3PA Onboarding Process

Once your data sharing agreement is signed and countersigned, you’ll move into the technical integration process. This section explains what happens between agreement sign-off and your first live event and why you can’t begin sending live orders to the API immediately.

Integration involves coordinated work on both sides: you build and test your integration against our sandbox, while our team provisions credentials, configures your account, and sets up the test resources you’ll use to validate end-to-end. Most integrations can be completed in 2–3 weeks of active work, though timelines depend on event calendar, resource availability, and the complexity of your system.

Phase 1: Kickoff and Account Setup

What to expect:

• A kickoff call with your Ticketmaster point of contact to walk through the API, the integration process, and confirm key dates and event details.
• A dedicated Slack channel created for ongoing communication, this is the primary channel for questions, status updates, and issue resolution during integration.
• Introductions to the contacts you’ll work with across Product, Engineering, and Operations.

What we’ll ask from you:

• Technical and business contacts on your side, including who will lead the integration build.
• The events, venues, or use cases you intend to support so we can confirm scope and dependencies.

Phase 2: Documentation and Sandbox Credentials

What you’ll receive:

• The full 3PA API documentation (this site), including endpoint references, request/response schemas, and error codes.
• A Postman collection preconfigured with example requests for every endpoint, so you can quickly explore the API.
• Pre-production (sandbox) API credentials that allow you to authenticate against our non-production environment.

API keys are delivered through a secure channel — never by email or shared documents. Production credentials are issued separately later in the process; sandbox credentials cannot be used against production.

Phase 3: Test Resources

Before you can submit test orders, your account needs to be configured on our side and we need to provide you with valid resources to test against. This is one of the main reasons integration cannot begin the moment the agreement is signed.

What we’ll provide:

• A test event in the sandbox environment, configured with inventory you can ingest against.
• The identifiers you’ll need to make valid API calls (event IDs, offer IDs, price types, and any other resource IDs your integration depends on).
• Any partner-specific configuration values required for your account.

Phase 4: Build and Test Against Sandbox

This is where the bulk of your engineering work happens. Using the documentation, Postman collection, and test resources, you’ll:

• Implement the API calls your use case requires (typically order creation and cancellation at minimum; additional endpoints depending on scope).
• Submit test orders against the test event and verify the responses.
• Validate that your system handles the documented error scenarios and edge cases (e.g., sold-out inventory, invalid offer IDs, cancellation flows).
• Iterate on any issues with our team via the shared Slack channel.

The sandbox is designed to mirror production behavior, so a passing sandbox integration is a strong signal that you’re ready to go live.

Phase 5: Sign-off and Production Credentials

When you’ve completed testing, our Operations team reviews your test orders end-to-end to confirm the integration is working as expected. This review typically covers:

• Order data integrity (ticket allocation, holder details, pricing, fulfillment data).
• Correct handling of cancellations and any other in-scope flows.
• Stable, repeatable behavior across multiple test runs.

Once we sign off, you’ll receive production API credentials through the same secure channel used for sandbox keys. These credentials are scoped to the events and venues defined in your agreement.

Phase 6: Go-Live

Going live is gated to a specific event (or set of events) rather than a generic “switch on” moment. For your first live event, expect:

• Pre-event coordination on event configuration, on-sale date, and any operational details (e.g., expected ingestion volume, peak times).
• Heightened monitoring on both sides during the initial on-sale and ingestion window.
• A debrief after the first event to surface any issues and confirm readiness for subsequent events.

After your first successful event, additional events and venues within scope are typically enabled with lighter coordination.

What This Means for Your Planning

When scoping your integration project, plan for:

• Engineering time to build and test against sandbox (varies by use case — typically 1–2 weeks once credentials are in hand).
• Calendar time for kickoff, account setup, and sign-off, which involves coordination on our side (typically 1 week combined).
• Event lead time — your first live event should be far enough out that integration and sign-off can complete before on-sale.

If you have a specific event you’re targeting for go-live, share that with your point of contact during kickoff so we can work backward from that date.