Seatsmart, a New York City-based search engine that is
seeking to become the “Kayak” of ticket re-sellers, has closed on an
undisclosed angel round, the founder and chief executive said Wednesday.
Kayak searches online travel sites to let users compare
tickets of hotels, airline flights and car rentals. Seatsmart, meanwhile,
performs the same function for ticket resale sites.
Larry Kokoszka, a former teach of English and Japanese in Tacoma, Washington,
launched the site last spring in New York City’s
East Village.
He said the funding round from one unnamed angel investor
will help the site expand its menu of events, particularly among Broadway shows.
Seatsmart culls events from ticket marketplaces Razorgator,
Ticketsnow, Rallytix.com, Ebay and Stubhub, which Ebay bought for $310 million in
January.
Mr. Kokoszka estimates that with its current partners
Seatsmart covers 80 percent of all the tickets available online.
The company gets a slice of the transaction from its partner
sites and plans to add advertising to its revenue mix, he said.
The company faces competition, however, as two European
ticket search engines, Tickex and Viagogo, launch services in the United States.
Mr. Kokoszka said Stubhub, which earlier this summer was
named the official online ticket reseller for the 30 teams of Major League
Baseball, has helped legitimize a business whose image was tarred by shady
scalpers in the past.
“We have a lot to thank Stubhub for,” he said. “They
guarantee ticket purchases to make sure fans aren’t going to be ripped off.”
Reflecting the industry’s changing face, in June Mike Domek,
the founder of Ticketsnow, stepped aside to hand the chief executive’s job to
Cheryl Rosner, former president of Hotels.com and Expedia Corporate Travel.
Though he has been “advised more than once” to move his
company to California, Mr. Kokoszka said New York City is an
attractive market because of its active theater-going culture and passionate sports
fans.
“People here are very active,” he said. “They’re always
going out to shows.”