Social networking and e-commerce have taken off during the last few years, mainly around group-buying websites like Groupon and flash sales sites such as Cobon. Eventbrite is capitalizing on a different part of social media: ticket sales and live events, where you can actually meet people in person.
What Eventbrite does? Many may have already used the service if they have attended a ticketed event such as a concert in the past couple years. The company’s online ticketing service helps event organizers manage all aspects of a happening: planning, marketing, Internet sales and payments. The platform is already popular for small to medium-sized events, because it is relatively inexpensive and easy to use online. Currently, there are even 47 events listed in Dubai.
As a consequence of empowering many events, Eventbrite sold more than 11 million tickets last year and reported $207 million in gross sales. The platform continuous to grow fast and the team expects to generate $500 million in gross ticket sales this year.
Founded in 2006, the website started out gathering much of its traffic from Google. If you searched for an event, you would find Eventbrite’s concerts in the search engines results.
However, as networking on social media has taken off, people increasingly learn about the events when their friends shared them. It is no coincidence that Eventbrite has taken off with Facebook and Twitter. Though it is not as big as the other two, the platform has become the “real-life” way for people to connect while attending events together.
Facebook itself also recognizes the significance of events in social commerce. The social network focused its just-launched Facebook Deals service around local businesses that involve events and activities that friends can do together.
Eventbrite is very suitable for a smaller network of friends with similar interests who can join concerts or classes together.
The sharing among friends is also valuable to event management companies.
Accoding the so far collected data, each time someone shares an Eventbrite event on LinkedIn, that results in an average of $0.90 in purchases, a Twitter share results in $0.43 and a Facebook share results in the largest value with $2.52. It’s this social currency that has real value.
Many people who organise create “events” on Facebook that require tickets, often use Eventbrite for the sales. The platform now handles tickets for a range of events in 13 categories, from nonprofit events to music concerts, from small meet-ups to large concerts.
The company takes a 2.5% fee on the ticket value plus $0.99 per ticket up to a maximum of $9.95 per ticket. It adds 3% for credit cards processing. It doesn’t charge for free events and doesn’t run any advertising.
Eventbrite has about 135 employees and it is based in San Francisco. So far, it has raised close to $30 million in venture capital from Sequoia Capital, DAG Ventures, Tenaya Capital, European Founders Fund, and others.
Mobile is a key focus. In October 2010, the company released an iPhone app with a bar code scanner for event organizers to check people in. The app pulls a guest list to check people in and is synced online so that multiple people can scan guests. Event organizers don’t need special scanning devices – instead they can use an iPhone. The company is also about to release a iPad version of the service.
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