Last July we began wondering if Facebook would start competing with Eventbrite with the integration of Credits and the company’s Events product. Today it appears that the company has decided to partner with Eventbrite. Given that Facebook is “larger than Evite”, this partnership could prove to be extremely lucrative.

While Facebook decided to use Eventbrite to sell tickets to their upcoming f8 conference, a screenshot of the event registration page, which was accidentally published early, showed a new integration which required attendees to use Facebook Connect in order to purchase a ticket. This integration could be part of a broader integration in which Eventbrite uses Facebook as the sole identity provider for all attendees.

While Eventbrite previously implemented Facebook Connect in order to let attendees publish events they have RSVPed to on the site, this is a much more significant integration. The details of the new integration have not been published, but the screenshot below, initially published on Techcrunch, makes the partnership pretty obvious.

My guess is that the partnership announcement will coincide with the launch of f8 ticket sales. Regardless of what the two companies announce, it’s clear that this will be a big announcement given the size of Facebook Events.