Seatwave

Last updated
Seatwave
Company type Private
Industry e-commerce
Founded London, UK (2006)
DefunctNovember 27, 2018;5 years ago (2018-11-27)
HeadquartersLondon, UK
Key people
Joe Cohen (founder)
ProductsOnline secondary ticketing, online ticket marketplace
Parent Ticketmaster [1]
Website www.seatwave.com

Seatwave was an online ticket marketplace for buying and selling tickets to music, sporting and cultural events. Seatwave was founded in May 2006. Ticket sellers used to be able to list their tickets on Seatwave and specify what price they would be willing to sell them for. Buyers could browse the site, compare ticket prices and could then purchase the ticket they feel was the best deal.

Contents

Seatwave's TicketIntegrity guarantee ensured buyers that would get the tickets they ordered by the day of the event. If they didn't, Seatwave would find them replacement tickets, or refund the buyer.[ citation needed ]

On 13 August 2018, Seatwave parent company Ticketmaster Ltd announced its intention to close Seatwave in October 2018, and move secondary ticketing services to its main website, in a bid to combat exploitation of the service by ticket touts. [2] [3]

On 27 November 2018, Seatwave was closed, no longer accepting new ticket listings or purchases. The company is currently closed down, and has yet to announce a reopening date.

Founder and investors

Seatwave was founded by Joe Cohen, formerly of Match.com and Ticketmaster, in May 2006 and began online trading in February 2007. Seatwave secured $25 million in February 2008 in a Series C funding round led by Fidelity Ventures and including existing investors Atlas Venture, Mangrove Capital Partners and AdInvest. On 1 June 2009, Seatwave announced it had raised $17 million in fourth round Series D of funding, taking the company's funding total to $53 million / €38 million. [4] [5]

Seatwave was featured on Media Momentum's "Ones to Watch" list in 2008 and in 2009, won their "Fastest Growing Company Award & Best Management" Award. Seatwave was awarded Online Business of the Year award in the Fast Growth Business Media Awards 2009 and was awarded first place in the inaugural Tech Media Invest 100 in 2009, in association with The Guardian, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Kemp Little and Europe Unlimited. [6]

In January 2013, Joe Cohen stepped down as CEO of Seatwave to become the company's non-executive chairman. Ajay Chowdhury was appointed CEO of Seatwave in September 2013.

Board appointments

Marty Pompadour joined the company as a non-executive director in 2008 but resigned on 23 June 2010. [7]

Board members also include Fred Destin, a blogger who often wrote about Seatwave. [8] Destin was a partner at Atlas Venture’s London office when the firm made its initial investment in Seatwave back in 2006.[ citation needed ] In 2010, Atlas Ventures closed its London office and Destin relocated to Boston. [9]

To prevent football hooliganism, the resale of football tickets in the UK was made illegal within the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. [10] Resale of football tickets is only legal when expressly permitted by the individual club. [10] As of 2011, Seatwave is the approved secondary ticket partner of Fulham FC. [11]

Seatwave has partnered with Grand Union Management who manage artists including The Enemy and Reverend and the Makers. [12]

Testimony at 2007 Parliamentary enquiry

In 2007, the UK's Department for Culture, Media and Sport appointed a Select Committee to investigate ticket touting and outline recommendations on legislative measures. On 10 January 2008, the Select Committee published a report which summarised their findings. [13] They identified 12 key benefits and 14 key detriments for consumers. [14] Seatwave testified at the inquiry where Joe Cohen presented his view on touting.

In April 2008, the government responded to the Select Committee's reports supporting the findings that legislation should be a last resort, identifying a need for the primary ticketing market to be improved and urging all players in the industry to work together to develop a voluntary code of principles. [15] Seatwave has declined to join any trade association connected with secondary ticketing in Europe, citing fundamental differences.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Venture capital</span> Form of private-equity financing

Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which have demonstrated high growth. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing risky start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. Start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are usually from high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.

Ticketmaster Entertainment, LLC is an American ticket sales and distribution company based in Beverly Hills, California with operations in many countries around the world. In 2010, it merged with Live Nation under the name Live Nation Entertainment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ticket resale</span> Act of reselling tickets for admission to events

Ticket resale is the act of reselling tickets for admission to events. Tickets are bought from licensed sellers and then sold for a price determined by the individual or company in possession of the tickets. Tickets sold through secondary sources may be sold for less or more than their face value depending on demand, which tends to vary as the event date approaches. When the supply of tickets for a given event available through authorized ticket sellers is depleted, the event is considered "sold out", generally increasing the market value for any tickets on offer through secondary sellers. Ticket resale is common in both sporting and musical events.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">StubHub</span> American ticket brokering company

StubHub is an American ticket exchange and resale company. It provides services for buyers and sellers of tickets for sports, concerts, theater, and other live entertainment events. By 2015, it was the world's largest ticket marketplace. While the company does not currently disclose its financials, in 2015 it had over 16 million unique visitors and nearly 10 million live events per month.

Viagogo, stylized by the company as viagogo, is a multinational ticket exchange and ticket resale brand. It is recorded in the United States (Delaware) and has been owned by StubHub since 2021. It was founded in London in 2006 by Eric Baker as an online marketplace for consumers to buy and sell tickets to sports, music, theatre and comedy events.

In finance, the private-equity secondary market refers to the buying and selling of pre-existing investor commitments to private-equity and other alternative investment funds. Given the absence of established trading markets for these interests, the transfer of interests in private-equity funds as well as hedge funds can be more complex and labor-intensive.

Online ticket brokering is the resale of tickets through a web-based ticket brokering service. Prices on ticket brokering websites are determined by demand, availability, and the ticket reseller. Tickets sold through an online ticket brokering service may or may not be authorized by the official seller. Generally, the majority of trading on ticket brokering websites concerns itself with tickets to live entertainment events whereby the primary officially licensed seller's supply has been exhausted and the event has been declared "sold-out". This "sold-out" status increases the ticket's potential market value. Critics of the industry compare the resale of tickets online to ‘ticket touting’, ‘scalping’ or a variety of other terms for the unofficial sale of tickets directly outside the venue of an event.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SoundHound</span> American music and speech recognition company

SoundHound AI, Inc. is a voice AI and speech recognition company founded in 2005. It develops speech recognition, natural language understanding, sound recognition and search technologies. Its featured products include a voice AI developer platform, SoundHound Chat AI, a voice-enabled digital assistant, and music recognition mobile app SoundHound. Key vertical industries include the automotive, IoT devices, restaurant and customer service industries. The company’s headquarters are in Santa Clara, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Howard Lindzon</span> Author and financial analyst

Howard Lindzon is a Canadian Author, financial analyst, technical analyst and super angel investor. Lindzon manages a hedge fund, serves as managing partner of the holding company Social Leverage, limited partner at Knight's Bridge Capital Partners, and is the co-founder of StockTwits. Lindzon was named one of The Best Tweets for Your Money in 2013 by Barron's.

Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. is an American multinational entertainment company that was founded in 2010 following the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster. It promotes, operates and manages ticket sales for live entertainment internationally. It also owns and operates entertainment venues and manages the careers of music artists.

TicketsNow was an online ticket retailer. It was founded in 1992 by Mike Domek and headquartered in Woodstock, Illinois.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jim Breyer</span> American venture capitalist (born 1961)

James W. Breyer is an American venture capitalist, founder and chief executive officer of Breyer Capital, an investment and venture philanthropy firm, and a former managing partner at Accel Partners, a venture capital firm. Breyer has invested in over 40 companies that have gone public or completed a merger, with some of these investments, including Facebook, earning over 100 times cost and many others over 25 times cost. On the Forbes 2021 list of the 400 richest Americans, he was ranked #389, with a net worth of US$2.9 billion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SeatGeek</span> Ticket platform

SeatGeek is a mobile-focused ticket platform that enables users to buy and sell tickets for live sports, concerts, and theater events. SeatGeek allows both mobile app and desktop users to browse events, view interactive color-coded seatmaps, complete purchases, and receive electronic or print tickets. Originally launched as an aggregator of listings on the secondary ticketing market, the company now operates as both a secondary marketplace and primary ticket outlet for sports teams and live event venues.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hootsuite</span> Social media management platform

Hootsuite is a social media management platform, created by Ryan Holmes in 2008. The system's user interface takes the form of a dashboard, and supports social network integrations for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube and TikTok.

ScoreBig is a startup company headquartered in South Windsor, Connecticut, United States, that focuses on the liquidation and sale of “undersold” ticket inventory for sports, concerts, theater, and other live entertainment events.

TicketNetwork is an online marketplace that provides an outlet for buyers and sellers of tickets to live entertainment events. The company was founded in 2002 by ticket broker Don Vaccaro and software developer Doug Kruse. It operates several retail sites and partners with large name brand travel and media companies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spark Capital</span> American venture capital firm

Spark Capital is a venture capital firm in the United States, responsible for early-stage funding startups of consumer, commerce, FinTech, software, frontier, and media sectors. It has branches in San Francisco, Boston, and New York City.

Chairish is a curated online marketplace for high-end vintage home furnishings and art.

The Better Online Ticket Sales Act of 2016 was signed into federal law by President Barack Obama on December 14, 2016. This act was created to thwart attempts by individuals and organization to automate the process of purchasing tickets en masse using ticket bots. Later, these tickets are often resold on third-party sites for profit at a markup over face value, or at a loss. This activity is also referred to as ticket scalping. The BOTS Act outlawed the resale of tickets purchased using bot technology and set a fine of $16,000 for violations of the act, which is enforced by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Gametime is a mobile ticket marketplace app developed by San Francisco-based Gametime United Inc., which was founded by Brad Griffith in late 2012. The app was released for iOS in May 2013, with an Android version released in March 2014. In multiple funding rounds following the app's initial release, Gametime has raised a total of US$71.5 million from various investors. The app received an award from each SportsBusiness Daily and the Appy Awards in 2017, and Gametime United was named among the fastest-growing companies in the U.S. in various categories by Deloitte, Inc. and Accel Partners.

References

  1. ↑ "Ticketmaster acquires Seatwave operating assets". MusicWeek. 6 November 2014. Retrieved 6 November 2014.
  2. ↑ "Ticketmaster to close resale sites Seatwave and Get Me In". 2018-08-13.
  3. ↑ "Well done Ticketmaster for closing resale sites – but it ain't over yet". 2018-08-17.
  4. ↑ Growing Business Success Stories - Seatwave: Joe Cohen Archived 2010-12-27 at the Wayback Machine
  5. ↑ Seatwave Secures $25 Million in Series C Funding, Reuters, 11 February 2008
  6. ↑ "MIC: Tech Media Invest 100 (Microsite),MIC: Tech Media Invest 100 2009 (Microsite)". The Guardian. London. 7 September 2009.
  7. ↑ Seatwave's annual report, 31 December 2009, P4
  8. ↑ Fred Destin's blog Archived 2011-07-06 at the Wayback Machine
  9. ↑ Palmer, Maija. "Atlas Ventures pulls back from London".
  10. 1 2 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994
  11. ↑ "Seatwave". Fulham FC. Archived from the original on 2011-09-19.
  12. ↑ Landmark Seatwave deal promises better access to tickets, Ticket News, 18 July 2008 Archived 1 August 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  13. ↑ Committee report on ticket touting, 18 December 2007 Archived 27 May 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  14. ↑ Culture, Media and Sport - Second Report, House of Commons
  15. ↑ Government Response to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee Report on Ticket Touting (HC 202 – Second Report of Session 2007-08)

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.