Ticketmaster Extends Exclusive Deal With University Of Florida Athletic Department As Official Ticketing Partner To Provide Verified Primary And Resale Tickets To Fans

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA JOINS 14 ADDITIONAL COLLEGES RENEWING CONTRACTS WITH TICKETMASTER

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Oct 12, 2016, 09:00 ET

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Ticketmaster, the global market leader in ticketing, today announced the multi-year extension of its contract with the University Athletic Association, d/b/a the University of Florida Athletic Department (UF), to continue to serve as its official ticketing partner. Through the renewed deal, Ticketmaster will continue to provide UF fans with the safety and convenience of verified primary and resale tickets for home football, basketball and baseball games as well as UF's Olympic Sports.

Florida joins 14 other schools renewing with Ticketmaster this year alone, including premier schools like Oklahoma State, Georgetown, Georgia State, and many others. With Ticketmaster verified tickets, college football fans can be confident that they are purchasing a real ticket guaranteed to get them into home games.

For the nearly one million Gator fans who attend home games every year, finding and purchasing the perfect seat is easy thanks to an integrated display of all available Ticketmaster verified primary and resale tickets for University of Florida home games. The expansion of the ticketing leader's open platform that enables the Gators' vendors to plug in and access key marketing and performance data was one of the key deciding factors for UF to renew early with Ticketmaster.

"Ticketmaster continues to evolve in ways that really matter for college athletics, so it was an obvious choice for us to renew our contract with them as our official ticketing partner," said Mike Hill, Executive Associate Athletics Director from the University of Florida. "With a program of our scope and size, it's critical that we have access to the extensive data and analytics that Ticketmaster offers, even beyond the clear benefits of their verified ticketing security, to help strengthen our marketing and improve our fans' experiences."

Ticketmaster's industry-leading open platform supports an active certified partner program that offers the services and expertise of Fan Interactive Marketing (Fan Interactive) to assist the Gators with enhancing their CRM lead strategy, campaign tracking, and analysis while boosting their ROI on digital marketing campaigns. In partnership with Fan Interactive, Ticketmaster leverages its own data enhancing services, LiveAnalytics, to help the Gators better understand and strengthen their engagement with Boosters, Season Ticket Holders, Students, Alumni and fans.

The early contract renewal signals the strength and appeal of Ticketmaster's primary and resale ticketing platform, which provides massive distribution and fan marketing insights for UF. The contract extension came well ahead of the expiration date as the Gators sought to lock in its continued access to Ticketmaster's comprehensive product offerings.

"As the official ticketing partner of the University of Florida for nearly the past decade, Gator fans know they can rely on Ticketmaster to provide verified tickets to see their team in action," said Jared Smith, President of Ticketmaster North America. "We're proud to continue our partnership with UF and work together to service their ticketing and fan marketing needs."

Ticketmaster first became the University of Florida's official ticketing partner in 2008 and has since enabled resale tickets to be offered through Ticketmaster.com and the Ticketmaster mobile app.

The 2016-17 season home games include seven football games at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, 18-20 Men's and Women's Basketball games at the O'Connell Center and 20-30 Baseball games.

About Ticketmaster

Ticketmaster is the global market leader in live event ticketing, digital marketing, and mobile fan engagement tools that drive over 530 million ticket transactions per year. Through exclusive partnerships with thousands of venues, artists, sports leagues, and arts and theater tours, Ticketmaster delivers unparalleled access to the most iconic live events to millions of fans worldwide. Ticketmaster is a division of Live Nation Entertainment, the world's leading live entertainment company.

About Fan Interactive Marketing

Fan Interactive Marketing is the leader in providing sports teams, venues, universities and entertainment companies in one-to-one interactive marketing, helping drive for their clients an average ROI of $11 for every $1 spent on their services. From email marketing (sending over 30 million emails a month) to CRM and database analysis (helping pinpoint the right strategy, campaigns and analysis), Fan Interactive assists over 80 sports & entertainment clients to turn their customers into loyal fans.

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SOURCE Ticketmaster