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.
History
SeatGeek was founded by Russell D'Souza and Jack Groetzinger at DreamIT Ventures, an early stage startup accelerator program in Philadelphia and launched in September 2009 at TechCrunch50 where it was named by VentureBeat and CNET as one of the top 5 companies from the conference. In May, the company had received $20k in seed funding from DreamIT Ventures. In January 2010, SeatGeek received between $500k and $1M in seed funding from Sunil Hirani, Mark Wachen, Arie Abecassis, Allen Levinson, Stage One Capital, Trisiras Group, and PKS Capital. In July, SeatGeek received a further $1M in Series A funding from Founder Collective and NYC Seed. Later, in October 2010 the Series A investors invested an additional $550k into the company. In September, SeatGeek launched interactive seating charts for NFL stadiums. In February 2011 SeatGeek announced a strategic investment from Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary through their fund A-Grade Investments. The level of financing was not disclosed. In August, SeatGeek announced that Yahoo! Sports had renewed its partnership with the company. In August 2012 the company received $1.7M in Venture funding from Entrée Capital, Mousse Partners, Founder Collective, Red Swan Ventures, and NYC Seed. In December 2013, SeatGeek announced the acquisition of FanSnap, a competing ticket search engine. SeatGeek discontinued the FanSnap search engine and rolled it into their existing ticket search platform. Also, it received $2.2M in venture funding. In August 2014, it received a further $35M in Series B funding. In November, SeatGeek and Telecharge announced that they had started a partnership. In March 2015, SeatGeek received $62M in Series C funding led by Technology Crossover Ventures. In July 2016, SeatGeek signed a deal with Major League Soccer to create an open ticketing network to let third-party websites sell tickets to MLS games. As part of the deal, SeatGeek also became the official ticketing partner of MLS team Sporting Kansas City. In September 2017, Seattle Sounders FC announced that SeatGeek would be their official ticketing partner starting in 2018. In 2017 SeatGeek acquired Toptix, a company from Israel founded by Eli Dagan and Yehuda Yuval. It also became the official primary ticketing partner of the New Orleans Saints and New Orleans Pelicans. In 2018, SeatGeek hired James McClure as international general manager to expand the company's global reach. SeatGeek reached a deal with in-car vending company Cargo in 2019 to offer exclusive ticket deals to ride-share passengers.
On April 3, 2018, the Dallas Cowboys announced an agreement with SeatGeek to serve as the team's primary ticket office, replacing Ticketmaster. It was reported that the Cowboys received an undisclosed equity stake in the company.
Technology and functioning
The list of events on SeatGeek shows prices for ticket inventories aggregated from ticket exchanges such as TicketNetwork, TicketsNow, and Razorgator. Tickets are sorted using the company's DealScore algorithm which finds the combination of best available price and seat location for a particular event. Historically, SeatGeek provided price forecast information in a similar manner to Farecast, an airline ticket aggregation and forecasting site purchased by Microsoft in 2008. SeatGeek has seen success in the mobile space, adopting Apple Pay to provide seamless purchase and payment. In August 2018, SeatGeek partnered with Lyft on a feature that allows eventgoers to be dropped off closer to their actual seat.
