Ticket resale company Razorgator, which has been struggling as of late in the ultra-competitive secondary ticket market, has laid off 30 employees and decided to give up reselling its own ticket inventory to concentrate on being a commercial ticket exchange, the company announced today, July 15.

The layoffs represent 24 percent of the company’s workforce and is only the latest round of dismissals, which began in late 2009. The company has shut down some of its satellite offices over the past several months, and President and CEO Brendan Ross told TicketNews that Razorgator’s PrimeSport division, which was headed by ticketing veteran Sam Soni, will be spun off as an independent entity under Soni’s direction.

Soni left the company in the summer of 2008 and returned a year later.

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“Sam has been a tremendous contributor since Razorgator acquired his sports travel and hospitality businesses in 2005,” Ross said. “We look forward to executing a seamless transition and wish him the best of luck.”

Razorgator recently unveiled a redesigned ticket exchange Web site, and in addition to continuing to operate it, the company will also continue to sell its TicketOS software product to brokers.

“By narrowing our focus, we’ll ensure that our talent and creative energy is focused on the activities where we are best positioned to grow and create value. I look forward to continuing to build a stronger Razorgator based on our most exciting, core assets,” Ross said.

Concentrating on the core business will also likely end the complaints of some of the company’s broker clients, who believed Razorgator competed with them to sell tickets instead of helping them sell their inventory. As a result, the company had been slowly losing broker clients to StubHub, TicketNetwork and other exchanges.

In an email sent out today to broker clients, Ross explained the moves.

Dear Valued Partners,

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I wanted to take this opportunity to inform you about some exciting news at Razorgator.

We have adjusted our corporate strategy to focus on the core, scalable portion of our business: selling your tickets. Going forward, we will no longer sell proprietary inventory on our exchange. Our PrimeSport business unit will be spun off to become independent once again, owned and operated by its founder, Sam Soni.

The secondary ticket market continues to evolve at a rapid pace, and we are confident that our strategic direction will enable Razorgator to become a stronger player.

Although we know this move is the right direction for our customers and for the broker community, this change has necessitated a staff reduction. The personnel decisions were necessary to realign our operations and restructure our organization around our new strategy.

As we proceed with this new corporate strategy, our top priority remains providing a positive experience to the broker community, our marketing partners, and our customers. In addition to being one of the leading online ticket exchanges in the world, Razorgator wants to be your preferred marketplace and top reseller of tickets.

Jackie Martinoski, Christi Hurst, Anna Chan, Pakshi Desigar and I look forward to attending this weekend’s NATB conference, where we will have the opportunity to see you and answer any questions you may have. Also, I will be participating in a panel discussion where I will discuss how our new strategy will benefit our broker partners.

On behalf of Razorgator, thank you for your continued business and support.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions/concerns.

Sincerely,

Brendan Ross
President & CEO, Razorgator