Well 2.5 years into the pandemic, live events are
back with fans packing stadiums to cheer on their favorite
teams and artists and last week mobile ticketing platform seatgeek
announcing it raised$238 million 2022. So joining me
now is Jack great singer as Ceo and co founder
of seeking Jack, thanks so much for coming on
. Congratulations. I know last year you reported at
net sales of 186 million, you say business is
on target to double sales this year despite some still
difficult conditions. What's behind the growth? A few
things. First off, there's a tremendous amount of
pent up supply and demand as a result of covid
for, you know, the demand side fans that
have just been stuck at home waiting to get back
out there and do stuff and now they finally are
able to and also when you look at supply,
there's a ton of artists who weren't able to tour
for a few years and rely on that to make
their income, they're now able to do again.
Yeah, I think a lot of people are excited
to see a live music in person again, Jack
, I mean you mentioned both kinds of events here
that are selling out tickets, but any specific acts
in particular that are seeing a lot of demand.
So first off right now, everyone's very excited about
the NFL and we're stoked to have the season starting
tonight on the music side, bad bunny is our
largest seller right now. We've also seen really strong
sales from harry styles, from Elton john, there's
a ton of sorts out right now that fans are
clearly excited about 238 million recently raised. Congratulations again
. How are you gonna use that money jack to
expand the company at our core? We are a
technology company and we live and die by the product
we build. And we deeply believe that with seatgeek
, the process of buying a ticket and going to
a live event becomes radically simpler, radically easier for
fans. So when we look at how we're investing
this money, it is in our product and in
the team that's building that we believe that with seatgeek
many, many more fans are able to go to
more events and I think that's been proven out by
the financial results that you mentioned earlier. Right.
So it is interesting. I'm seeing here Jack,
despite strong growth from your company, obviously a recent
raid, you actually terminated a SPAC deal, Said
to take your company public via a blank check firm
back in june of this year. What was behind
that decision and is a potential I. P.
O. Perhaps even as back in your future plans
down the road, we were really excited to be
partnering with the red ball, which was the name
of this back and just mutually decided given market conditions
, given what we're all seeing in the public markets
, that the timing wasn't right. So really I
was privileged to work with them, but given what
happened outside of psychic and in the broader equity markets
, we both thought it was the right decision to
knock the public views back at that point. So
I see here two people definitely have an appetite to
get back out there and I think for a lot
of these events travel, whatever it may be that
people couldn't do for the first two years of the
pandemic, they're willing to pay a higher price.
So I see in fact ticket shows, statistics show
that ticket Sales are up 20% since the start of
the pandemic that does well outpace inflation jacks, you
expect those ticket prices to continue to rise and demand
to stay sticky even with double-digit gains and ticket prices
. It's interesting as we've seen that growth, you
mentioned since the beginning of Covid, when you actually
look at this year versus last year prices are not
that much if at all. However, there's a
lot more tickets being sold, particularly notable given in
the broader inflation story and how consumer prices are rising
in so many areas. We really haven't seen that
this year happening in the live entertainment market, what
we have seen is way more fans going to live
events, but at approximately the same price as they
were last year. Um, and I know the
NFL season kicking off tonight, Big game and amazon
is going to take the cake in terms of streaming
thursday night football games going forward after this very first
season opener? What is the demand that you've seen
for NFL tickets this year? Really strong and I
think there, it's not strong for a specific team
, it's really across the board. We've seen NFL
sales up prices as I mentioned earlier about the same
as last year, but overall number of tickets sold
higher than ever, higher than ever. Pretty impressive
. Of course, bots a factor Jack scammers,
all of these things that I'm sure, you know
well here in the world of digital ticketing, how
do you try to combat that? In a world
where of course these venues, these offerings are increasingly
at risk. Like I mentioned earlier, seatgeek is
incredibly focused as a company on making things super easy
for fans, huge part of that is making sure
that its fans that are buying tickets on seatgeek and
not bots. And the good news is from a
technology standpoint, we're able to be more effective than
ever and keeping computers off of seatgeek buying tickets,
making sure they're getting into the hands of fans.
It's something that is very cool, our product,
I think very important, our clients know that they
are in control of who is buying their tickets and
looking ahead as we get through the fall Jack,
obviously you mentioned bad bunny, the NFL season very
popular in terms of ticket sales right now as we
look more towards the holidays and even some of these
winter months, what are some of the big acts
that you expect to see high demand? I don't
want to make forecasts about which artists will be touring
, but I think that broader secular trend and the
thing I feel very confident about is that next year
will be a record year for concert sales. And
a lot of that comes back up to that pent
up supply pent up artist ability to tour that I
mentioned earlier, artists were a little bit slower than
sports teams to announce stuff in the uncertain parts of
the pandemic. Just because, you know, with
the sports game, even if there's no fans,
in many cases, you can still have the game
doesn't make any sense for a concert, but now
that there's a lot of clarity that concerts are back
and fans are going to as many shows as possible
, I think next year is gonna be a historic
year for the industry. All right, Jack,
I'm excited to get back to some of these concerts
too. Thanks so much for coming on the show
. That's Jack Ratzinger Ceo and co founder of psychic