BACKGROUND

Technical Field

The present disclosure relates generally to electronic commerce, and more particularly, to the redistribution of purchased event tickets.

Related Art

Computer systems and networks have facilitated the tasks of buying, selling and transferring goods. For example, global computer networks, such as the Internet, have allowed purchasers to relatively quickly and efficiently seek and purchase goods online. Similarly, global computer networks provide an efficient and cost-effective medium for sellers to advertise, offer, provide, and sell their goods. Electronic commerce companies provide buyers and sellers with online services and the infrastructure to accept orders of goods from remote purchasers, to perform the financial transactions necessary to confirm and complete the sale of goods, to ship or distribute the goods to remote purchasers, and to perform other related logistics.

One example of a market for goods within the realm of electronic commerce is the online ticket market. Various online ticket sellers provide websites through which parties can buy and sell tickets online. These tickets can be obtained by a user to reserve seats and/or admission for a variety of live events, such as sporting events, concerts, theater events, and other entertainment events. Typically, a buyer looks for available tickets on a ticket marketplace website or other online listing and decides which, if any, of the available tickets are of interest to the buyer for possible purchase.

Tickets for ticketed events are typically sold well in advance of the event. For example, a fan of a musical artist will often purchase tickets for a performance of that musical artist at a venue months in advance. Due to a wide variety of circumstances, purchased tickets often go unused by the ticket purchaser. Ticket purchasers can knowingly or unknowingly fail to attend a ticketed event for which they have purchased tickets or, even when attending the event, can leave the event early leaving empty seats at the event. Conventionally, it is necessary for the ticket purchaser to determine that they will not be attending the event if they wish to resell the tickets. However, in some circumstances a ticket purchaser can forget about an event, underestimate the time it would take to reach an event, or unexpectedly leave the event early. In these cases there is no mechanism by which the purchaser can recoup any of the money spent on the tickets and no way in which the event venue can fill the unused seat or seats associated with the unused or underused tickets.

It may therefore be desirable to provide systems and methods for redistributing unused, partially used, and/or potentially unused tickets for various ticketed events.

