UsableMarkets

Yoonew is a fascinating little site. They are a futures market for event tickets, and the main focus right now is on the Super Bowl. I think you have to be a little nuts to drop $300 or so on the possibility that your team could make it to the Big Game, but I’m sure there are enough rabid fans out there willing to take the chance. Football is, after all, the most popular sport in America. And America is filled with crazy people. Ergo ….

Regardless, here’s the link, and I provide an excerpt for free:

Behind the scenes are the market makers – the very select few individuals who actually have their hands on the tickets. These include players and NFL officials, official partners to the NFL, and the people who purchase tickets from them. How much they pay for those tickets is based on their analysis of the game economics, and they are putting serious capital at risk every year. They then turn around and sell those tickets to the public. If they’re good they make a lot of money. If not, they can lose their business over a single game.

Yoonew is productizing that risk and bringing it down to the level of the individual ticket buyer – people who actually want to attend the game. Instead of buying a ticket early and not knowing if your team will even make it, people can simply buy a contract that delivers a ticket at no additional charge if their team makes it. If the team doesn’t make it, they’re out whatever they paid for the contract.

Prices are market based – and contracts can be purchased for as little as a few hundred dollars (prices are rising steadily now as the chances of any particular remaining team making it go up dramatically). That’s a big lure for rapid fans who can’t otherwise afford to attend the game. They pay now, and hope for the best.

From a usability point of view, the site is not what I would call terribly usable. Any UX person who takes a look at the site will probably note the over-use of color on the site which makes it hard to follow what’s happening on any specific page. Orienting yourself on any page is difficult.

The inspiration for the design must come from trader’s desktops, which usually tend to have a black background and use copious amounts of color to indicate where you should be looking. I would imagine traders also happen to be one of the main target audiences for the site.

Yoonew in black and white (and yellow, orange, green, and blue)

As always, thanks for listening.
~alex

~alex