5 years of TicketSwap
Fighting fraud but especially: creating a community of fans
2012 As festival-goers, we weren’t so pleased with the current state of buying and selling tickets.
It all started when Hans Ober (aged 24 back then, and still a student) had a spare ticket for the Dutch festival, Lowlands. He scoured the internet for a safe and convenient way to sell it, but there wasn’t anything out there. In the end, he took the risk and listed the ticket on Marktplaats (the Dutch Craigslist). As is customary on Marktplaats, the buyer came over to his apartment to buy and pick-up the ticket, so already had access to a worrying amount of personal information (name, address, phone number etc.). Hans reluctantly handed over the tickets, to which the buyer responded: “Ok thanks! I’ll transfer the money somewhere next week!” 🙊
Hans: “That didn’t really feel good. In the end it worked out, but in times where online banking and exchanging PDF files was already possible, there must be a much more convenient way. Right?”
Hans shared his idea with Ruud Kamphuis (25 back then) and Frank Roor (26 back then), who had the technical know-how to build a website. Frank worked on the designs, Ruud thought about the technical architecture and Hans asked around to see whether others shared the same enthusiasm for the idea. There was one thing that was set in stone from day one: this website would be easy, fair and transparent. And above all, unique to the market, as it would only be accessible to real fans.
Frank: “To keep the story short: In 2012, the first version of TicketSwap was live. First, only friends and family used it. But then suddenly, on December 22nd, it happened… the first conversion of a ‘stranger’ was a fact.”
The feedback of TicketSwap’s first users couldn’t have been more positive. It worked! Event-goers could sell their tickets with a profit of max 20% on top of the original ticket price. The team reasoned that this was enough to cover added costs (like service and transaction fees) but too little to be enticing to traders. From then on, every new user coming on to use TicketSwap meant another step closer to a safe, fair, and easy secondary ticketing world.
2013 TicketSwap has become an approved product and has started to build its reputation as the ultimate solution for real fans.
People started talking about TicketSwap and this caught the attention of the press for the first time. The Dutch newspaper ‘De Volkskrant’ was the first who really picked up our story. Others followed suit: the big names were now talking about TicketSwap. We were well and truly, on the map!
2013 was the year we not only hit the 100 users milestone. We also hit 1000. And then 10,000! Ruud: “Back then, we received an email for every activity that happened on the platform. We quickly decided to stop that 😛. The amount of listings on the website was increasing exponentially. Especially in the build up to the Dutch favourite party of the year, Queensday. The website couldn’t handle all the traffic!”
We also started noticing interest from event-goers outside the borders of the Netherlands: Belgium was calling. Fans desperately wanted to buy Rock Werchter tickets. Time to implement a new Belgian friendly payment option and then officially launch TicketSwap in Belgium! 🇧🇪
At the same time we were flirting with the idea of le swap des billets in France… Magnifique! 🥐
Frank: “In the meanwhile, we kept improving the design and discovered new ways to prevent fraud on TicketSwap at all times. Those aspects were important for us from the beginning — and still are today. We also started working on making TicketSwap mobile friendly. Another excited happening this year: our first partnership with Awakenings!” The moment their primary sales were sold out, Awakenings placed a widget on their website, redirecting their fans to TicketSwap for buying and selling their tickets in a safe way. Frank: “We were already thinking about a connection that would make the most out of partnerships back then; a way to give new buyers a totally unique ticket so they were 100% sure the ticket would work”.
Ruud: “As we saw the concept of TicketSwap was a success, we started to notice our first copy cats. An honour if you think about it, but the bad thing is we noticed those people bought fairly priced tickets on TicketSwap, so they could resell it for a profit on their own websites. Time to stop them by creating the possibility to ‘block buying’. This way, we kept out traders and the platform went back to the real fans, safe and sound.😊
2014 We worked hard on further improvements, developments and our team
The website was still quite simple, and it was time for a little more depth. Besides the event pages, we created location and discovery pages. People could now use TicketSwap to find out what’s up next!
Also, the activity of users shifted from desktop to mobile. We started work on a mobile friendly website, and decided it was time to launch the TicketSwap apps (Android & iPhone). Besides these developments, we also noticed that the increase of international fans on our platform was showing no signs of slowing down!
Hans: “We were surprised that in all those countries in Europe, a system like TicketSwap was also missing, but we were happy to help. We optimized our website to serve fans in other countries the best as well. We officially launched in France (something we celebrated with our brand new employees by going to Lyon) and Germany. We weren’t done hiring yet; there was still so much more work left to do for all our improvement plans! Time to put some new vacancies live.”
And oh what a feeling. All the hard work was finally paying off! 💪 In April, we received our very first award: The Amsterdam Student Entrepreneur of The Year Award 2014. This included a trip to Silicon Valley with a group of Entrepreneurs. We also received the ‘Website of the Year’ award in the leisure category. And yet another big milestone and dream was achieved: Hans had an in-depth interview with the biggest independent Dutch public broadcaster, de NOS.
2015 Secondary ticketing became as safe as possible with Secure Swap
Hans: “From the beginning, we knew the ultimate solution for ticket problems was to work together with partners like ticket companies, venues and event organisers. With an automatic connection, we could invalidate old tickets and create new unique barcodes for TicketSwap buyers. We developed the system that goes by the name ‘Secure Swap’.”
In February, the first automatic Secure Swap partnership was established with Eventix. Hans: “Lots of venues and ticket providers showed interest in doing business with us from that point on. This was really groundbreaking in the secondary ticketing world, that so far had a shabby reputation”.
This great new partnership was followed up by more interested venues, ticket providers and organisations like DGTL & Draaimolen, MadNes Festival and Next Monday’s Hangover. TicketSwap would have its first German partnership in December, with Alle-Farben-6-Stunden. Das ist ja ganz toll!
Ruud: “In October, the 500.000th user signed up. And we could add another award for Website of The Year to our newly obtained trophy cabinet, next to the one from 2014.”
What happened next was a standout moment for the TicketSwap team. During Amsterdam Dance Event, we hosted our own party in the basement of our office building. Sponsored by Warsteiner, and with the awesome tunes of some befriended DJ’s we kicked off Amsterdam Dance Event with a bang! Via our Facebook page TicketSwap fans could win a spot to this very, very exclusive party in the heart of Amsterdam. Super cool to meet some of our users offline!
2016 The year of the Paylogic partnership and the the Fight Cancer donation campaign
Hans: “In March 2016, we went viral in The Netherlands with our partnership with ticket provider Paylogic. From now on, parties and festivals that have Paylogic as ticket provider can chose to Secure Swap their tickets on TicketSwap. STRAF_WERK, Soenda and 7th Sunday were among the first to implement this awesome new feature. This means no more fraud! A lot of media channels picked up this awesome news; BNR, FunX, 538, 3FM and we were even featured in the news on television! Even though the newscaster was talking about “Ticketswop” , we were super excited and proud to be an item in the most watched national news broadcast. Who would’ve ever thought this could get so big!”
Frank: “Our users being super modern and stuff, it might not come as a surprise that more and more ‘Swappers’ are using their mobile phones to buy and sell tickets. In 2016, the mobile usage beat the desktop usage for the very first time. You can even buy a ticket last minute via your mobile when you’re queuing to get into the venue, how about that!”
The TicketSwap community kept on growing. In June, both the Hungarian and Spanish market were launched and in September the 1.000.000th person registered as a TicketSwap user! And, believe it or not, we won the Website of the Year Award in the leisure category once again! Woooooh!
Hans: “Another project I won’t forget: TicketSwap joined forces with Fight Cancer to take action against cancer. Fight Cancer is the younger and more rebellious sibling of the Queen Wilhelmina Fund (KWF). At TicketSwap, the disease has impacted the lives of several colleagues. We decided to take a stand against cancer, together with our users. During the month of October, people had the ability to donate an additional amount to Fight Cancer when buying or selling tickets. Together with our Payment Service Provider Mollie, we matched the donations. Ultimately, we raised the stunning amount of €29.238,- together. The proceeds of this cooperation went to six doctors and researchers selected by Fight Cancer that are expected to be among the future research in oncology.”
2017 Year of the milestones: 2,000,000 users and 60+ employees
2017: this seemed another year of great milestones. In both France and the UK, we reached the magic number of 100.000 users. Hans: “We hired lots of new employees at support, product and marketing departments, which led to the 60th employee milestone. It wasn’t that long ago that we only had 4 people working on TicketSwap, the first year…”
The milestones of 2017 are with too many, so let’s keep it to an overview :-):
- Received the Product Innovation Award in Dublin
- Established partnerships with the big names in the Dutch EDM scene
- Organised the ADE Panel ‘The Good News about Secondary Ticketing’
- Office party on a Tuesday… we still have people in our team complaining
- Frank became a dad (as first of the three founders!)
- Launched native apps for iPhone and Android, and made it to the ‘highlighted’ section in the app store with it
- Our first 💲-transaction
- Our first trip to the US, to discover opportunities there
- Extended our office with another floor, including 2 beer taps
It’s been great — Thanks to you
This 5 year overview was especially focussed on our efforts. Truth is, without the music, theatre or sports or any other live event fans, this safe platform would not been so valuable. We’re extremely grateful for every single user on our platform. We started TicketSwap because of our own frustrations and we saw we were not the only ones. Not just in The Netherlands, but all over the world. We changed the secondary ticketing market together into a safe, fair scene, that makes everybody happier 🙏.
The bigger the community gets, the safer the secondary ticketing world is. Let’s continue this. From our side we promise to keep working on the most fan friendly platform!
