When you purchase tickets to a show, the vendor system only knows who you, the buyer, are. All other invaluable data, from your guests’ names to whether you actually show up to the event, falls through the cracks.
Stephen Glicken has been in the music industry for nearly two decades and has worn many hats, from recording engineer and studio builder to record label and venue manager. He’s seen the inefficiencies within the ticketing supply chain from all sides. “Ticketing is a pretty complex beast,” he says.
On average, 40 percent of tickets go unsold — but it’s difficult to cater to your audience if you lack the data on who actually shows up.
With Project Admission, Glicken and his co-founder Jordan Stone want to give control back to the content providers with audience data that can help them cater their options more effectively.
“The idea was to build a white-label platform for ticketing companies that sits on top of their platform post-purchase, pre-access control, to help convert the ticket into an airplane-like ticket and help with transferability with the idea of understanding the chain of ownership,” says Glicken.
The platform integrates into existing small-to-medium ticketing platforms at venues or larger ticketing companies. Each ticket is assigned to one specific person, similar to an airplane ticket, to track ownership and understand who is attending or selling their tickets. The tickets can still be sold to a third party, but thanks to its digital layer, the venue manager will always know who really showed up.
“Our clients are anyone top to bottom in the ticketing industry, from ticketing companies to venues to brands to content providers. We integrate into ticketing companies and venues but it’s the content providers who will be truly leveraging the platform,” says Glicken.
“However, everyone in the supply chain can benefit from the complete understanding of the chain of ownership of a ticket and capture of any downstream revenue.”
Glicken explains that their approach is not to try to dismantle the current ticketing industry, but instead to optimize what already exists and help try to connect the dots. The platform gives more control to the content providers by allowing them to mark if that ticket is available for resale, at face value or for profit, and how it can be sold. “We built it to go where the river flows,” he says.
“We’re also building relationships with marketplaces to help push those through and moving into these white-label marketplaces that could be controlled by a brand or an artist.”
The Nashville-based startup operates on a per-transaction revenue model based on the company they’re working with and the transactions they will managing.
This summer, Project Admission launched an inaugural campaign called ‘Share the Code,’ where 10 fans of the band Sir Rosevelt shared three codes with their friends, who then shared their own codes, until every code was redeemed. The campaign culminated with a concert in Denver last month, where 5,000 people from 46 states were present — all powered by the platform.
The team will be going into fundraising mode shortly to raise a seed round to scale further. Glicken says that the majority of the round will be mainly to invest in talent. “To me, people are everything. There’s no execution without people. Those funds will be going into people and business development,” he says.
