#image_title
0
0
YouTuber Sees Praise and Criticism Over Ownership Stake in Student Seats
Bordeaux, a popular YouTuber that produces primarily CFB videogame content, announced on Monday that he is now an owner of a sports ticketing app called Student Seats. The Student Seats app is a third-party ticket selling app that is exclusively accessible by students, as it requires a student email address to even register. This announcement has been highly controversial, as many fans of the YouTuber took to social media to voice their displeasure with the move. It would be easy to dismiss the issue as nothing more than just this weeks social media outrage topic, but there is more going on here than meets the eye. I went into the weeds of the digital hellscape formerly known as twitter to get as much information as I could so you wouldn’t have to. Before we get any further, I want to be perfectly clear, Bordeaux went out of his way to make time to answer my questions when he did not have to. He treated me with respect and answered my questions in greater detail than he had to. I would like to give him the credit for doing so, when he very easily could have just told me to speak with a lawyer, or just ignored my attempts to communicate. Here is what I have found so far.
At 4pm EST on October 13th, Bordeaux made a post on twitter with a caption that read “No, I haven’t gotten my first IRL head coach offer yet, but I am a proud owner of a company, Student Seats. Made for students looking to buy/sell student tickets to college game @StudentSeatsApp. Having a lot of fun already growing and innovating, anybody on campuses that wants to be involved just reach out!” Since it was posted, the post has seen well over 2 million views, but garnering just under 1300 likes, showing that the public reception to this announcement has been overwhelmingly negative. However, a negative reaction is not enough grounds for any potential criminal actions. In a reply to an upset fan in the comments, where Bordeaux stated “We were founded years ago due to ticketing scams at Alabama, as a way to counter that with a safe platform, No selling fees, 100% buyer protection. Students are already trading them, so at schools where we are able to operate, we want to protect them. That’s the goal.” This post raises some concerns and questions about the Student Seats platform.
The part that might have some folks upset is the part of the post where Bordeaux states “No selling fees, 100% buyer protection.” There are fees on Student Seats for every transaction, however they are paid by the buyer, not the seller. According to Student Seat website, there is a section of the FAQ page that is dedicated solely to the subject of fees. The fees are laid out as follows: Transactions less than $25: 0% + $4.98 fee. Transactions between $25 and $50: 5% + $4.98 fee. Transactions between $50 and $100: 8% + $7.50 fee. Transactions above $100: 15%. Bordeaux made it abundantly clear to me that this statement was specifically referencing seller fees, not fees in general.
There is still the concern about price gouging and scalping on the platform. It is a very common practice for universities that use a lottery to sell student ticket for students to enter into ticket lotteries at their university for the sole purpose of resale or scalping. Once again, the comments and replies came through with the answers I was looking for. A twitter user shared a screenshot of a listing on Student Seats for Michigan vs Ohio State on November 29th later this year, with a much higher sale price of $313.95 for a student section ticket. Michigan sells their student tickets at a face value of only $29, which means the listing on Student Seats represents a 982.6% price increase over face value. I will leave it to you to decide whether or not that qualifies as scalping. However, that does not mean that these practices are something that Bordeaux is okay with, which is something he told me multiple times he does not condone or agree with.
I reached out to Bordeaux to discuss and clarify these issues, and he was happy to do so. Our conversation went as follows:
[Bordeaux’s first message to me was an answer to the two questions I asked him in the replies of his original post, where I asked for clarification about the fees as well as scalping and price gouging]
A: We only have buying fees that scale, listed on the site, and factored into the that is shown. Scalping is an issue everywhere, and I’d like to find ways to minimize it now that I’ve come on, but we’re ultimately here to serve the students that are trading a safe place to do so.
Q: You made a statement in one of your replies that students are “already trading.” Could you clarify what you meant with that statement? Does Student Seats allow tickets to be traded in some capacity? Some have taken it as an attempt to obfuscate that Student Seats is for buying/selling tickets.
A Student Seats holds funds in escrow until the transfer has been confirmed. We are simply an alternative for the students that are buying/selling tickets on snapchat stories, Group Me chats, etc to protect them from scammers since they run rampant. Student Seats is only available at select schools where students are permitted to trade their student tickets, that’s on the university side. For example, we don’t operate at Tennessee, Georgia, Auburn, or other schools where such activity is strictly prohibited.
Q: There seems to be some confusion about your involvement with Student Seats. You mentioned in your original post that you have some ownership stake in the company. Is this something that you can elaborate on? Do you have sole ownership or some kind of percentage or majority/minority share?
A: I have an ownership stake in the company.
Q: Do you have any control or say over things like fee amounts and other practices and policies on Student Seats, such as anti-scalping measures?
A: Yes. Something I didn’t like was a leaderboard showing accounts that had bought/sold the most student tickets. That has now been removed from the website and will be removed from the app in the coming days.
Q: What policies would you recommend to Student Seats to help curb scalping and price gouging?
A: I think transparency on ticket pricing should continue to rise, and I’d like us to keep exploring more ways to do that. On Student Seats, anybody can view what tickets were sold for, what price they’ve been listed at, and get an idea of where they’re trending. I also like that a price alert can let you know if a ticket becomes available at the price point you are looking for. It’s a student-to-student market, we don’t control prices. Students have to list at what other would be willing to buy at.
Q: Do you think Student Seats should be more actively involved in price control efforts? I found a listing for student tickets for Ohio State at Michigan that represents a 982.6% increase over face value for Michigan student tickets. What, if anything, happens to users that show a repeated pattern of scalping or price gouging behavior on Student Seats?
A: That’s something that i wanna continue to look into, I think there’s always ways you can improve. I will say, one idea that got thrown out there was capping the price we allow students to relist for. The issue is if we do that, most students will just go back to selling on Snapchat, Group Me, etc to try and get more money than the cap allows. That sends them right back to praying somebody Venmo’s them, or the buyer praying they actually get the ticket after they send the money. I feel like a sufficient solution could be partnering with universities to cap resell prices, but we would need to be the only place students could exchange tickets at that school, or else we remain unable to protect everybody.
Q: Is there anything you would like to say or any general statement you would like to make to those that have had such a negative reaction to your announcement?
A: I have seen a lot of responses that don’t fully understand what we are as a platform, just quote tweets, buts that’s just how the internet is. I hate to see people claim stuff like ‘now students are gonna sell to non-students’ – we don’t allow that. It’s a verified student-to-student exchange. Users must have a school email. Most schools require you to present a school ID to get into the student section as well. Another one that sucks is any claims of a “scam,” just because that’s the one thing we are specifically trying to prevent. Students have been trading their tickets for decades at schools they’re allowed to, and this gives them a secure way to do so. I’ve received a lot of thank you’s from people that watch my channel that go to schools we represent because they deal with ticket resell issues themselves. I am truly proud the company has protected well over 3 million dollars work of student ticket exchanges since being founded in 2020 – before I was involved. I think my announcement brought to light an uncomfortable truth of what some college students have to deal with to get student section seats at their school. For a lot of people, it was free, or first come first serve, so they think we’re trying to change that at their program when we’re not. We probably don’t exist there because that school has a plan that works for the student body to have. Not every school allocates enough seats to students. For the ones that allow transfer, that is where we step in as a safe alternative since it’s happening anyway. I’m always gonna be open to new ideas and ways we can continue to serve students best. If any come along, I want to hear them, but hanging students out to dry with no alternative to the snapchat nightmare stories and group me chats has not been working.
Q: Last question. Earlier, you mentioned the importance of transparency surrounding student ticket sales. Can we expect open communication from you in the future about potential updates and changes to Student Seats?
A: Oh absolutely, nothing upsets me more than growing up seeing businesses that will make sudden changes and not speak on it, or hear out any feedback. Figuring out the best way to go about that might take some time, or be a learning process, but ultimately I just want to do the best I can to help serve students.
From our conversations on and off the record, I don’t believe there was any malicious intent here by Bordeaux to mislead anyone or encourage any price gouging or scalping practices. By all accounts, he actively wants to combat those issues, while providing a secure platform for students to trade/sell their tickets with each other. It seems like he is not content with the Student Seats platform as it currently exists, is fully committed to changing and improving the platform, and has already done so. Not only that, but he has now committed on record to openly communicating with Student Seat users and his own followers about changes and improvements to the platform. This is far more than anyone can say about other third-party platforms that currently operate in the ticketing resell space. I am simply a reporter of information, so the conclusions are yours to make, but if anyone were to ask me, I would suggest they give Bordeaux and the Student Seats team a chance to show whether or not they have students best interests at heart, as opposed to just going off of initial reactions. Whether or not you agree, however, is entirely up to you.
About the Author
