FreeTicketExchange.com - Buy and sell sports, concert and theater tickets without the fees
April 25, 2008 – 8:33 am
By now, we’re all pretty familiar with StubHub and how we can buy and sell tickets to sporting events, concerts, and more on it. The only problem is that StubHub charges an arm and a leg for their service. I’m guessing that’s why eBay bought them for over $300 million in 2007. In comes FreeTicketExchange to solve the problem in a pretty innovative way.
They take a swapping approach to event tickets and reduce the entire monetary aspect of the process. If I have a ticket to a Kids In The Hall show that I can’t use, I could sell it on StubHub and lose 25% of the price OR I can list it on FreeTicketExchange for FREE and earn credits to get tickets for another event in the future. This model is interesting and has the critical mass problem that many other web companies face. Namely, it’s a network approach and the network is only as good as the number of people in it. I have no reason to list my ticket if no one will be on the network to take it from me and vice versa.
I had a recent conversation with the founder, Joe Pensa, and he was extremely pleasant and gave way to a little insight as to how FreeTicketExchange works. They are a new company and growing every day and presently they swap about 30 tickets per day and get 150 new registrations per week. That may sound like small potatoes, but that’s pretty significant in terms of network effect. If each one of those 150 people swapped with just each other that’s A LOT of swaps that can take place.
Monetization is an interesting element in this business. They name of the site has “free” in it, so charging for services is out, but Joe does manage to monetize anyway. They make deals with ticket suppliers to handle their inventory of tickets (Supahfans.com is a current listing partner) and do all of their monetization on the back end.
Well Joe, I wish you best of luck in this endeavor and you can be sure that if I need tickets, I’ll register immediately!
What’s the concept?
Ticket swapping for events, sports, concerts and more… for FREE
Why should you care?
If you have tickets that you got as a gift or bought, but just can attend the event, you can swap them (in essence) without losing value.
How do they make money?
Back end deals with ticket providers and add on services.
Will this company last 5 years?
Most definitely. As long as they can build a network that hits a critical mass, the rest is easy sailing.
Suggestions for improvements?
Hit the social space more. Maybe a Facebook app?
