Buying a ticket to a live event, be it sports, music, or theater, is a piece of cake on the Web. There are online services galore that help users find and purchase tickets at their desired price. But does the price you pay actually equate to the true value of the ticket? Put differently, could a ticket for a different location in the same venue for the same price (or even less) be the better one? Say hello to SeatKarma.com which believes that the true value of a ticket is a combination of its price and its location in the venue. The company’s tagline: “No two tickets are the same!”
SeatKarma’s search engine covers 99% of tickets available for purchase online by retrieving live ticket information from a couple of hundred secondary market ticket brokers. The cost comparison is then augmented with venue mapping available for approximately 1600 venues. 1300 of these are “live maps” which place a marker on the section where the seat will be located. The remaining 300 are small venues such as bars where seat mapping doesn’t apply. The company claims it now has more live maps than any other comparison engine on the market.
SeatKarma has a really cool feature where 140 venues in its system have actual “Court View” photos of the perspective you’ll have of the court or field from your desired seating location. These 140 venues include all the US professional sports venues for the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, as well as the some of the top NCAA football venues.
There are also twenty 3D maps that were custom drawn for theater venues with complicated seating arrangements (balconies, Mezzanine levels, etc). More will be added over time. Eventually SeatKarma plans to have all the major venues drawn in 3D as well. Baseball stadiums are also currently being mapped in 3D and are due to be available on the site in time for the start of the new baseball season April 1st.
The company’s business model is based on affiliate commissions generated by selling tickets through brokers. Ten percent of the revenue will be given to charity every month.
Here’s the killer part: SeatKarma is just a couple of MBA graduate students from Texas A&M University—Ohad Nezer and Chris Nicolaysen—that pulled all of this off for only $30K… You just gotta love that!
Sweet… thats a nice startup with a nice unique idea, bound to be a hit.
Thanks, Web2Crawl. We are excited about the site, and are here to handle any feedback or comments.
Nice! Most of the startups we’re seeing seem to be on the 50/50 line. But this has definite potential.
Good job.
The venue mapping and court view’s are a great idea. I’ll be looking forward to more 3D models. Nice work Seat Karma.
Wow, this looks like what I’ve been needing for a while! What a great idea!
Complex project. Incredible execution.
Question is, does this make a mountain out of a moehill?
Um, problem: StubHub has the patent for interactive seating charts….I guess they’ll find out the hard way!
big problem, thank you for your comment. StubHub is an important partner to us and we display their tickets on our site. We would not engage in any activity that might resemble their technology without first making the appropriate arrangements
This is a great tool!!! I am going to spread the word! What a great website! I can’t wait to see the new baseball stadium 3D maps…
Nice… finally a graphical model that we all can see before booking. It’s hard getting tickets and get disappointed when you get there.
TechFilipino.com
SeatKarma – great idea! No doubt it will be my first choice when searching for tickets. Good luck !
The seating charts are the best I’ve seen. But the city and venue filters will bring users back. Great execution.
Sounds like a great idea, I will definitly give it a try next time I am going to buy tickets!
Ticketstumbler.com FTW
I have used this and compared prices and seats at three venues and got great seats at a great price
i could have done it for $20k
15! 10! Whoops… somebody else already did it. Hope you enjoy your $20k…
Kudos, brian! 30K included plenty of beginner mistakes, that’s for sure. Shoot us an email if you want to team up on your next venture.
I used seatkarma.com already, made buying tickets really simple and easy..
I had a great experience with seatkarma . . I heard about through a friend. Saved me searching 5 different website for the cheapest price.
Weird… how did y’all get all those seat views? Do you have a guy like the Verizon guy going around snapping pictures from all the seats?
And if so… does he need a partner?
And if so… can I be that partner? Please contact me ASAP.
Me TOO!!
I’ve always questioned whether the tickets I purchased were the best available tickets for the price. Now, I will never have to wonder.
Are your seating charts only available for Stubhub tix or all tickets offered?
Nice job guys. Very impressed with the execution on a shoe string budget.
Alex, our seating charts include tickets from all of our ticket sources. Here’s a sample link directly to ticket results for a baseball game in September:
http://seatkarm....php?eid=928907
You’ll notice that tickets from several sites are represented on the map. There is one dot per seating section – red dots have a picture of the approximate view from your seat. Use the slider bars to narrow your search.
Really nicely done fellas. Makes my lowly ticket finder look like amateur hour…
http://jamtopia.com/tickets/
One thing you might want to look into is automatically finding local concerts of interest by importing users’ favorite artist lists from iTunes, Pandora, Last.fm, etc.
LiveKick (no affiliation) does this really nicely…
http://livekick.com/myartists/
Kudos,
Todd
http://jamtopia.com/
Groovy mugshot Todd
We are actually working on something of the sort. It will be added very soon as a feature in our site as well as a stand alone iphone App.
Ohad
> Groovy mugshot Todd
Thanks.
I actually grew the mustache for charity if you can believe it.
Learn more here… http://movember.com/
> We are actually working on something of the sort.
Look forward to seeing the new features.
TL
Wouldn’t the logical extension include bidding on each seat ?
I could see Tickmaster allowing bidding by seat location.
In that manner they could maximize seat revenue
just a thought
Haven’t seen anyone moving in exactly this direction yet, but some sites (like Stubhub) do allow people posting tickets to sell them in an auction format.
I like this website because it looks user friendly. No more reading every single last word on the entire web page before I find the information I need. Thanks for making it easy!
SeatKarma looks comprehensive and user-friendly, can’t wait to try it out for my next game!
Great idea, I hope it really takes off! 3D Maps are awesome.
It’s really nice to see a startup with a decent business model. 10% to charity is also a nice touch.. The site looks great. Good job guys!
Wow! You go, Texas A&M students! This sounds like a much needed, smart yet simple idea. Best of luck!
I’ve checked out the site and was impressed with how easy it was to use. I am definitely going to be using seatkarma.com next time I’m looking for tickets.
Also, LOVE the logo!!
Great idea, but I am unable to get a seating chart for the following:
http://www.seat....php?eid=941734
Thanks for letting us know John. We will make sure to display this map as soon as possible.
Ohad
Got this resolved now, John. Sorry we missed the glitch!
Great graphics and easy to navigate layout…impressive idea. I’ll keep tabs on this site for my future ticket purchases.
this website begin to be so well known in France !
Great ifdea an great execution!
Alredy orderd tickets for my trip to the US next month.
Easy to navigate and got a great price…
Fansnap, TicketStumbler, Seathound, SeatQuest, Tickex. Crowded field.
sure there are several others out there doing similar things, but all those websites combined get less traffic a month than stuhub alone gets in a day. Some of these are great websites, but we feel we bring a unique offering to the table; a large number of live maps, sectional pictures, and much more to come! We believe there is room enough in the market for several strong players.
Ohad
love this website, easy to use, great prices for all the teams that i love, already bought tickets to the lakers, thanks guys….
funny how SK takes $30k, TicketStumbler takes $15k, but Fansnap took $10.5 mil in funding
The business model and product sound solid, but I believe the founders should strongly reconsider their logo. The Budai image reeks of cultural insensitivity. Imagine a business using an image of a religious figure such as Jesus or Muhammad to promote ticket scalping.
We appreciate the feedback Crew. We were fortunate to test market the Buddy concept to a very diverse group of students from China, India, and the surrounding areas. They all did not see a problem in using an image loosely based on the Laughing Buddha (which is different than the regular Buddha image). However, we will revisit this issue. If people find it offensive, we will change it. We are not out to hurt anyone.
Ohad
I especially like the clutter free look of this website…
On ticketmaster and others, it gets confusing many times… and they redirect you to some of their sister sites …
I think this is a very simple, easy to use approach to hassle free buying…Very neat indeed!
what a great concept!
Are these venue maps being pulled via Stubhub API and then adding seat location?
Brian, most of the maps are proprietary Seat Karma maps. When we don’t have a live or a static map available locally (mostly for very small events), we pull a static map from one of our affiliate sites
I am so excited about SeatKarma. No more wondering if I’ll be able to actually see something from the seats I buy!! I can’t wait to buy my first tickets using SeatKarma!! How did you guys come up with such a great idea?
A great idea, well-executed. I’m excited to use it and pass along to all my friends and family!
Whoa! $30k into it and they’ve launched? That’s impressive. I hope these guys can make it fly.
Other commenters have mentioned that it’s a crowded market, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t use some innovation. In fact, that’s usually what a crowded market needs!
The Court View feature is extremely exciting. Hope the major NCAA basketball venues will be coming soon!
Janet M,
We’ve got a few ideas in the works that may just make this a reality before too long. Stay tuned to TechCrunch or our blog. We’ll keep you all well informed.
Awesome site guys. This just goes to show that you don’t need 9 million in funding to launch a great site.
wow , grate site , simple but powerful idea !!!
good luck
KILLER APPLICATION!
The world was watinig for this long long time…
thank you SeatKarma…
I think it is an amazing website bound for success. What an incredible idea!!!!!!
Good luck and great success to the founders!!!!
Way to go Ags! This site will really help me plan my trip to New York. Now I won’t have to deal with scalpers!
Wow, Very impressive. Not only a great idea but a very needed one. It is always hard to actually know if the ticket you are buying is as good as they promise it is, and with all your maps not only you get the best price, but you know exactly what view you are getting!
Congratulations on the site and the best of luck!
Hate & Love.
Hate the fact that I had this exact same idea … (checks Jottit …) June 08, but being a lowly business professional had no idea how to go about doing it or getting funding – I had estimated £10k but hadn’t factored the seat views which I imagine cost (great feature by the way).
Love – the way it was implemented, better than I had pictured. I guess I’ll always be an ideas man so it is cool to see them put into action by others!
Peter, Keep your chin up and shoot us an email the next time you get a great idea like this!! We may be able to point you in the right direction.
It is always nice to have a go to webpage when i need tickets for my next big date. Thanks guys, this makes my entertainment life that much easier to plan!
looks good to me. Maybe needs a way to sell your own tickets…
DjacK, I think we will leave this to the ticket marketplace sites, like RazorGator and StubHub for now. We prefer to place all of our efforts into finding the best tickets for our customers. The great thing is that when you post your tickets on one of these sites, they automatically get listed in our results, too!!
This is awesome. I am always the last minute ticket purchaser, and knowing this site exists is going to help find better tickets at a better price..last minute.
What a great point! I hadn’t considered using SeatKarma for last minute tickets until you said that!