“Seatwave continues to drive down the cost of live entertainment”

LONDON, ENG (Seatwave) 20 July 2009 – Seatwave, Europe’s #1 fan-to-fan ticket exchange, today announced continued strong growth for Q2 2009. This comes as fans rush to buy tickets in one of the most action-packed summers in sports and live entertainment history. Seatwave’s UK site experienced an 86 per cent growth on the same quarter in 2008, while its European exchanges witnessed staggering growth of 125 per cent for the same period.

As a result of Seatwave’s ongoing efforts to move the resale of tickets to market-based, rational pricing, consumers have purchased tickets for over 250 events at prices below face value. A significant number of tickets to Britney Spears, Madonna, Six Nations, Twenty20 World Cup, Oasis and Take That were all exchanged for less than their original prices. In fact, the number of tickets selling below face value on the Seatwave.com site has doubled from Q1 of this year. One in every three tickets for Oasis sold on the site since March went for less than their primary market prices. Similarly since April, one third of all tickets bought for Britney Spears on Seatwave sold below face.

Commenting on the figures, Joe Cohen, Founder and CEO of Seatwave, said:

“As a result of the global recession a huge number of major artists have gone on tour this summer and Seatwave’s marketplace has been able to help fans capitalize on the oversupply of great events”.

Irish rock band, U2, proved to be the most popular ticket in Q2 – with over 28,000 tickets sold on Seatwave. In the music stakes Take That and AC/DC followed in second and third places respectively, showing that old favourites remain firm favourites with fans.

In sport, cricket took the lead amongst UK fans with the Twenty20 World Cup and The Ashes proving most popular. The Twenty20 World Cup, for which over 7,500 tickets were sold, outsold The Ashes by over 3 to 1, making the new format very popular indeed. These tournaments were followed in third place by David Haye v Wladimir Klitschko who will likely now fight it out in September for the World Heavyweight Championship.

In the world of live entertainment and comedy, Britain’s Got Talent was a clear front winner, making up 20% of all theatre tickets sold in the UK in the quarter. Comedians Michael McIntyre, Ricky Gervais and Eddie Izzard followed suit demonstrating the UK’s love of laughter and jokes.

Most popular events in Q2 (based on number of tickets sold)

1. U2
2. Twenty20 World Cup
3. Take That
4. AC/DC
5. Depeche Mode
6. Green Day
7. Oasis
8. Kings of Leon
9. Beyonce
10. Pink

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About Seatwave

Seatwave, Europe’s largest fan-to-fan ticket exchange (1.9 million unique visitors – comScore, April 2009), is an online marketplace for buying and selling tickets for theatre, sports, music and other live events. The company was launched in February 2007 by Joe Cohen, ex Ticketmaster and ex match.com and early stage Venture Capital firm, Atlas Venture. Seatwave has more than 700,000 tickets on sale at any one time and every ticket purchase is covered by their TicketIntegrity™ and TicketCover™ guarantees. Seatwave is the official ticket exchange for Live Nation’s Mojo Concerts, Fulham FC and many others. The company was recently named Online Business of the Year (Fast Growth Business Awards 2009), VC-backed Business of the Year (Fast Growth Business Awards 2009) and Europe’s fastest growing digital media company (GP Bullhound Media Momentum Awards 2009). The company is based in London. www.seatwave.com

For more information please contact:

Claire Thom / Louise Rutter
Portland PR
T: 020 7842 0135
E: [email protected] / [email protected]

Gametime ad touting concert tickets for 60% off prices at competing websites