The Changing of the Live Ticketing Experience
It is no secret that Venture Capitalists like myself love startups operating in categories ripe for disruption — but what does that really look like? Well, it is a category whose standard technology was built on outdated principles. Whose business model is too entrenched by incumbents to properly modernize. Who is deeply unpopular or broken for its end-users. And where a clear technological or social change is clear and inevitable.
In what now feels like a previous life, I spent six-years of my career in live event ticketing (at eBay, StubHub and LiveNation), so I know firsthand that the category is one of the most outdated, unpopular, entrenched, and broken industries around. That is why I’m so excited for our investment in live event platform Rival, announced to the public today. My worlds are colliding.
Despite being a $100B industry ($35B alone in the US), the business of event ticketing really really really is not optimal for just about every stakeholder. I probably don’t have to explain why it is not great for fans — I am sure everyone reading this has refreshed a browser for hours trying to buy a ticket to Adele/Hamilton/playoff games the minute they go on sale, enter squiggly words that you cannot read (they are actually called captchas) only to have some damn ticket broker snatch up every available seat. (Please read Rival founder Nathan Hubbard’s take on that here.) But the artists, teams and venues also lose out on an estimated $10B of revenue and the important opportunity to build relationships with fans when tickets are sold on the secondary market. And if you thought the venues were the big winners — well, consider that they are responsible for securing a 50,000 person stadium in today’s climate and only know the identity of ~10% of the ticket holders walking into in the building.
Simply put, it’s time for a entirely new ticketing platform. An entirely new ticketing paradigm. Built from the from the ground-up. One that rethinks commerce, data, and security for today’s changing consumer, venue and the go forward expectations of each. That is what Rival will bring to fans, teams and artists — a complete live experience overhaul.
If it sounds like a huge task, it is — but I am not exaggerating when I say that Nathan is quite literally the most qualified person on the planet to tackle this problem. In his career, Nathan has helped build artist, team and fan-centric live events businesses from MusicToday to Live Nation (where we first met, which eventually merged with Ticketmaster). He then became the CEO of Ticketmaster (the big shooter) where he worked to modernize and transform the business into what it is today. Most recently he was an executive at Twitter thinking about direct-to-consumer distribution in commerce and media. He even had earlier success as a touring musician, so in the battle of Talent vs Suits, Nathan wins both sides.
Although Rival is still in beta, they have already secured partnerships with major sports franchises as product development partners (stay tuned for more). He also struck product gold in co-founder and CTO Ryan Lissack, former CTO of Maker Studios and a two-time colleague of my partner Mark Suster at Koral and BuildOnline. They have already built a top notch technical team and are actively hiring. I can’t wait to see how Rival will transform the live event experience, and we’re thrilled to support the team on their journey.
