With the ever-growing number of brokers and resale marketplaces, navigating the secondary market and finding the best deal can potentially be overwhelming for consumers. However, the new Alabama-based start-up RoosterFly.com hopes to make the resale process easier and more transparent for buyers and sellers alike.
Founded by Joshua Brennard, John Lucas, Bucky McMillan and Michael Neimkin, the site aims to consolidate and compare ticket listings on the secondary market. Brennard, the lead project manager, and lead programmer Randy Ayers recently spoke with TicketNews about their site’s features and future.
“John Lucas came to me with this idea eight or nine months ago,” Brennard said, citing a need for consumer accessibility in the industry. “It just makes sense to have this for the secondary industry, especially where prices fluctuate all the time.”
Since then, the four founders and Ayers have worked hard on developing a site that imports real-time inventory from a host of partner sites. The result is a site that not only precipitates sales for brokers, but also offers more ticketing options and easy price comparison for consumers on the secondary market, joining the ranks of search-and-compare sites like TickEx and FanSnap.
RoosterFly currently lists inventory from StubHub, TicketNetwork, TicketCity and TicketsNow. The site uses direct API links to companies’ inventory to give consumers a real-time look at ticket prices and availability across the board.
In addition to the four existing partnerships, a few others are currently in development and the RoosterFly team is actively searching for more.
“We feel it’s a win-win for all parties involved. For the brokers out there, we have the backing to promote their tickets. For us, it’s a win because we collect an affiliate fee [for each sale],” Brennard said. “For the user, it’s about getting the best tickets available without any extra charge. The price they see is what they’ll pay.”
While the site is starting to consolidate the secondary marketplace, Ayers noted that the industry still has a way to go before reaching its full capacity for accessibility among consumers.
“The thing that makes my job most difficult is that each broker has its own way of listing venues and posting events,” Ayers explained. “I’d like to take this opportunity to advocate the standardization of these listings on the secondary market.”
Though Ayers has worked hard to develop a system that can merge event listings from various partner sites, some listings vary too much to be consolidated. “There are instances where our system may not be able to successfully merge two events together, which may confuse the user,” he described, adding, “I think [standardization] is a good move for the industry.”
Technically still operating on a “beta” level for debugging purposes, RoosterFly is live and accepting orders. As the site team develops its Web presence and builds a following on sites like Facebook and Twitter, the group is also looking into the next wave of expansion, including a possible iPhone application and other mobile developments.
“This is a work in progress,” Ayers said. “We’d like to improve the site and do more as [consumers] use it. We want to make it as useful for the consumer as possible.”
