Online ticketing platform TicketLeap relaunched on Monday, trying to stake out a place in a market dominated by Ticketmaster.
Like Eventbrite, TicketLeap tries makes its deals with the event organizer rather than the venue, which is Ticketmaster's domain. It also courts somewhat smaller event like the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.
Unlike Eventbrite, its focus is on live entertainment rather than business-related events, and this relaunch is intended to make the site sleeker, easier to use and more social – key for concerts and festivals.
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“We aspire to become a Tumblr for events,” CEO and founder Chris Stanchak told TheWrap.
“You look at the social aspect of events, it used to start when the doors open,” he said. “Instead, it starts when they go on sale.”
Besides the surface relaunch – a new logo, new colors and so forth – TicketLeap also revamped how both event organizers and potential attendees can use it.
Anyone can log in to the site using their Facebook or Twitter account, making it easy to share what events you are going to with your friends and organize your plans.
Each event also has a “wall” much like Facebook, one that is synced with the social network so there can be an active conversation around the event.
Event organizers can host ticket sales for all of their events from one page, use interactive calendars and online seating charts and social feeds to make each page a one-stop hub for their shows. That can help festivals spread out across a city with a common theme -- say food -- coordinate across the platform.
"Eventbrite takes more of a Myspace approach where they let people do anything they want," Stanchak said. "The pages might have a big video playing at the top and it's not an optimized ticketing experience. We're trying to avoid that."
TicketLeap staged this relaunch at a time it is growing faster than ever. Launched in 2003, by 2007 it had grown enough to attract outside investment.
It has raised $8.5 million to date and last week passed $100 million in tickets sold, with 50 percent of those sales coming in the last 18 months..
It’s no Ticketmaster, but it’s a start.