VC cash helps Vibe meet £600K Crowdcube goal
Ten per cent of mobile ticket exchange Vibe Tickets is now owned by investors following a successful crowdfunding campaign that saw it raise £610,080 in four weeks.
UK-based Vibe, which launched the Crowdcube campaign in late August, met its target with one day to go, helped over the line by a last-minute £200,000 investment from venture-capital firm Vela Technologies.
“Vibe Tickets fits perfectly the profile of a business that Vela likes to invest in,” says Antony Laiker, executive director of Vela Technologies (a man not afraid of a dangling preposition). “The multi-billion pound primary and secondary ticket markets are dominated by big companies who effectively control the pricing and distribution of tickets often to the detriment to true music or sports fans. These fans are often priced out of the market and/or charged excessive fees. Vibe Tickets offers an alternative, allowing fans to use the Vibe app to buy and sell tickets transparently.
“Although the business started life three years ago, and is still pre-revenue, the recent launch of the Vibe app has allowed the business to scale up and grow more rapidly. We wish [CEO] Luke Massie and his team all the best and look forward to working with and assisting Vibe in the future.”
“This success attracting fan investors proves that users are still not satisfied with the state of secondary ticketing market”
Vibe, founded three years ago in Lancashire by then-20-year-old Luke Massie, facilitates through its app the buying and selling of unwanted concert and event tickets at face value or less. It has since last year connected over 30,000 users in eight countries.
Vibe’s crowdfunding success follows a survey of 1,000 British adults, commissioned by Vibe and carried out by Harris Interactive, which found that eight out of 10 British music fans are likely to use Vibe Tickets to buy and sell unwanted tickets at face value.
Rosa Martinez, Vibe Tickets’ newly hired marketing director, adds: “This success attracting fan investors proves that users are still not satisfied with the state of secondary ticketing market and want to re-invent the rules.
“The results of the Harris Interactive research are very encouraging. The fact that 80% of of young fans would rather make another fan happy by selling a ticket at original face value than to profit from the opportunity just shows that there are a high number
of young fans who value ethical commerce.”
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Industry veteran Rosa Martinez joins Vibe
Ticketing industry veteran Rosa Martinez has been appointed marketing director of Vibe Tickets.
Martinez (pictured), who previously worked with the face-value ticket resale app on a freelance basis, joins Vibe today. Her past experience includes spells as online partnerships manager at Ticketmaster UK, head of marketing at Eventim UK, marketing director at Ticketea in Spain and, most recently, European marketing director at AXS.
“I’ve been following Vibe from the very start, and I am very excited to come on board at this important moment to build sustained user growth and to effectively communicate the huge value this app adds to every entertainment fan out there,” she comments.
“The big established ticketing companies are not well positioned to solve their own challenges and provide the next generation of live fans with better access to face-value tickets”
UK-based vibe, which offers a marketplace for the buying and selling of unwanted concert and event tickets at face value or less, is currently running a crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube, making available 10% of its equity in exchange for an investment of £600,000. At the time of writing, it has raised £343,110 from 207 investors.
Outlining her choice to move to Vibe Tickets, Martinez – who has until now worked in the primary market – writes in a LinkedIn blog that traditional ticketers “do truly care about fans buying tickets at face value, and all of them invest significant resources to stop touts and robot bots…
“However it is my opinion that the big established ticketing companies are not well positioned to solve [their] own challenges and provide the next generation of live fans with better access to face-value tickets and innovative functionality.”
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Face-value resale site Vibe seeks to raise £600k
Vibe Tickets, a UK-based ‘ethical’ secondary ticketing site, is making available 10% of its equity as it seeks to raise £600,000 on crowdfunding platform Crowdcube.
Vibe, founded three years ago by then-20-year-old Luke Massie, facilitates through its app the buying and selling of unwanted concert and event tickets at face value or less. It has since last year connected over 30,000 users in eight countries.
“I simply hated seeing genuine fans being ripped off by touts and the secondary market,” says Massie, “and I’m clearly not alone. We’ve now got 145,000 followers on Twitter and an incredibly active community on our app, so we’re opening up Vibe Tickets for people to invest in our vision and share in our success via Crowdcube.
“It’s a great opportunity for anyone who wants to help us outsmart the ticket touts and help us build something that’s genuinely disruptive and incredibly useful to genuine fans”
“This investment round will make 10% of Vibe Tickets available through Crowdcube. We’re looking for fans, followers, friends and venture capitalists to invest anything from £10 towards our target of £600,000. It’s a great opportunity for anyone who wants to help us outsmart the ticket touts and help us build something that’s genuinely disruptive and incredibly useful to genuine fans.”
The Crowdcube campaign launched on Wednesday (17 August) and has so far raised £312,870 from 104 investors. The company was recently valued at £6 million.
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