New technology from startup ventures is transforming the sports industry. The mission of this series will be to introduce startup companies in the sports technology space to a broader audience and allow Founders of promising new ventures to tell their story. Feel free to contact us if you know of a startup that should be considered for this series.
Company: IdealSeat
CEO: Joel Carben
Headquarters: Seattle
1. Elevator pitch
The future of live sports and entertainment will be data driven. We provide data about the experience that changes the game.
IdealSeat’s mission is to create, analyze, and deliver insights from unique data about the fan experience. Our strategy focuses on the three core aspects of the experience at events, with an emphasis on live sports: ticket discovery, gameday decisions, and pre- and post-game experiences.
We are quickly becoming the industry’s most valuable source for data and analysis about the fan experience from deciding to attend an event to having the game of your life.
2. Problem & solution
Currently, professional sports teams and entertainment companies do not consistently or holistically track fan experience analytics within their venues. There exists no data that fans can access to answer the question, “How can I have the best experience?” This data gap leads to non-optimized fan experiences, resulting in missed upsell opportunities and recurring revenue loss for teams and venues.
IdealSeat has collected 1M data points on the Major League Baseball fan experience since its inception in 2012. This data is made available to ticketing companies via API for integration with their platform, so ticket buyers can identify the best seats for their desired experience. Using IdealSeat’s data today, fans can maximize their chances to catch a foul ball or home run, sit in the sun or shade, enjoy food and drinks during a social outing with friends, or sit in family-friendly areas of the ballpark.
Our technology leads directly to tickets of higher value being sold, on average $5 per ticket. With over 150,000 engagements through web and mobile in 2015 we proved that customers are looking for this data, and will spend more dollars as a result. With the future in mobile, we are in a strong position to make ticket purchases all about having a great experience at the best price.
3. Market – your target market and the overall market
IdealSeat’s business model pivoted in 2016 from directly selling tickets enriched with data to fans, to creating a platform that enables ticket companies to overlay IdealSeat data onto their ticket offerings. This B2B focus allows us to grow our core strengths – data acquisition, analysis, and technology – while partnering with ticket sellers to upsell their inventories and reduce the current $10 billion dollar annual unsold ticket inventory. Our major focus right now is all in the secondary market.
4. Business Model – how do you make money?
We license data on a monthly basis and engage in a revenue share on tickets sold using our data. Our goal is to help ticketing companies to sell more tickets at a higher value. The more tickets we help sell at a higher price, the better we do and the more our technology gets adopted, which leads to a better experience for the fans.
5. Current status and milestones (monthly UU, customers, revenue, etc.)
IdealSeat is closing our first three customers in Q2, secondary market enterprises with $50M a year in sales. We are in negotiations with multiple secondary market companies with tickets sales ranging from $10M to $1B in annual sales.
We also were recently ranked as one of the top ten sports tech companies globally by Sports Tank. This led to an offer to meet with a collection of VCs and league Executives from the Carolina Panthers, Indiana Pacers, NASCAR, and more. We are currently in discussions with several of those entities.
6. How much venture funding have you raised?
$125,000 since 2012. Mostly bootstrapped.
7. Who are your investors?
Gary Rubens. One of the leading angel investors in the Seattle region. Gary is an avid sports and entertainment fan with a strong background in e-commerce. Gary also sits on our Board of Advisors and is a big fan of NASCAR and country music, so our business will likely move into those areas soon.
8. Management Team – with titles
Joel Carben – CEO
Spencer Fornaciari – CTO
Adam Navarrete – CMO
Manish Gaudi – Business Strategy Advisor
Adam Gilfix – Data Strategy Super Intern
We have a team of over 20 Advisors, staff and interns who have bootstrapped our groundbreaking technology since day 1 and deserve a ton of credit. We also have a research team of nearly 85 fans in North America that track data in every MLB park.
9. Future milestones and goals
We are on a pathway to sign our first 10 customers in 2016, and will expand to 50 in year 2. Our goal is to perfect our secondary market offering and then work our way into contracts with the teams and leagues.
We will be expanding into three majors this fall – NFL, NHL, and NBA, with MLS, NCAA Football and NASCAR also in the mix.
10. What else do you want the audience to know about your company?
We have an amazing team of sports geeks committed to building the future of live sports and entertainment. We live this on and off the field. Our advisors include Oakland Athletics Outfielder Sam Fuld, SI writer Jonah Keri, and several additional professional athletes, team executives, and media. Last year we attended a game in every park in MLB and met with thousands of fans are all part of the team now.
Every day we walk in the office and solve big problems. It’s truly awesome to be a part of bringing advanced data to world of fan experience. We like to think of it as Moneyball for fans. If you need this data for your next ticket purchase ask your ticket provider “Where’s my IdealSeat?”
Grant Son executed this interview.
Grant is a proven innovator and champion in both large corporations and entrepreneurial environments. Professional experience includes serving as CEO of two digital ventures – SchoolSports (top-10 sports website acquired by ESPN) and Greater Good Ventures – as well as senior roles with iconic sports brands such as CBS, the NFL, and Sports Illustrated. MBA in finance from Columbia and BA from the University of Pennsylvania. Thirty years of experience, including 20 years in digital media. Board member and advisor to established companies and more than 20 start-up ventures.
Grant is a member of the teaching faculty at Columbia Business School where he serves as an adjunct professor in the Marketing Department and the Media & Technology division. Professor Son created Columbia Business School’s first course on Sports Marketing and currently teaches the course for the full-time MBA program.
Attended every major sporting event, including six Super Bowls, World Cup Soccer, World Series, NBA Finals, Stanley Cup Finals, championship boxing, and two Olympics.