Last spring when sports fans on the North Side of Chicago were still hopeful, Amy and I decided that we wanted to go to a Cubs game. It was the day of the game, and we didn’t have tickets. We checked out StubHub, and saw some pretty good prices, but we decided that waiting would get us even better prices. We waited. The prices went down. We waited some more. The prices went down some more. And then disaster struck. StubHub stops selling tickets 2 hours before a game. We were shut out. We ended up heading to Wrigley and buying from some “ticket brokers” outside of the park. We got a pretty decent price, and we had a great time (I may or may not have been listening to the Yankees game on my iPhone at the same time), but we were left with the question of when is the best time to buy tickets on the secondary market. Apparently SeatGeek has the answer—they’re a New York City based web startup that predicts the price of sports and concert tickets. We’ve seen similar startups succeed in the travel market, and I think this business may make even more sense for event tickets.
With SeatGeek sitting in the cheap seats isn’t necessarily a bad thing. They’ll not only help you find the best deal on tickets right now, but they’ll also help you figure out how long to wait to buy tickets before you get shut out like I did. They claim greater than 80% accuracy, which is due to the fact that they’re using some pretty heavy statistical methods to predict prices. SeatGeek still has a ways to go before it’s a popular service (I tried a few searches that gave me no results and no suggestions of what else to try), but I think that they’ll have a pretty easy time building a profitable business. If you want to get in early, you should check out internships at SeatGeek. Current postings include Social Media Intern and Analytics Intern. Both positions are unpaid, and to apply you can send a résumé and cover letter to jobs@seatgeek.com. If you want more information, check out TechCrunch’s coverage of SeatGeek.
Links to Help You Begin Your Research
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Tags: analytics, data, Internships, New York, research, social media, social networking, sports, statistics, unpaid
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