Founded in New York in 2009, SeatGeek is a prominent mobile ticketing platform that allows consumers to buy and sell tickets across sports and other events in the US market.
The company has partnered with different organisations around the US since the platform was launched, including Yahoo! Sports and various MLS teams around the country.
The service has recently moved into other markets, including the UK, after acquiring Israeli ticketing software company TopTix in 2017 for $56 million.
SeatGeek’s acquisition opened up the service to an international market, as TopTix’s primary software application, labelled ‘SRO’, combined perfectly with SeatGeek’s mobile applications and market place ability.
SRO gives sports clubs a world class software application to manage areas such as memberships, ticketing, reporting, corporate hospitality, marketing and so forth all inside a singular web-based user interface.
“We all thought it was a very good fit – what SeatGeek would bring to the table to work alongside the SRO software platform. We felt it was a great opportunity to build a global offering that could really drive a change in the market at a significant level and we have enjoyed strong growth over the past two and half years,” SeatGeek’s managing director for Sport across Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Peter Joyce told FC Business, earlier this year.
When the acquisition of TopTix occurred in 2017, SeatGeek only had one English Premier Club partnered with the company, West Bromwich Albion. Two years later, the platform is now used by seven Premier League clubs in the 2019/2020 season, which represents a 35% market share across the league.
The clubs using the service are Manchester City, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Newcastle United, Brighton and Hove Albion, Leicester City, Aston Villa and Sheffield United.
A further seven clubs are clients from the EFL Championship. Those teams are Derby County, Stoke City, Middlesbrough, Reading, Bristol City, Charlton Athletic and West Bromwich Albion.
The UK Sport headquarters has recently doubled in staff numbers with SeatGeek now having 430 employees and eight offices in different locations around the world.
Joyce believes the company continues to improve its reputation in the UK sports market.
“Ticketing software in UK sport has tended to work in five-year cycles when it comes to the systems and software products available and I think we’ve turned heads over recent years.
“New suppliers can come and go and there can be a swing in a certain direction from time to time. SeatGeek and the SRO software solutions have certainly enjoyed excellent growth over the years and our challenge is to build on a very solid platform and client base and take it to the next level.
“Alongside winning significant new business over the past two years we have also re-signed every club (7) who have come up for re-contract in that period and this demonstrates a client base that are enjoying working with SeatGeek and the SRO software platform. Technology is changing rapidly as we all know and there’s a demand for ticketing providers to keep pace with those ever-changing requirements and continue to grow and evolve.”
Central to SeatGeek’s success is the technological superiority the company has over its competitors. Legacy ticketing systems are generally known to manually report, overwork staff and be inflexible when it comes to configuration of events.
However, SeatGeek’s SRO service provides those in charge with extensive control across their organisation. This includes the most customisable rules-based engine ever created, with clubs also given valuable services for those using a powerful Application Program Interface (API). This gives third party providers the chance to build in tools that provide analytics, CRM, data, dynamic pricing and so on.
Fans praised the SeatGeek’s SRO platform last season, when the service was in use for a series of semi-finals and finals at Wembley Stadium. Over 95% of all tickets were sold online using SeatGeek’s online applications with not one complaint received. Instead, hundreds of positive comments were left across social media regarding the ease of the sales process.
Joyce claims SeatGeek will continue to grow and adapt in the future, using the impressive technology that is accessible.
“We will continue to listen to the market’s requirements; build for the future and one club at a time grow the footprint of our SRO platform to deliver an excellent all-round ticketing experience for as many clients and fans as possible.”
