abelcuskelly

Potential is there to make much more than. depends on the size of venue & unsold / unused # of premium seats, type of event, sport, etc

RFID tags on tickets could accomplish this and have been being tested for a while now but haven't got much adoption yet unfortunately. Hopefully more soon. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/04/world_cup_rfid/

we are working on getting program going where corporate season ticket holders can donate their unused seats or suite as last minute as they want thru our app to upgrade youth groups like boys and girls club of america at the game to an amazing experience. some details to be worked out but hoping to make good use of all unused inventory at an event

So we didn't get the call. Bummed but happy with our answer for the reason given by yc for not funding us as its surmountable. We were comforted a little by some progress we made this afternoon with one of the pro NBA sports teams we are discussing pogoseat with and working toward an initial exploratory seat upgrade release test with a very limited number of seats so the can can experiment with it and get the feeling for how it would work and operate in conjunction to complement dynamic pricing which they are experimenting with this year too for pre-game start ticket pricing. we of course would like to do our own in-game dynamic pricing for upgrades as game gets further in and off of game events once we collect enough data to provide it.

Paul didn't think we sufficiently convinced them how our seat upgrade pricing strategy was going to work, which i dont feel we did either, and that we wouldn't be able to reach an optimal price discount % that works for the upgradeable seats without diluting regular ticket sales. valid concern.we were not prepared to answer both of these questions satisfactorily during our time with them.

Lets consider a 0% discount to what the ticket would cost to purchase by an individual fan, perhaps we may find pricing is optimized somewhere between there and the minimum price threshold that must be paid in total by an upgrading fan which is the price that upgraded to seat costs a season ticket holder per game on average.

We can and will increase revenue streams for the venues and sports franchises. Price discount on seat is not necessary if demand or the venues preference doesn't dictate the need. We will be making money in other areas outside of seat upgrades such as in-game data analytics we will be able to collect and down the road from a revenue share with other 3rd party developer apps that sit on our pogoseat fan entertainment platform and make a fan's experience at the game more engaging, entertaining and memorable.

So below is our response to Paul, still learning as we go along too so feedback or any critiques are welcome and appreciated.

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thanks for your time. we apologize we were not able to communicate more clearly our strategy of generating additional revenue streams for venues. your comments will absolutely help us in our future talks with venues.

1. we understand what you're saying. i believe you think that upgrades will incentivize fans to buy cheap seats and then upgrade and that the total dollars of those 2 tickets will be less than if a fan bought a good seat to start with. this is a valid argument and one we've thought over and talked to numerous venues with.

2. both seat upgrades and dynamic pricing are different solutions to the same problem. we are of the opinion that dynamic pricing is a long way from completely eliminating empty seats. if ever. i think both elements will play a part in maximizing venue revenue.

3. the venue has the option to simply charge the actual price difference between 2 seats (0% discount). some scenarios where this may come into play include:

    * a fan ends up in a undesirable section (wrong fans, rowdy fans, unexpected poor view, etc)
    * through our social layer you discover friends who you didn't know were at the game, and they're in a different section with upgradeable seats next to them
    * you scope out a section with a cute girl, fun-loving fans, etc
    * fans may not want to be committed to attending an event and buy nosebleed seats.  once at the game, however, the fan may want to make the best out of the opportunity and want to upgrade

5. lastly, you mentioned today that you were worried that investors would be pushing us to move quickly, while it's in our interest to move slow. fortunately for us, we have plenty of investment capital and the huge allure of yc to us was your mentorship and the resources that the yc network could provide (including our fellow classmates of course). to this point, if you know of any hackers in the event ticketing world, we would absolutely love a warm introduction if you feel comfortable providing one.

once again, thank you for your time. we wish you the best of luck with your newest batch of yc teams. there were some strong minds and great energy in the room today and there should be no shortage of excitement and creativity this summer

We hope to be able to have stubhub send us all their unsold inventory at game time for us to put up for upgrade. money made off the seat sale is split between the reseller (such as stubhub), the venue and us. We also would like to allow season ticket holders a chance to conveniently submit their seats to the venue for a nominal fee with one click on 'not attending' for each game they can't make if they want to make some extra money on the side. Initially though we are constraining the available seats for upgrade to only the venue's unsold inventory. once we get traction with upgrades from that seat inventory we can consider expanding our offering to resellers (we have already talked to some who want to dump their unsold inventory to us and take a cut of whatever is made) and season ticket holder and individual fans.

that's a hell of a discount, nice! Then again its the Blue Jays.. we just spoke with the Rockets today and they related that the average ticket price per game for their season ticket holders is about 20-30% lower then if you just bought a one time regular game tickets.

thanks for the input.

-abel

Great question Allan, thanks for asking. Number of reasons here, one being that mobile ticketing technology is at beginning stages of adoption. Second, its not too tough to integrate with some venues and team's ticket inventory, at least for the open systems.

Also, ticketmaster is required by their existing contracts to return all unsold tickets (and they sell about 70% of the tickets) and $$$ to the venue for tickets they did sell for the venue 2hrs before game begins. We will fit into the ecosystem at game start and will be selling any unsold venue inventory (including the inventory sent back from ticketmaster).

From our conversations with industry consultants, ticketmaster is a mess, built on old technology and given the size they have reached with merger with Live Nation they would have a lot of trouble managing a real time tech given their tech foundation. They are focused on their core business and for them to get into upgrades with mobile technology would strain them too much at this point. More importantly, most fans we talk to hate ticketmaster- notably due to their unreasonably high fees due to their top position in the industry.

We are approaching the problem of empty seats from a social angle and looking to create a social engagement fan platform where fans can do everything from our mobile platform from winning a free upgrade, to ordering concessions, to finding their friends and upgrading to a seat near them. We understand social networks and how to drive increased spend thru smart marketing such as competitions vs. other team's fans in the stadium, promotions with budweiser and so forth.

This is not either ticketmaster's or tickets.com's core business or even one they have indicated an interest in. We see a huge opportunity here and hope to become the provider of in-game data analytics from how the score, time left in game, weather, player injury during game, etc effect prices of their tickets. Since we will be facilitating and tracking not only where a fan is initially sitting but also any activity they engage, including moving to a better seat, it will be easy to collect a ton of useful data.

There are about 150 ticketing systems out there, tickets.com being one of the major ones and there is a lot of fragmentation and chaos happening in the industry. We want to provide an option for white label ticketing system providers (white label just means they sell thru the venue's website rather than their own like ticketmaster.com does) to license our pogoseat platform or just the ticketing upgrade saas.

So if we execute correctly and bring enough value from the fan interaction, social engagement and excitement angle we will be partnering with someone like tickets.com rather than competing against them.

Look forward to feedback.

Thanks!