Ticketing platform Eventbrite files to raise $200m in IPO

Online ticketing platform Eventbrite plans to raise up to $200 million in an initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange.

Founded 12 years ago by Julia and Kevin Hartz and based in San Francisco, Eventbrite has a presence in Australia.

It describes the way it generates revenue by “[charging] creators on a per-ticket basis when an attendee purchases a paid ticket for an event”.

Last year it shifted 203 million tickets, with a 51% revenue growth to $201.6 million and a loss of $38.6 million. About 30% of revenue came from outside the US.

To expand further into festivals and larger music events and showing what it called a greater commitment to independent venues and promoters, it acquired Ticketfly (from Pandora for $200 million), Ticketscript and Ticketea in 2017.

There was a 61% revenue increase to $142.1 million for the first half of 2018, with losses at $15.6 million.

It sometimes also pays for creators to use its service, spending $10.4 million on these last year, up 51% on the previous year.

Eventbrite is still recovering from a hacking attack earlier this year on Ticketfly that exposed the personal data of its 27 million customers and disabled large portions of the platform for weeks.

It created major headaches for independent promoters and producers who rely on Ticketfly for ticketing, marketing and website hosting.

It cost the company $6.6 million.

In its prospectus, Eventbrite identified a wide range of competitors.

These ranged from large ticketing companies like Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, to personal invitation providers such as Evite and Paperless Post.

Additionally, Eventbrite says that it could face competition from large internet companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter.

"These competitors may be better able to undertake more extensive marketing campaigns and/or offer their solutions and services at a discount to ours," it said.

Eventbrite is the latest tech company to hit the market this year.

They include Spotify and Dropbox, and business software providers DocuSign, Zuora and Domo. China’s massive Tencent is expected to file in the next few months.