The ticketing executives who are spearheading an initiative to create a new ticket exchange, which they’re temporarily calling “NewCo,” are continuing their efforts to round up backers for the venture, following a closed-door launch meeting yesterday, August 24, in Chicago.

Details of the meeting, held at the offices of SeatExchange, were not disclosed, but according to SeatExchange President and CEO Chris Brennan, representatives from several companies attended the meeting in person or by conference call, including fellow Chicago-based brokerage GoldCoastTickets.com. Brennan declined to give an exact number of attendees, and the principals with Gold Coast also declined to comment and referred questions back to SeatExchange.

“We’re not going to discuss the specifics at this time, but I can say that it was a very constructive meeting,” Brennan told TicketNews today, August 25. All of the participants in the meeting were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements prior to attending. “This is the beginning of a process which will take time, but we’re moving forward.”

TFL and ATBS for ticketing professionals

SeatExchange Vice President Bill Peterson, also declined to elaborate on the meeting, but he wanted to make it clear that NewCo is not like Ticket Evolution, a competing broker-based ticket exchange that was launched last month by the principals of GoldenTickets.com in Texas.

“The premise of what we’re trying to do is very different than Ticket Evolution,” Peterson said, but he declined to elaborate. TicketNews posed several questions to Brennan and Peterson, such as what was discussed at the meeting; how many people attended the meeting; how much money are they hoping to raise for the venture; and what type of technology platform are they planning to use.

In an email sent to prospective attendees earlier this month, Peterson and Brennan laid out some of the plans for the exchange. “The ‘NewCo’ Exchange is a technology platform delivering brokers a strategic approach to manage and market content online based on an SEO ‘first’ model. The ‘NewCo’ management team is confident this solution will address the many issues and challenges facing the broker community today, while creating value in the future.”

Brennan and Peterson have experience in the secondary ticket market, having worked at sports marketing, package tour and ticket brokerage Premiere Global Sports, where Brennan served as CEO for four years until late 2008.

After parting ways with Premiere, Brennan joined SeatExchange in 2009, and was soon joined by Peterson. SeatExchange has ticketing and travel package deals with the athletic departments of several major U.S. universities, and also has deals with British soccer and rugby teams.

But, according to Crain’s Manchester Business, SeatExchange was dropped as the secondary ticket company for English Premiere League soccer club Manchester City following an undisclosed contractual dispute. At the time, Brennan called the dispute an “isolated incident” over “contractual issues that couldn’t be resolved,” he told Crain’s.