Major League Soccer (MLS) stadiums in the US are in line for a concert boom after teaming up with artist management and production company Terrapin Station Entertainment.

Sports Business Journal reports that a coalition of 10 MLS teams and 11 stadiums are working with Terrapin Station to increase the number of shows at the venues, the majority of which previously just hosted one or two gigs a year.

All of the participating stadiums – Allianz Field (Minnesota), America First Field (Salt Lake City), Dignity Health Park (Carson), Exploria Stadium (Orlando); Historic Crew Stadium (Columbus), Lower.com Field (Columbus), Red Bull Arena, (Harrison), Shell Energy Stadium (Houston), Subaru Park (Chester), Toyota Stadium (Frisco) and TQL Stadium (Cincinnati) – have capacities in the 20,000 to 30,000 range.

“It’s sort of a new category of venue and stadium, so they’re a bit larger than an arena but it’s not quite at the MLB [Major League Baseball] level, where it’d be 35,000, 40,000 tickets they’re trying to sell,” explains Steven Lundy, Terrapin EVP, business development. “So, it hits this sweet spot while also being a stadium play and having that prestige and excitement around it.”

“We would love to have a tour that goes across all 10 venues. That would be the utopian goal”

According to Terrapin Station founder Jonathan Shank, who worked with the likes of Grateful Dead and Smashing Pumpkins during a 25-year stint in music management, concerts at MLS stadiums can generate mid-six-figure revenue as a matter of course.

“Ultimately, we have become an extension of the team and really a liaison to the local promoters, to the national tour promoters and to the agents,” he says.

Terrapin Station has already booked three as-yet-unannounced shows for MLS venues and has another dozen in the works, with the coalition likely to start reaping the rewards of the partnership from next summer.

“If everyone was working together, we could make this an even better opportunity for a promoter and an artist,” adds Kristin Bernert, president of business operations at MLS side Columbus Crew. “We would love to have a tour that goes across all 10 venues. That would be the utopian goal.”

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

Secondary ticketing platform SeatGeek has followed StubHub into the primary market via a strategic partnership with ticketing software developer TopTix.

SeatGeek, which began life as a ticket aggregator/search engine but recently also launched a ticket marketplace of its own (partially under pressure from StubHub, which in 2014 pulled its inventory from the site), will use TopTix’s SRO⁴ software to provide the back-end functionality for its new primary platform.

Its first partnership is with Major League Soccer (MLS) – the highest-level football (soccer) league in the US, equivalent to the UK’s Premier League – which will allow for a team’s primary tickets to be sold on any site or mobile application of their choosing using SeatGeek/TopTix’s technology.

“Together with SeatGeek we are going to build the best ticketing experience in the sports industry”

“We were seeking a partner who shared the same vision for an open ecosystem and can support us with back-end software to support our primary ticketing needs,” says SeatGeek co-founder Jack Groetzinger. “We couldn’t be more pleased with TopTix. The team is comprised of [sic] some of the best people in the industry and the SRO⁴ software is really impressive.”

Commenting on the MLS deal, Kathy Carter, president of Soccer United Marketing (MLS’s commercial arm), says: “Our number-one objective when we set out to find a ticketing partner was to align with a group that would build an incredible fan experience. We selected SeatGeek because we believe that together we are going to build the best ticketing experience in the sports industry.”

US market leader StubHub’s first primary partnership, announced in February, is with basketball team the Philadelphia 76ers.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.