesday, a decision had not been reported, as our fall meeting report noted.
What changes for fans
The new system will be built during the offseason, so nothing changes for the rest of the 2026 season. The league has not said when it will go live or which other marketplaces will take part, and it has not made any promises about resale prices or service fees. Wider access means more sites will show the same verified tickets, but it does not by itself make those tickets cheaper.
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