The UK’s Seatwave, a platform for secondary ticket purchases – where people or venues can post live event tickets for resale — is today announcing an acquisition that will take the company further into the primary ticket market and music discovery and the U.S. market: it’s buying Timbre, a Boston-based startup and mobile app of the same name that lets users search for live music and then buy tickets to attend shows.
Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed. Timbre, founded in 2012, has raised some $720,000, while Seatwave, founded in 2006, has raised some $53 million. Among their investors the two share one in common: Atlas Venture. This is Seatwave’s first acquisition in the U.S.
The purchase actually closed in Q1, and Seatwave is timing the announcement of it today with the launch of a new Timbre app in the UK with details of some 18,000 concerts and gigs, with the ability to buy tickets for them. Ajay Chowdhury, Seatwave’s CEO, tells me that next up with be a refresh of the Timbre app in the U.S.
While the company plans to continue to keep the brands independent, what the acquisition will do is make it easier to merge certain features of the two together. For example, while the Timbre app may give you details of a sold-out Prince show, you would be able to find tickets for it, potentially, via a reseller on Seatwave’s platform.
“This gives us a chance to also be involved in pre-event discovery,” says Chowdhury, a former chairman of Shazam who took on the CEO role in September 2013 after Seatwave’s founder Joe Cohen stepped down (but stayed on as chairman). On a more practical, business level, it also helps Seatwave grow its margins by using its own properties to sell tickets directly.
Image: Flickr
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