From dresses to razors, snacks to automobiles, the number of products and services moving away from pay-per-purchase to a subscription model grows every day. Now, with almost half a year of a successful pilot in the Atlanta market, a new subscription product for live, ticketed events has shown that the model can save event attendees a whole lot of time and money.
INWEGO is a subscription-fee based app that offers tickets to live events, which users can see a week in advance and book all the way up to the end of the event. Created by Atlanta-based Experience (part of the Cox Enterprises family of companies), INWEGO costs users a flat $29 a month for access to events including Braves, WNBA Dream, Hawks, Falcons, and all Georgia Tech games, NHRA races at the Atlanta Dragway, and PGA Tour events.
The $29 fee is it. No transaction fees. No additional charges — well, your hotdog and beer are up to you.
The model is attracting quite a fanbase of its own, according to Experience CEO Greg Foster. INWEGO launched in Atlanta in September 2016 and, according to Foster, even with very little marketing has already exceeded their projections for total downloads and subscriptions. On average, there are half a dozen new subscribers each day.
There is no limit to the number of events a user can attend a month, and for most events, INWEGO users can also add a guest pass for a non-subscriber friend within the app.
For the team, they not only get to fill seats that would have otherwise gone empty, but they gain exposure to a whole new audience that might not even have thought to buy a single-game ticket.
“We’re seeing the evidence, that when we use this the teams are seeing audiences who have never been in there before,” says Foster. He adds that a large percentage of the audience is millennials, a demographic that sports teams are constantly trying new and exciting tactics to capture.
Though Foster says they are highly considering a number of possible markets to launch INWEGO next, he believes it was important to pilot the product first in their hometown of Atlanta.
“Any good business, which has to capitalize on folks trusting you, you have to do it in your backyard. You have to own your backyard,” says Foster.
It’s something the CEO, who came to Experience less than a year ago, knows very well. With positions leading corporate development at Turner and as a partner at Noro-Moseley Ventures under his belt, as well as multiple successful exits of Atlanta-based startups, Foster is well-aware of the power of good relationships.
“Here, we’re fortunate to have great, deep relationships with the Braves, the Hawks, the Falcons. They need us — to be the innovators, to bring the technological know-how — and we need them,” says Foster.
Experience built these relationships from working with teams on their core set of products — what Foster calls their “legacy products”— which include seat upgrade technology, ticket package and exchange models, and other ticket technology that operates on a B2B model (where the business is the sports team, school, or venue).
For example, Experience’s Fluid Ticket turns season tickets into a currency that can be exchanged for value, so that a season ticket holder who can’t make a game doesn’t just lose their money outright. The Pass product allows customers to purchase a package of tickets. The company offers these products in several different flavors, all customizable to a particular team’s needs.
With these legacy products, Experience counts more than 75 percent of professional sports teams, and over 70 universities (including the entire SEC and most of the ACC schools) as clients. They also have partnerships with major ticketing providers Live Nation and Spectra by Comcast Spectacor, making the option of adding music concerts very possible in the near future. These are relationships the company can leverage for INWEGO and any future B2C products.
Because Foster says he wouldn’t be surprised if INWEGO and other products like it are a big part of the future of the company. “I want to build a portfolio of consumer-looking products,” he says.
Considering the projection that Atlanta-area INWEGO users will have access to over 350 events per year, and the fact that current users attend over two events each month using INWEGO (which almost certainly would have cost more than $29), this prediction doesn’t seem to be out of the ballpark.
