A Marketplace That Benefits both the Ticket Seller and the Ticket Seeker: Tickpick

“Our platform allows consumers to quickly value tickets for live events including sports, concerts, and theater by removing the painful process of searching for the best deal as well as the uncertainty of whether they’re overpaying for tickets.”

The secondary ticket marketplace is a resale marketplace between ticket purchasers and ticket resellers who have purchased tickets for events that were originally sold or issued by sponsors or promoters of the events. The industry, which was once a small offline space of ticket resellers or scalpers as they are commonly known, has grown into a multibillion-dollar online industry.

There was a time when resale used to be local and each deal was idiosyncratic, and transactions took place in centralized marketplaces. But, over the past few years, the secondary resale marketplace has witnessed massive groundbreaking changes.

The creation of online ticket resale marketplaces changed the way tickets are exchanged on the secondary marketplace. Several types of global events are launched every year and with a global audience, most event organizers sell their tickets online, giving event organizers and ticket vendors an opportunity to track the behavior and purchase pattern of an individual. Also, the introduction of electronic tickets has provided the long-awaited technology to fight fraud and counterfeit tickets.

As the industry grew, powerful players started to join the table pushing the deregulation of the resale market. So, with the arrival of new companies in the secondary marketplace, event organizers have changed the way they sell tickets in the primary market by adopting variable and dsynamic pricing. Some event organizers have even decided to integrate the primary market and the sponsored secondary market. Primary and secondary markets are evolving together and what happens in one market shapes the other.

The Place Where Smart Fans Buy Tickets

A witty mind, Brett Goldberg was trying to buy and sell tickets to the Red Hot Chili Peppers back in his college days. At the initial phase, Goldberg made enough money to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers in a number of cities, but when he attempted to buy tickets for additional dates, he found himself frustrated by the secondary market. He saw inefficiencies in the ticket marketplace and set out to build a more transparent and cost-effective solution. Combining his background in finance with Chris O’Brien’s computer engineering skills, O’Brien and Goldberg founded TickPick in 2011.

O’Brien and Goldberg began reshaping the secondary event ticket marketplace with a “no-fees approach”. Today, Tickpick is one of the key vendors in the industry. The company does not charge any fees for buyers and is the industry’s only secondary ticket marketplace without buyer fees. Offering a simplified transaction without hidden fees or commissions, TickPick pays sellers a flat 10% fee, which is a notable contrast to the 25% or more in total fees charged by TickPick’s competitors.

“The price you see next to each ticket is the price you will pay at checkout. No hidden fees or commissions. By not paying fees, our customers save an average of 10-15% on every purchase.”

Over the years, TickPick’s popularity has skyrocketed as the company has earned a number of awards. Recently, the company was named a Technology Fast 500 award winner, a Deloitte-sponsored award for the fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and energy tech companies in North America. Also, TickPick was selected as one of the Fast 50 companies for Crain’s New York Business.

An Amazing Buyer Experience with a Novel Approach to the Secondary Market

Being an innovative ticket marketplace, TickPick leverages its algorithms to look at the price/value ratio for tickets and then offers value grading for buyers so they can get the optimal experience for their money.

Allowing live event enthusiasts to buy, bid and sell tickets, TickPick utilizes a revolutionary approach to the secondary ticket sales market. TickPick‘s “Best Deal Ranking System” and patented bid platform give consumers and sellers the ability to better connect through detailed listings and qualified bids.

The secondary ticket marketplace for live events is a billion-dollar industry which consists of approximately 100 million transactions annually. As it stands, the industry gives a massive advantage of transparency in seat location and price to all professional sellers who account for more than 50% of all ticket transactions. TickPick solves this problem by using their trademarked algorithm. Known as the “Best Deal Ranking System,” the algorithm ranks tickets based on what is considered the “best deal”, based on price and location. Buyers select their event, the number of tickets and price range. They use a seat ranking system to view the available seats. This system assigns ratings to each ticket location based on proximity and viewing angle so consumers have full transparency into the quality and price of every available seat.

If ticket buyers don’t get the seat they want, TickPick has a patented bidding platform to help them find their desired seats. With a process similar to financial markets where supply and demand creates a more efficient marketplace, TickPick’s bidding platform allows consumers to bargain with multiple sellers by placing offers on a multitude of seats. The bidding platform automatically negotiates with hundreds of ticket sellers and consumers and notifies them by email if their bid is accepted. Sellers can also bid again at any point leading up to the event, if their offer isn’t immediately accepted.

Both the “Best Deal Ranking” System and bid platform have no purchaser fees and come with the real ticket guarantee, which promises admission into the event of interest or a 110% refund. These platforms are the key factors that set TickPick apart from its competitors and firmly establishes the company as the ultimate destination for buying and selling live event tickets at the best prices.

“Our patented ticket-grading algorithms grade every ticket from A+ to F based on a combination of price and seat quality to help you get the best bang for your buck.”

Modernizing the Mobile Application Experience

The no-fee ticket marketplace is transforming the industry at a jet engine pace. As an add-on to the transformation, TickPick just launched its overhauled Android and iOS mobile applications. Built from scratch, the application is developed using React Native, the latest generation of React — a JavaScript code library created by Facebook. This provides TickPick with a single code base, that can offer a rich customizable and user experience.

The newly developed TickPick app is is available now, which is crucial for ticket buyers who want to take advantage of time-sensitive deals. It includes a smoother Apple Pay process, which has become a vital driver of the company’s growth, as Apple Pay accounts for 20 percent of TickPick’s sales.

“Our mobile users represent a significant amount of our revenue and referrals, and we knew it was time to revamp our entire mobile experience. With more than one million downloads since 2013 and a doubling of mobile payments year-over-year, we’ve successfully built a large mobile following.”

The revamped mobile application includes several new capabilities that are specifically designed to bring a high-level user experience through personalization, access to relevant content and faster operations.

With this app, users can now select a “Buyer Type” preference that adjusts the “Best Deals” that are available to them. It also includes a new tracking feature that provides updates to its users about the price fluctuation and availability of data on selected events. This is ideally suited for buyers that are checking the price multiple times a day.

Furthermore, the company has made a few adjustments to the TickPick algorithms, which are also incorporated into the new mobile platform. The machine learning tools are applied to user’s previous deals and behavioral data, which allows TickPick to tailor future deal recommendations to every user.

The Talk of the Town, TickPick

With top-class ratings and reviews in app stores and social media, TickPick is touching the hearts of all its users.

 “I had a horrible experience when trying to buy tickets for Super Bowl 49, so when I made up my mind to go to Super Bowl 52, I was already skeptical. However, I really enjoyed the daily e-mail updates that I would get from TickPick. I saved a ton of money and everything about their customer service was fantastic. I cannot recommend them enough!!!”

-Kristian Lovato, a TickPick user

“Best ticket buying site on the market. The no fees are great. They also have frequent promo deals. The only ticket site I use”

-a TickPick user.

“I used to use StubHub for buying and selling tickets but now after using TickPick for about a year I have come to realize that it’s the better option.” 

- a TickPick user.

Crafting the Future Roadmap

In what has turned out to be an exciting year for TickPick, the company is projecting a record of $120M in sales revenue and will be announcing new partnerships throughout the year, starting with the announcement of its sponsorship of Firefly Music Festival, where TickPick is replacing one of its biggest rivals, StubHub, as the festival’s official marketplace.

As a player in the fast-moving technology space, TickPick will continue to enhance its customer experience through technology and improved UI and UX as well as by scaling its best-in-class customer support team.

Meet the Marvelous Duo

Brett Goldberg, Co-CEO, TickPick: Brett received a B.S. in Finance from Lehigh University. Upon graduation, he went to work in Barclays’ Investment Banking Division in the Industrial Group. Following Barclays, Brett joined Sixpoint Partners, a boutique investment bank in New York City. In 2011, Brett turned his business skills to the ticketing industry and realized his dream of creating the first two-sided, transparent ticketing marketplace: TickPick

Chris O’Brien, Co-CEO, TickPick: Chris received a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Lehigh University. After graduating from Lehigh, Chris began working at Nuance Communications implementing speech recognition technologies for a number of Fortune 500 corporations. He is the technical creator of TickPick, where he applies his vast technical skills to providing innovative and accessible ticketing services to customers worldwide.

“Why would you negotiate with one seller when there are 10,000 tickets out there? What we’re trying to do is to optimize the best ticket for the lowest price. If consumers are not happy with availability or prices, we have a feature that allows them to tell us what price they want to pay for what sections they want to sit in. It’s entirely unique.”