Last year I wrote a brief analysis of why sports venues benefit by restricting ticket resale. It is hard to think of any other instance, perhaps other than land ownership, where the resale of your asset can be restricted or outright denied. Further, anything which makes honest people hide from police as if they were criminals probably erodes the force of law to our collective detriment.

Anyway, an Israeli firm, Ticket2Final, has proposed a novel online idea to sell chances to win the right to buy championship tickets at face value. They partner with the league that will hold the championship, and during playoffs they use economic models (which sounds like odds making) to set prices for customers to essentially bet on their team making the championship. If they do, they can buy tickets from the league at face value.

The league benefits by getting their tickets sold at face value, which is what they normally do, plus there’s the opportunity to split the proceeds of the fans who bought chances but didn’t get to buy tickets when their team didn’t make the playoffs. Fans get new options, leagues get new revenue. It’s an efficient, though chance-based, market.

The legal risks are clear. The Ticket2Final model seems a lot like gambling. And if it’s not gambling, it is potentially an illegal sweepstakes. There’s also no sign that any league has taken Ticket2Final up on their offer to broker tickets.

Even though Ticket2Final has a long way to go to be ready for prime time, they have what could be a valuable business process patent. And even if its not fully baked, it addresses the need for new ticket distribution schemes better than the collective non-efforts of most leagues.