Middle East ticketer Platinumlist eyes expansion

Platinumlist, a leading ticketing and event solutions company in the Middle East, is planning to open offices in the UK and Europe at the beginning of 2024.

The Dubai-headquartered firm currently deals in concerts and attractions in 18 cities across Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE.

“By the end of the year will be fully operating in all the GCC regions,” Platinumlist MD Vassiliy Anatoli told IQ. “With regards to worldwide expansion, we have also opened in Turkey and plan to open offices in the UK and Europe in Q1 of 2024.”

The company launched in Turkey in June this year, with two concerts at the Haliç Congress Center in Istanbul by Iraqi singer Majid Al Mohandis and Syrian singer Assala Nasri.

“We have been particularly successful in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain which provided the majority of the growth”

“We discovered there are plenty of synergies in this region to our audience and our network of event organisers” continued Anatoli. “We aim to add to this thriving market by enabling more organisers to hold events in Turkey from our existing territories and visa versa. Moreover, we want to enable our audiences to discover Turkey as a holiday destination. We can confidently say that we are able to offer competitive event and attraction technology in B2B and B2C sectors in Turkey.”

Speaking about the company’s success in the Middle East, Anatoli said: “We have been particularly successful in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain which provided the majority of the growth. In Saudi Arabia, we are working on major projects with the Saudi Gaming Federation as well as the Ministry of Culture mega project and MDL Beast. In Bahrain, we are working with Formula1 Bahrain Grand Prix and Sun Waves Festival as well as concerts by major international acts such as Maroon 5, 50Cent, Westlife, and more in Al Dana Amphitheatre.”

Platinumlist launched its own iOS and Android app after the pandemic, which has now been downloaded a million times, and brings the company’s monthly online visitors to more than two million. “It has become the platform of choice,” adds Anatoli.

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Platinumlist powers through the pandemic

The pandemic has brought a lot of changes to the events industry worldwide and triggered a reset button for many in the ticketing industry. Here, we catch up with MD Vassiliy Anatoli to find out how Dubai-headquarterd ticketing platform Platinumlist has weathered the pandemic.

We had a very successful Q1 of 2020 that helped us a lot with the rest of the troubled year. We noticed that despite the pandemic, many attractions kept operating and that is what we focused on whilst there were no events.

Previously, in 2018, we have entered into an OTA (online travel agency) sector and started selling attractions along with the events. This has helped us a lot in 2020. Most major OTAs have slashed budgets and we have become the number one OTA attractions seller locally. This has yet boosted our OTA division which has now grown three times in revenue and continues to do so every year.

The events were only stopped for approximately four months in the UAE and for over a year in Saudi Arabia. Despite this, we have managed to have a healthy break even at the end of 2020.

“The UAE resumed events in full swing by September 2021, which has catapulted our revenues”

2021 has started well but was swiftly cut off by another spike in cases locally which halted the industry for another four months.
However, by March 2021, Saudi started making plans and we have won the tender for the Formula 1 STC Saudi Arabian Grand Prix 2021 and many other major projects such as Rotana Concerts, Evolution Exhibition, Museum of Happiness, and Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale.

Finally, the UAE resumed events in full swing by September 2021, which has catapulted our revenues. Another major win was the 2021 Indian Premier League and ICC World Cup which has sold over 350,000 tickets. The Gulf football, UAE Pro League, has resumed its operations at the same time around August 2021.

We were very lucky to be able to retain our full technical team past the pandemic. The work of adding more products and refining the existing functionality has not stopped. We have ventured into online events and streaming briefly but quickly understood that it’s not our future. The plan over the pandemic was to increase our functionality set and launch with a big major product by the end pandemic.

“We are actively looking for partners worldwide to enter new markets”

Staying true to our commitment, we are about to introduce a SAAS solution that is aimed at empowering small to medium organisers to build their own events and manage ticket sales from start to finish. Currently its in Beta mode, but will be launched fully with map configuration at the end of Q2.

Moreover, the Upsells or Ticket Add-ons functionality was also launched, adding value to the users’ ticket purchases and at the same time increasing the revenue of the organisers.

Another major highlight is the launch of the Platinumlist App on IOS and Android, which immediately ranked 5th on the Appstore upon launch and has now become the platform of choice of over 450,000 downloads combined IOS Android.

Higher revenue has increased our profitability, which allows us to continue to reinvest in daring projects such as SAAS and event funding backed by crypto, a safe resale platform to name a few and to continuously expand into new regions.

Our benchmark year was 2019 when we saw 60% growth YOY. By the end of 2021, we have managed to increase our revenue in comparison to 2019 even though we operated only for six months of the year, which I think is a notable testament of our team and technology resilience.

We have set an ambitious goal for 2022 and Q1 looks like we are on track. We are actively looking for partners worldwide to enter new markets as our functionality stack very competitive at the moment.

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