TickPick, an online ticket marketplace, has completed the first round of seed funding for their revolutionary ranking system and bid platform that benefits the consumer and seller, and brings transparency to the secondary ticket market, eliminating overpriced tickets.
According to a May 1 press release from TickPick, the New York-based marketplace, created by founders Brett Goldberg and Chris O’Brien, allows users to buy, bid, and sell live event tickets using their Best Deal Ranking System and bidding platform, giving the consumers and sellers more opportunities to connect. According to BusinessFinance.com, seed funding is provided to help a business develop an idea, create a product, and market the product for the first time — in this case, TickPick’s patented bid platform.
TicketNews discussed the initial launch of TickPick.com in October and since then the company has made a few improvements to compete with similar sites such as ScoreBig, which also offers a bid option. What makes TickPick unique is their trademarked algorithm, also known as the Best Deal Ranking System, which ranks tickets based on what is the “best deal” by assigning a rating to each ticket location based on proximity and viewing angle.
According to the press release, the secondary ticket sales market is a $4.5 billion industry annually with more than 100 million transactions and 50 percent of all transactions made by a professional seller.
“TickPick is a marketplace that benefits both the ticket seller and the ticket seeker,” said co-founder Brett Goldberg in the May 1 press release. “Our platform allows consumers to quickly value tickets for live events including sports, concerts, and theater, removing the painful process of searching for the best deal and uncertainty if you’re overpaying for tickets.”
TickPick’s unique ranking system solves the problem of the opaque ticket market by allowing users to select an event, the number of tickets and the price range and browse through tickets.
If the user is unable to find what they are looking for they can use TickPick’s bid platform. This option allows consumers to bargain with multiple sellers by placing offers on several seats at the same time. The user simply selects a seating section, number of tickets and a high price for most desired tickets and low price for least desired tickets. The bidding system will automatically negotiate for the buyer and notify the consumer via email if their offer has been accepted. TickPick’s bid platform is also beneficial to the ticket seller as it allows the seller to instantaneously sell tickets to buyers who previously made an offer.
According to TickPick’s website, a key problem with the secondary ticket market is that sellers are forced to guess what buyers are willing to pay for a live event ticket which leads to irrational seat prices and leaves buyers frustrated and more likely to walk away from a transaction. TickPick solves this problem by informing sellers of a fair and competitive price for specific seats.
“Our mission is to create a more efficient and transparent ticket marketplace,” said co-founder Brett Goldberg in a recent email to TicketNews. “We believe this can be done by mirroring the way financial markets work. By creating a transparent bid/ask ticket marketplace where sellers can offer to sell tickets at specific prices and buyers can offer to buy tickets at defined prices, we believe we will increase the total number of tickets sold as well as the total aggregate value.”
Goldberg also explained in his email to TicketNews how their transparent ticket marketplace will help them stay competitive while saving consumers and ticket sellers money. “This increased efficiency should also allow for ticket marketplaces to operate at lower costs,” said Goldberg. “Therefore TickPick should be able to charge lower fees than its competitors, which will then result in less dollars being spent by consumers and more dollars going to the ticket sellers.”
TickPick does not charge purchaser fees and uses the “real ticket guarantee,” promising admission into the event for which tickets were purchased, otherwise giving the consumer a 110 percent refund. Sellers are charged a 10 percent commission on sold tickets.
According to a recent press release, TickPick is only available for live events in the New York area although they hope to expand to additional markets by the end of 2012.
