Ticket reselling site Seatwave lands $17M amid tough rivals

June 2, 2009 | Camille Ricketts | Comments | |

Seatwave, one of several sites for secondary ticket sales, has brought in $17 million in a fourth round of funding to continue developing and marketing its platform. While the London-based company has done quite well for itself — recording a 200 percent jump in revenue from first quarter this year compared to last year — it faces an increasingly fierce field of competition.

Seatwave, which allows ticket holders to sell their passes to others online if they cannot go to an event, says it aspires to become a major destination for ticket seekers on the web, but with eBay and Ticketmaster snapping up smaller companies like StubHub, GetMeIn and TicketsNow, it’s more dangerous than ever to be a small fish in a small pond. It also comes up against Viagogo, another U.K. company founded by the creator of StubHub that just snagged $70 million to achieve the same goals. It has also seen a 250 percent growth in sales in the past year.

One of Seatwave’s assets in this horserace is the degree of security it provides to transactions. The site says it guarantees that all exchanges take place with legitimate ticket sources and that buyers will receive the tickets they paid for or receive a full refund. It also offers a service called TicketCover that refunds buyers if an event is cancelled or if they cannot attend for a range of reasons.

Seatwave takes 25 percent of the sale price split between the buyer and seller of the tickets. It has raised $53 million to date now from Adinvest, Atlas Venture, Fidelity Ventures and Mangrove Capital Partners.

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About the Author, Camille Ricketts

Camille is the lead writer for GreenBeat. She came to VentureBeat from Google where she worked on its traditional platforms team, particularly in TV. Before that, she was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in New York and London. Follow her on Twitter at @camillericketts, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

With GreenBeat 2009, VentureBeat's all-star conference on all things Smart Grid, coming up in November, Camille will be expanding coverage of this exciting space. Stay up to date by following @greenbeat2009 on Twitter or by becoming a fan of the event on Facebook here.

  • Ticket sales is a rapidly growing industry. Although its dangerous to be a small fish in the industry, if they develop themselves correctly they could make some really profits if they sell it
  • another $17MM? they must have a high burn rate..... look for the exit now!
  • Haggie
    $17M? Really?

    I go to 1-2 shows a week and rarely buy my tickets in advance. I can almost always find a decent ticket on Craigslist for face value and when I have extra tickets I sell them on CL at face value and pay no fee.

    I don't see the exit strategy for these ticket resellers. Ticketmaster has built its own secondary market website, so I doubt they are interested in acquiring any of the competitors and I can't imagine any of them getting big enough for an IPO.

    I think all of these guys will end up in the no-man's land of respectable, but limited profitability in a market flooded with competition that keeps any one of them from getting too big.

    Also, expect a ton of expanded consumer protection ticket resale legislation to come after recent admissions from Ticketmast & LiveNation executives in Congressional hearings.
  • Really?
    Haggle, have you been paying attention in the past five years?

    The secondary market is $3+ billion turnover. Ticketmaster's secondary site has been a failure. That is why they did make acquisitions, buying GetMeIn in Europe and TicketsNow in the US, which they probably must now divest. StubHub is the shining star of eBay, riding their multi-year baseball agreement. According to the Deloitte survey, TicketNetwork is one of the fastest growing companies in the US.

    The US congressional hearings were about the possible Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger in the primary ticketing industry. What does this have to do with the secondary market other than the government, fans, and artists want Ticketmaster no where near it? That would be consumer protection!

    Seatwave and Viagogo are leading the charge in Europe, simply using the blueprint from the US.