Congrats guys- I know for a fact you have a terrific DevOps team!
Aww shucks :)
Keep up the good work ;)
SeatGeek Raises $62M
21–30 of 34 posts
Re: SeatGeek Raises $62M
#22as someone who lived through/participated in phase one of the "ticket disruption" to include secondary markets, i'm skeptical this is relevant and really i think the vc dudes just flushed a bunch of money down the toilet. TM owns this market and frankly, the issue has nothing to do with tech, and everything to do with the way professional sports and concert marketing works from a biz perspective. then there's the who…
seatgeek has an amazing ui, maybe the best ui for finding tickets. That alone is very valuable. The problem is that with this round total raised is $100M. VC's expect to double or triple their money, as par. That sets a simplified expected exit valuation of $300M for this to be a success. Ticketmaster was last sold for $400MM in 2009. The bar for success is now extremely high. Anything below the high expectations gen…
> Ticketmaster was last sold for $400MM in 2009
It was not sold. It merged with LYV to be valued at 50% of a $2.5bil company. It's now a $5bil company.
Re: SeatGeek Raises $62M
#23Hooray for the SeatGeek team!
I love their UI and onboarding process, and used it to get tickets to one of last year's world series games.
Re: SeatGeek Raises $62M
#24as someone who lived through/participated in phase one of the "ticket disruption" to include secondary markets, i'm skeptical this is relevant and really i think the vc dudes just flushed a bunch of money down the toilet. TM owns this market and frankly, the issue has nothing to do with tech, and everything to do with the way professional sports and concert marketing works from a biz perspective. then there's the who…
They are not going against TM in the ticket market though. Putting the entire ticket market in one place is really nice from a ticket buyers perspective. How much TM and the whole ticket market sucks though, is another story.
But they are. TM/Livenation don't just do concert tickets. They do all types of events, festivals, etc. I've seen tickets for golf events, dinner events, etc on livenation.
Not only this, but TM/LN actually own a ton of venues. They seem to grow in size monthly.
Here is the latest: http://blog.livenationentertainment.com/blog/Blog-Details/20...
There really is a monopoly on the market.
"SeatGeek helps people find and buy tickets to sporting events, concerts, Broadway shows, nightclubs and a range of other live entertainment through its mobile app or website." This is targeting TM/LN market for sure.
They don't have the connections that TM/LN have that allow them to gobble up a venue/festival monthly.
http://www.livenationentertainment.com/
Those are some hard stats to follow.
Despite all of this, I'd love to see SeatGeek succeed. Hopefully some of this funding will help them.
Re: SeatGeek Raises $62M
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
seatgeek has an amazing ui, maybe the best ui for finding tickets. That alone is very valuable. The problem is that with this round total raised is $100M. VC's expect to double or triple their money, as par. That sets a simplified expected exit valuation of $300M for this to be a success. Ticketmaster was last sold for $400MM in 2009. The bar for success is now extremely high. Anything below the high expectations gen…
You didn't really counter any of the OPs points, though. A great UI is cool, but not if you don't have any tickets to sell because Ticketmaster already owns the entire market.
is the UI good enough that people pay a markup on TM for the sake of the buying experience?
Re: SeatGeek Raises $62M
#26as someone who lived through/participated in phase one of the "ticket disruption" to include secondary markets, i'm skeptical this is relevant and really i think the vc dudes just flushed a bunch of money down the toilet. TM owns this market and frankly, the issue has nothing to do with tech, and everything to do with the way professional sports and concert marketing works from a biz perspective. then there's the who…
Former TM engineering manager here...
> TM owns this market and frankly, the issue has nothing to do with tech, and everything to do with the way professional sports and concert marketing works from a biz perspective.
Props to you for realizing the complexity of the business side. Most folks don't realize how complicated the world of ticketing is.
I do think you underestimate the value of technology. Ticketmaster effectively figured how to solve some really hard problems, similar to how we solve inside Google today.
The difference is TM did it with VAX assembler and for very focused use cases.
Re: SeatGeek Raises $62M
#27As an avid sports fan and all around event-goer, this is very exciting. I'd love to see someone match (and surpass) the quality of StubHub.
I hope SeatGeek doesn't get picked up by eBay. That's a sure-fire way to halt all future product development.
Re: SeatGeek Raises $62M
#28I interviewed at SeatGeek five years ago when they were a very small team. I was super intimidated at my first "startup" interview. No need to be; Jack and Russ were some of the nicest guys and interviewers. I remember after the interview they spent a bunch of time talking about the ways they had scripted Adobe Illustrator (I believe) to make the then very awesome, but now quite rudimentary, seat maps. Really thought…
I remember getting an email from Jack a few years ago asking if I wanted to help them build their iOS app. They knew exactly what they wanted and where they needed expertise, which is the right way to approach contract work. I wasn't surprised when their app turned out to be very well done :)
Re: SeatGeek Raises $62M
#29as someone who lived through/participated in phase one of the "ticket disruption" to include secondary markets, i'm skeptical this is relevant and really i think the vc dudes just flushed a bunch of money down the toilet. TM owns this market and frankly, the issue has nothing to do with tech, and everything to do with the way professional sports and concert marketing works from a biz perspective. then there's the who…
Former TM engineering manager here... > TM owns this market and frankly, the issue has nothing to do with tech, and everything to do with the way professional sports and concert marketing works from a biz perspective. Props to you for realizing the complexity of the business side. Most folks don't realize how complicated the world of ticketing is. I do think you underestimate the value of technology. Ticketmaster eff…
What are some of the main challenges in the world of ticketing, regulatory & business wise? I wonder what would make it so hard to just strike a deal with a venue.
Re: SeatGeek Raises $62M
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Former TM engineering manager here... > TM owns this market and frankly, the issue has nothing to do with tech, and everything to do with the way professional sports and concert marketing works from a biz perspective. Props to you for realizing the complexity of the business side. Most folks don't realize how complicated the world of ticketing is. I do think you underestimate the value of technology. Ticketmaster eff…
What are some of the main challenges in the world of ticketing, regulatory & business wise? I wonder what would make it so hard to just strike a deal with a venue.
TM took over back in the late 80's as the underdog because they made the great business decision to give venues a cut of the pie as opposed to charging venues for their services - which is what their competitors did at the time.
They quickly took demolished the competition and began setting up long term contracts, usually between 3 and 10 years with each venue.
Then, in 2010 they merged with LiveNation who owns a vast majority of some of the nations largest, most popular venues.
Major artists' managers and promoters all have close ties to TM/LiveNation as well, because it's where the money is. So when Taylor Swift goes on tour, these folks make sure they hit a TM venue at each stop along the way.
That's just the tip of the iceberg, but you get the gist.