Future looks ‘brite’ for online ticketing service

Internet ticketing service Eventbrite has seen its ticket sales in Ireland rocket in the first six months of the year as customers flock to smaller festivals and events.

Eventbrite set out to target boutique festivals by making an easy-to-use service that would allow organisers sell and manage tickets seamlessly with very little integration.

Since its launch in Europe in 2011, Eventbrite has seen consistent growth in the UK, and this year decided to focus on the Irish market.

Marino Fresch, the country manager for Ireland, said it will double ticket sales here this year.

“We’ve seen around half a million tickets sold through Eventbrite in Ireland worth €6.5m, we’ve doubled that in the first six months of this year,” he said.

The company does not go after large events. “When we started we thought it would be the longtail that was the gap in the market. What we have seen is that we are being used by larger events,” he said.

The platform is now capable of handling everything from large music festivals to yoga classes.

The latest development is crowdsourced seating maps. By allowing users to upload seating plans, Eventbrite creates a venue database that allows other users to offer seating for their events.