As the company continues to grow its brand, ticket search engine and price forecaster SeatGeek recently secured a round of funding from A Grade Investments, a venture capital firm headed by actor-producer Ashton Kutcher and Madonna’s manager Guy Oseary.
The amount of the investment in the two-year-old company was not disclosed, but the money follows SeatGeek’s initial $2 million round of financing, which included investments by Founder Collective, NYC Seed and Stage One Capital, among others.
According to SeatGeek co-founder Russ D’Souza, the money from A Grade will be used to add personnel, sow the seeds of an expansion into the European market and make improvements to its proprietary Deal Score technology. Deal Score allows fans to search for the best values for event tickets; the algorithm crunches various information and listings, in addition to historical data, and then offers pricing predictions that are accurate more than 80 percent of the time.
“SeatGeek is thrilled to add Grade A Investments to an already notable list of investors,” D’Souza told TicketNews. “Our company has gone from a fledgling startup to the market leader in ticket aggregation in a little over a year, and we’re confident that our new investors will continue to fuel our tremendous growth.”
Competition in the ticket search category has heated up over the past year, with SeatGeek and FanSnap leading the way. FanSnap recently signed a high-profile partnership deal with Microsoft’s Bing that allows users searching on Bing to see ticket listings powered by FanSnap.
SeatGeek counts the Wall Street Journal among its partners, and recently signed a deal with Bleacher Report, one of the nation’s leading sports Web sites, that allows fans to view ticket information on team pages on the site.
“SeatGeek’s platform offers the latest data on ticket availability and prices, giving our users the best information to make purchasing decisions,” Dave Nemetz, founder and vice president of Business Development for Bleacher Report, said in a statement.
Nihar Singhal, SeatGeek’s vice president of Business Development, said in a statement that Bleacher Report’s growth will continue by adding SeatGeek’s ticketing information.
“Providing an easy way for fans to find scores, schedules, and tickets for their favorite teams will solidify Bleacher Report as a one stop destination for all things sports,” Singhal said.
