By Brian Parker
We’ve all been there: you purchase tickets for an event months in advance and on the day of the event, an unexpected situation arises and you are suddenly unable to attend. The hassle of selling tickets on StubHub or Craigslist is frustrating and ineffective if showtime is within 24 hours. It almost seems easier to give rogue tickets away to a friend or to just pocket them, wistfully hoping your family cancels their impromptu visit.
Enter Lyte, which offers a quick solution to “offloading” unused concert, performance, and sporting event tickets in crunch time, reimbursing you at or near face-value.
Lyte founder Ant Taylor recognized the lack of a dedicated platform that would allow sellers and buyers to save money on tickets at the last minute. He explained that a whopping 17-25% of tickets for sold-out shows are unused partially due to scalpers, but that a large portion of those are a result of fans who simply couldn’t make it. Despite the prevalence of large ticket resell platforms like StubHub, Lyte’s goal is to make the process quick and easy, with a 10-minute turnaround time from sell-to-buy.Logistically, plans to partner with venues will allow Lyte to function with varying ticketing systems and hopefully, a digital will-call system will in the future will make Lyte’s ticket transfers seamless at the door.
Lyte will charge only around 15% commission on their ticket sales, which keeps tickets prices reasonable and attractive to buyers. After discovering that scalpers were charging upwards of $5,000 for tickets to a secret Arcade Fire show in Brooklyn last month, Taylor ensures that Lyte buyers will pay as close to face value as possible. Security for these transactions comes first from Lyte’s research in determining original ticket value, but also through Facebook integration, which will help keep scalpers at bay.
Lyte is able to recognize suspicious activity from its backend, which will also help them analyze data on listings, music trends, and the demands of sellers and buyers. Taylor hopes to build a full market platform by developing a trustworthy network of music and entertainment fans, with Lyte being the go-to method for selling off tickets between friends and strangers alike. Taylor adds that building a full marketplace for will require “finding the right buyer at the right time,” and that Lyte is focused on making it easy for sellers to sell, especially in the early stages of the startup. ”It might require us taking a revenue hit to get the fan to the event. But the key is to make this common sense, and to build the structure community by community.”
Visit Lyteup.com to upload your tickets, and stay in touch with the Lyte community.
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