Contingency Selling Under Product Uncertainty and Service Capacity Constraint: A New Pricing Model with Applications to Sports Events

摘要

Sports events marketing presents marketing scholars with some unique challenges that are atypical to other markets. First, tickets for most popular sports, particularly tournament style events, are typically sold in advance when it is uncertain which team will make it to the particular game. A second issue with sports tournaments ticket selling is that the demand often far exceeds the service capacity, which is limited by the number of seats in the venue. These two forces together give rise to potential inefficient ticket allocation. On one hand, a consumer may purchase a ticket and end up paying for a game without her favorite team. On the other hand, another consumer may not purchase but his favorite team does play;