Seatwave, the UK-based upstart behind the eponymous marketplace for secondary tickets, has landed $17 million in Series D funding led by Accel Partners with Atlas Venture, Mangrove Capital Partners, Fidelity Ventures and Adinvest joining the round, writes Atlas partner Fred Destin on his blog.
Recently named Europe’s fastest growing digital media company by investment bank GP Bullhound, Seatwave allows fans to trade theatre, sport and music tickets online and thus competes (hard) with TicketMaster (IAC), StubHub (eBay) and that other well-funded startup in the ticket reselling space, Viagogo, which raised over $65 million to date including an investment from tennis legends Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf. The primary reason it was selected is because the company reportedly saw its revenue rise 2203 per cent in the past two years, with user numbers having increased to 1.9m monthly users today and exchange operations in five countries.
The company was founded in 2006 by Joe Cohen, formerly with Ticketmaster and Match.com, and Atlas Venture, which remains the largest shareholder. Seatwave has now raised a whopping total of $53 million including this round. The startup raised seed and $3 million in Series A funds from Atlas Venture in 2006, $8 million from Mangrove CP and Atlas in 2007, and raised a large $25 million round back in February 2008.
Congrats SeaWave on funding. Look forward to hearing more from your company.
I’m puzzled. They’ve raised $36M and “saw its revenue rise 2203 per cent in the past two years” yet they need another $17M? This story reeks of a failed business plan.
They had revenue of $1 now they have revenues of $23.03 . 2303% increase in revenue.
Would it kill them to properly hyphenate the tag line?
“A fan-to-fan ticket exchange.”
Congratulations to the Seatwave team. I look forward to seeing continued growth in the European ticket market.