With a 20% rise in ticket prices from 2019, live events appear to be back in full swing. Jack Groetzinger, CEO and co-founder at SeatGeek, joined Cheddar News to discuss the supply and demand for live events. “Now that there's a lot of clarity that concerts are back and fans are going to as many shows as possible, I think next year is gonna be a historic year for the industry,” he said.

Closing Bell

SeatGeek CEO Sees ‘Historic’ Year in 2023 for Live Events

Well 2.5 years into the pandemic, live events are back with fans packing stadiums to cheer on their favorite teams and artists and last week mobile ticketing platform, seatgeek announcing it raised $238 million 2022. So joining me now is Jack great singer as Ceo and co founder of seeking Jack, thanks so much for coming on. Congratulations. I know last year you reported at net sales of 186 million, you say business is on target to double sales this year despite some still difficult conditions. What's behind the growth? A few things. First off, there's a tremendous amount of pent up supply and demand as a result of covid for, you know, the demand side fans that have just been stuck at home waiting to get back out there and do stuff and now they finally are able to and also when you look at supply, there's a ton of artists who weren't able to tour for a few years and rely on that to make their income, they're now able to do again. Yeah, I think a lot of people are excited to see a live music in person again, Jack, I mean you mentioned both kinds of events here that are selling out tickets, but any specific acts in particular that are seeing a lot of demand. So first off right now everyone is very excited about the NFL and we're stoked to have the season starting tonight on the music side, bad bunny is our largest seller right now. We've also seen really strong sales from harry styles, from Elton john, there's a ton of sorts out right now that fans are clearly excited. About 238 million recently raised. Congratulations again. How are you gonna use that money jack to expand the company at our core. We are a technology company and we live and die by the product we build. And we deeply believe that with seatgeek, the process of buying a ticket and going to a live event becomes radically simpler, radically easier for fans. So when we look at how we're investing this money, it is in our product and in the team that's building that we believe that with seatgeek many, many more fans are able to go to more events and I think that's been proven out by the financial results that you mentioned earlier. Right? So it is interesting. I'm seeing here Jack, despite strong growth from your company, obviously a recent raid, you actually terminated a SPAC deal. Said to take your company public via a blank check firm back in june of this year. What was behind that decision and is a potential I. P. O. Perhaps even as back in your future plans down the road, we were really excited to be partnering with the red ball, which was the name of this back and just mutually decided given market conditions, given what we're all seeing in the public markets, that the timing wasn't right. So really I was privileged to work with them, but given what happened outside of psychic and in the broader equity markets, we both thought it was the right decision to knock the public views back at that point. So I see here two people definitely have an appetite to get back out there and I think for a lot of these events travel, whatever it may be that people couldn't do for the first two years of the pandemic, they're willing to pay a higher price. So I see in fact ticket shows, statistics show that ticket Sales are up 20% since the start of the pandemic that does well outpace inflation jacks, you expect those ticket prices to continue to rise and demand to stay sticky even with double-digit gains and ticket prices. It's interesting as we've seen that growth, you mentioned since the beginning of Covid, when you actually look at this year versus last year prices are not that much if at all. However, there's a lot more tickets being sold, particularly notable given in the broader inflation story and how consumer prices are rising in so many areas. We really haven't seen that this year happening in the live entertainment market. What we have seen is way more fans going to live events, but at approximately the same price as they were last year. Um, and I know the NFL season kicking off tonight, big game and amazon is going to take the cake in terms of streaming thursday night football games going forward after this very first season opener? What is the demand that you've seen for NFL tickets this year? Really strong and I think there, it's not strong for a specific team, it's really across the board. We've seen NFL sales up prices as I mentioned earlier about the same as last year, but overall number of tickets sold higher than ever, higher than ever. Pretty impressive. Of course bots a factor Jack scammers, all of these things that I'm sure, you know well here in the world of digital ticketing, how do you try to combat that? In a world where of course these venues, these offerings are increasingly at risk. Like I mentioned earlier, seatgeek is incredibly focused as a company on making things super easy for fans, huge part of that is making sure that its fans that are buying tickets on seatgeek and not bots. And the good news is from a technology standpoint, we're able to be more effective than ever and keeping computers off of seatgeek buying tickets, making sure they're getting into the hands of fans. It's something that is very cool, our product, I think very important, our clients know that they are in control of who is buying their tickets and looking ahead as we get through the fall. Jack obviously mentioned bad bunny, the NFL season very popular in terms of ticket sales right now as we look more towards the holidays and even some of these winter months, what are some of the big acts that you expect to see high demand? I don't want to make forecasts about which artists will be touring, but I think that broader secular trend and the thing I feel very confident about is that next year will be a record year for concert sales. And a lot of that comes back up to that pent up supply Pent up artist ability to tour that I mentioned earlier, artists were a little bit slower than sports teams to announce stuff in the uncertain parts of the pandemic. Just because, you know, with the sports game, even if there's no fans, in many cases, you can still have the game doesn't make any sense for a concert, but now that there's a lot of clarity that concerts are back and fans are going to as many shows as possible, I think next year is gonna be a historic year for the industry. All right, Jack, I'm excited to get back to some of these concerts too. Thanks so much for coming on the show. That's Jack Ratzinger Ceo and co founder of psychic