Zvents has over 3 million events, generated from 140,000 local marketers in its catalog. It gets 14 million monthly unique visitors.

eBay’s Richard Brewer-Hay writes on the eBay Ink blog, “StubHub currently offers around 30,000 events for discovery whereas Zvents users have access to 600,000 events on any given day and over 3 million during the course of a calendar year. Essentially, with this new acquisition (and after integration), StubHub users will eventually have access to 100x more events than the present.”

That’s a lot of events.

The Zvents Team says on its own blog:

Joining StubHub is an exciting next phase in our evolution to be the world’s premier provider of event and entertainment content. Since launching Zvents in 2005, our team has worked tirelessly to build a strong product line for our users, advertisers and partner network. Zvents boasts over 14 million users via its various channels – Zvents.com and its media partner network of over 300 major sites, including Microsoft, AT&T and over 280 major newspapers.

StubHub’s industry-leading service and platforms provide the ideal launching pad for us to accelerate our growth and expand our mission. We are dedicated to enabling our users to find fun and interesting things to do in their lives by providing the best events and entertainment information across our products and network. StubHub shares our passion and we will work together to drive a new vision for live entertainment.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

If you’ll notice the images in this article, StubHub is displaying results for Louisville. That’s because it doesn’t have Lexington as a market. Zvents does. Presumably, this means StubHub will feature a significant amount of new markets.

It’s no surprise that Chicago wants a piece of the action every time a ticket changes hands for a city event. Chicago called for a little juice when someone takes a ticket and resells it to someone else for an event in the city.

Internet Retailer said the city’s legal representatives want StubHub and other websites to collect and pay Chicago’s 8 percent amusement tax for each of these transactions, of which the city believes it is owed some $186,000 to date. City attorneys also content eBay and StubHub aren’t being very forthcoming with information for the case:

The city, represented by city attorney Mara Georges, contends in the lawsuit against eBay that the e-marketplace maintains relationships with businesses based in Chicago but that the city needs to “engage in discovery to determine the full extent and specifics of Defendant’s operations and amusement tax liabilities.”

The city charges that eBay and StubHub have refused to comply with a request to submit their records on ticket sales since last year, which triggered the imposition of fines set at $500 per day until the matter is settled.

eBay doesn’t think it owes the amusement tax, a position that should lead to a protracted lawsuit. We’re wondering how the idea of a first sale of a ticket will be treated by the court; allowing Chicago to collect an amusement tax each time a single ticket has been resold looks like a slippery slope to us.

The city charges in the lawsuit filed in Cook County Circuit Court that the two companies are "reseller’s agents" and are required under Chicago’s law to pay an amusement tax. The suit asks for a court order that will allow the city to audit the companies and hand out fines for not collecting and paying the tax.

eBay and StubHub plan to challenge the suit. "We do not believe that the City’s Amusement Tax applies to either eBay’s or StubHub’s business models nor do we believe that the Amusement Tax can properly be assessed here," said a statement by a spokesperson for both companies. "We intend to fight this litigation vigorously."

The lawsuit alleges that thousand of tickets have been sold to events at Chicago venues via the two Web sites. Total ticket sales sold through eBay and StubHub are not known, which is why the city wants to audit the two companies, said Jenny Hoyle, a spokeswoman for the city’s Law Department.

The amusement tax ordinance says that a resellers agent is "a person who, for consideration, resells a ticket on behalf of the ticket’s owner or assists the owner in re-selling the ticket." The term applies, "whether the ticket is re-sold by bidding, consignment or otherwise, and whether the ticket is re-sold in person, at a site on the Internet or otherwise," the ordinance states.
 

Earlier this month online retailer Amazon.com sued the state of New York challenging a new sate law that requires out of state Internet retailers to collect sales tax. The state of Texas is also looking into making Amazon collect taxes since it has a physical presence in the state.

The multiyear deal with the National Football League includes branding and promotion for the site, according to Ticketmaster. Financial terms of the deal were not released. Ticketmaster currently runs separate ticket exchange sites for 18 NFL teams where fans can resell their game tickets online.

Ticketmaster trails other online ticket resale outlets such as StubHub, which is owned by eBay, and auction sites like eBay. "It’s fair to say we’re an underdog in the category right now," said Eric Korman, Ticketmaster’s executive vice president. "We need to really aggressively compete to win dollars and grow ahead of the competition."

Ticketmaster will guarantee the resold tickets, which are sent to buyers through email, the same way it does with regular ticket sales. The company is relying on that security feature and the NFL branding to attract potential ticket buyers and sellers.

"It’s going to be safe, it’s going to be reliable, it’s going to be efficient," Korman said. "When you show up at the gate, you’re ensured that ticket is going to be valid."
 

In the suit against StubHub, which is owned by Ebay the Patriots maintain that the site allows fans to break state law and violate team policies. Team rules prohibit reselling game tickets for a profit.

StubHub began contacting the 13,000 customers yesterday to tell them that their personal information had been turned over to the Patriots after a ruling by Superior Court Judge Allan van Gestel.

"We take the privacy of our customers very seriously, so we made every effort to appeal this ruling. Unfortunately, our appeals were not successful," StubHub said in an e-mail to the customers according to the Boston Globe.

In the ruling Judge van Gestel wrote, "The Patriots have said that they intend to use the identities of the purchasers and sellers not only for this case, but also for its own other allegedly legitimate uses, such as canceling season tickets of ‘violators’ or reporting to authorities those customers that they deem to be in violation of the Massachusetts antiscalping law."

Tickets for some Patriots games are selling on StubHub far above face value. Tickets that the team originally sold for $125 are now selling for $650 on StubHub. Standing room tickets, which were $49, are for sale for $120 to $150.

A lawyer for the Patriots would not say what the team would do with the 13,000 names that StubHub turned over according to the AP. The Center for Democracy and Technology, an advocacy group, said the court ruling infringes on the rights of Patriots fans.

The purchase will cost eBay approximately $310 million, and will allow the auction site to increase its presence in the realm of online ticketing, while giving StubHub access to eBay’s technology and resources.

Officials at eBay had denied rumors of a StubHub acquisition as recently as October, but reversed course today by going public with its purchase of the ticket reseller.

“StubHub has been extremely successful in the online tickets segment, and it’s a perfect complement to eBay’s tickets business,” said Bill Cobb, president, eBay North America Marketplaces. “Together we can strengthen both businesses and provide fans with more choice and better service.”

“StubHub’s business model is an excellent fit with eBay, a company we’ve admired for a long time,” said Jeff Fluhr, founder and CEO of StubHub. “StubHub exists to serve passionate fans – and we feel great knowing our customers will benefit from the power of eBay and its community of users.”

It’s a strategic move, to be sure, as StubHub had been quietly infringing upon the online ticket market which eBay highly covets.

Ticket brokering is dangerous territory, with states beginning to crack down on scalpers.

So far, eBay has managed to keep its head out of the noose, as the company never actually has possession of the tickets.

Michael Arrington gives great insight into how the secondary ticket market actually works:

So, eBay has that stigma to overcome in this whole venture. Nonetheless, the deal should proper eBay to the forefront of the secondary market.

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Joe is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.