SeatGeek, a new Web site tha launched this week during the TechCrunch50 Conference in San Francisco, is aiming to take the guess work out of when event tickets will reach a bargain price.
Using a proprietary algorithm that crunches relative data, the site allows users to plug in the name of a sports team or music artist and receive information on the best prices for those tickets on the secondary market, and whether those prices will decrease or increase. The site checks several broker sites in real time to determine the best prices.
“We forecast the price of concerts and sporting events,” co-founder Jack Groetzinger told TicketNews. “We know that prices sometimes drop as an event draws closer, but sometimes they don’t. We try to predict it, in which case buying early might be a good thing. But often, buying immediately isn’t always the smartest move.”
Currently, the site is concentrating on predicting prices for Major League Baseball and concert tickets, but SeatGeek plans to add National Football League tickets to the mix within a month or so.
Among the factors the algorithm studies in order to make the forecast are past prices for the team or artist, the weather, what other events are nearby, whether an opponent is in a playoff race, who’s playing and who’s injured, and other variables. It offers three levels of prices, for inexpensive seats, medium-priced seats and premium seats, and it will recommend whether a fan should buy now or wait to buy in order to score the best deal.
SeatGeek makes money on the 7 percent to 10 percent affiliate referral deals when fans buy tickets from one of the sites listing tickets, such as StubHub, and also by selling a product, SeatGeek Pro, to brokers.
The pro version sells for between $2,000 and $10,000 per year, depending on the level of forecasting a broker wants, and allows resellers to time when best to buy tickets. The site claims to have an 80 percent accuracy rate.
“We think this can change the way people buy tickets,” said Groetzinger, who co-founded the site with Russ D’Souza. “In some cases, it can save people hundreds of dollars.”
