The intelligent pricing of sports event tickets is becoming more of a reality with Liverpool Football Club the latest to introduce far more detailed pricing ahead of next season.
The moves echo those in airline seat booking where demand for particular services or events leads to different pricing depending on the time of booking.
Liverpool will introduce six tiers of pricing for the new season and will extend the availability of juvenile tickets priced at £5 (€6) after this was warmly welcomed during trials this season.
The sale of lower price tickets for children has been a major boost for GAA attendance over a number of years with tickets available for all matches up to All Ireland Semi Finals at a reduced rate.
It is a vital tool in maintaining the attractiveness of live sport at a time when bringing a family to an event would otherwise be too expensive and when alternatives like watching the game on TV are so prevalent.
Liverpool froze prices for this season and the new structure will see the cost of admission to some areas of the ground at Anfield, including the famous Kop, either remain the same or drop next year.
Prices will be determined in this next phase by the location of the ticket and the view of the pitch but it will likely not be long before the introduction of even more factors including the time the tickets are booked and the attractiveness of the match at that time.
In 2008 the San Francisco Giants became the first major US sports franchise to remove set prices from its tickets and within four years over half of the clubs in Major League baseball have gone down the same path.
The greater the demand and the more tickets sold, the more expensive they become.  Most sports have outsourced their ticketing arrangements to third parties in order to benefit from the better technology and modelling that can be achieved with scale.
The GAA moved to Tickets.ie as part of its plan to expand the number of outlets where tickets are sold and this has brought Supervalu and Centra stores into the ticketing calculation, offering main sponsors an exclusive and revenue positive additional benefit of their sponsorship.
O2 offer ticket exclusive promotions at its venues in Ireland and Britain and such flexibility is an important part of sponsorship and other commercial partnerships.