Ticketing platform Seated is being re-acquired by its founders, David McKay and John Griffin, 4 years after it was acquired by intimate stay expertise producer Sofar Sounds. McKay will lead the corporate’s return to independence as CEO.
Seated — dubbed an artist-first ticketing platform — was launched in 2017 to empower artists to take extra management of their ticketing by enhancing tour listings for artist web sites; it has since advanced right into a central pillar of many main excursions’ advertising and marketing and ticketing efforts. The platform’s choices have now expanded to incorporate SMS-based presale registration, audience-building and pixeling for advert technique, official waitlists for sold-out reveals, and direct-to-fan ticketing. Seated has come to work with big-name artists together with Billie Eilish, Submit Malone, Olivia Rodrigo, Lizzo, Eric Church, John Mayer, Morgan Wallen, Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars and Gracie Abrams lately.
“Once we bought the corporate in February 2021, it was a really completely different time [for live events], and our imaginative and prescient of what a mixed Seated and Sofar would change into drastically modified as soon as the vaccines got here out. Our enterprise was clearly shifting in a distinct route than Sofar,” says McKay. “To their credit score, [Sofar] continued to help us and we stayed a totally impartial working group inside Sofar for these 4 years, which truly made this a really clear cut up.”
The 2 entities started discussing a cut up when former Sofar Sounds CEO Jim Lucchese departed the corporate in 2024 to change into the president of Berklee School of Music. Lucchese was changed by former Atlas Obscura CEO Warren Webster, who McKay says is a “breath of contemporary air for Sofar” however diverges from Seated’s targets of working with enviornment and stadium touring artists.
“Seated has achieved exceptional development beneath Sofar Sounds’ possession these final 4 years, turning into an important accomplice to a number of the greatest artists on this planet,” Webster mentioned in an announcement. “We’re proud to have been a part of that story, and as Sofar focuses on the growing demand in our communities for stay experiences, we’re thrilled that Seated will proceed to develop with its founders on the helm.”
For the founders, the reacquisition is about doubling down on constructing instruments for artists to promote tickets immediately and develop stronger connections with their followers. The platform has lately performed direct-to-fan ticketing for Noah Kahan, Shawn Mendes and Goose, whereas artists like Brandi Carlile, John Legend and Nathaniel Rateliff have used Seated to promote their very own presale tickets, giving them extra management over the ticketing expertise and fan knowledge. Seated has additionally helped artists use identification verification for resale and waitlist ticketing, decreasing the variety of tickets that find yourself with brokers.
Over the previous 12 months, the most important residencies at Sphere in Las Vegas — together with Eagles, Useless & Firm and Kenny Chesney — additionally used Seated for knowledge seize, demand insights and SMS presale registrations.
With ticketing being a hot-button subject in the previous few years, McKay says he’s excited to be impartial once more in order that Seated can focus extra on serving to artists seize their fan knowledge. Somewhat than spending all of their tour advertising and marketing on directing followers to ticketing platforms the place they’ve to attend for a particular time for an onsale, McKay needs artists to have the ability to give their followers actionable gadgets that get them nearer to securing tickets.
“When tickets should not on sale but, followers can join reminders to get tickets, and when tickets promote out, we open up the fan waitlist,” McKay says, and all that fan knowledge goes again to the artist.
“All of the ticketing corporations that you realize and love — or don’t — are constructed with the instruments to service their clients, that are the venues,” McKay says, including that main ticketing corporations are investing in field workplace computer systems, scanners and season ticket know-how for sports activities groups. “Ticketing corporations as a complete, the artist isn’t their buyer.”
After enjoying Fenway Park in Boston, Kahan was set to carry out at an area Vermont venue with solely 5,00 tickets accessible. As an alternative of constructing followers rush to an onsale (the place bots are the quickest to the tickets), the corporate had followers enroll with their info and their value vary, and Seated was in a position to type by means of to verify all patrons had been genuine followers. If followers wanted a refund, they may click on a button to return the ticket, and it could go to a different fan on the waitlist. Followers who didn’t need a refund for his or her ticket may donate the cash they spent to Kahan’s charity, with McKay stating that 15% of those that wished a refund did so.
“That’s the most important distinction between an artist-led ticketing platform and a venue-led ticketing platform,” says McKay.