Ticketing startup SeatGeek partnered with Facebook, having enlisted the help of the largest social media network in the world to distribute tickets to more people and reach out to a larger number of potential customers, the New York City-based company announced on Thursday through VentureBeat. The move comes on the back of an application programming interface (API) SeatGeek released last year to provide any third parties with a platform they can use to sell tickets to a broad range of happenings. By partnering with Facebook, the startup is extending its offering to a massive online ecosystem, providing clients with an option to integrate its API directly into their Facebook pages and sell tickets to their fans on the social media platform.

Major League Soccer (MLS) team Sporting Kansas City is SeatGeek's first client taking advantage of the new partnership and has already started selling tickets through its official Facebook page, with the API itself featuring audience targeting systems that appear to be comparable to the ones already offered to administrators and managers of Facebook pages. Basic demographic filters appear to be available to event organizes, as Sporting Kansas City's tickets unsurprisingly aren't available for purchase through Facebook to European users yet a convenient "Get Tickets" button is listed next to eligible matches for people in the United States. SeatGeek's framework is advertised as working seamlessly with the social network, with the company's name being clearly denoted next to every purchase button served by its platform.

SeatGeek said in a prepared statement that its business endgame is making tickets for live events more discoverable on the World Wide Web and its partnership with Facebook is meant to provide a significant boost to these efforts. While the company first built a name for itself among ticket resellers, the launch of its API marked a shift toward event organizers and was designed to deliver a straightforward platform for purchasing tickets that can be integrated into websites that potential event-goers are already visiting on a frequent basis, with Facebook topping that list along with Google. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed by either party and more sports teams and other event organizers are expected to adopt the platform in the near future.