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TickPick acquires ticketing search aggregator Rukkus

After enjoying a period of ‘aggressive growth’, TickPick has announced the acquisition of a significant portion of ticketing aggregation service Rukkus. The deal will give TickPick access to the company’s state-of-the-art app features.

Since its creation in 2014, Rukkus has allowed consumers to search across a number of the US’s largest ticket sellers to find the best value prices for various sports and entertainment events. The company boasts some 300,000 customers, a million website visitors and a further million app downloads.

The idea of getting customers the best value tickets possible is shared by new owner TickPick. The New York-based business has a no-fees approach which, alongside algorithms that consider price vs value, aims to give customers a good deal on what it calls the often exploitative secondary ticketing market.

Besides sharing the same value for money-based philosophy, the highlight of TickPick’s acquisition of Rukkus is the use of its high-definition 360-degree seat view feature. After conducting research that concluded first-person seat views were important to some 90% of secondary ticket buyers, Rukkus developers spent a year working to create its Seat360 technology. The service gives ticket-buyers a virtual reality panorama look at the venue from their prospective seat.

“We’re continuing our growth path by making smart acquisitions, developing partnerships and constantly improving our technology

Manick Bhan, CEO and CTO of Rukkus, suggested last year in IQ’s European Arena Yearbook that the feature was “the single biggest innovation in the ticket-buying space since the first seat map was introduced.” The technology has since lived up to expectations: since the introduction of Seat360 functionality to Rukkus’ app, the company has sold more than US$100 million worth of tickets.

Under the new deal, Seat360 will be integrated into TickPick’s platform and users of the Rukkus app will be redirected to TickPick’s website when making purchases. The deal has been labelled a smart move by TickPick co-CEO Brett Goldberg. “Rukkus brought in several hundred thousand valuable customers, and they also built a very impressive seat-view capability that is much more immersive than the ‘virtual’ views offered by many of our competitors.

“We’re continuing our growth path by making smart acquisitions, developing partnerships, and constantly improving our technology for the industry’s best customer experience.”

 


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Arena tech: The groundbreakers

The global live music business is in a state of technological flux, with innovations such as virtual and augmented reality, live streaming, blockchain and bots all being touted as potential new sources of revenue for an increasingly mature industry.

But while the monetisation of live-streamed concerts is, by most estimates, still some way off, a handful of pioneers in the arena space are already delivering concrete results through clever tech to some of the world’s leading entertainment venues.

Meet DigifoodArchaioRukkus, VertedaClair GlobalLiveStyledCastBottoms UpKontakt.ioYondr and Hurdl: eleven innovators working behind the scenes to make large entertainment venues smarter, more connected and more profitable than ever before…

 


Read the rest of this feature in the digital edition of IQ’s definitive guide to the European arena market, the European Arena Yearbook 2017: