Fever, the data-led entertainment and experience company, has raised $20 million in a Series C funding round. The round was co-led by Atresmedia, a big European media company, and Labtech, with participation from existing investors Accel Partners and 14W Ventures. The fresh capital will help Fever expand into new markets across Europe and North America and cement its position as the global go-to platform for city-lovers looking to find new experiences.
Co-headquartered in London and Madrid, Fever is an events and experience technology company focused on inspiring users and helping event organisers generate demand. Launched in 2014, the Fever mobile app and website, together with its Secret Media Network, reaches and inspires over 12 million unique users per week across its key markets (London, New York, Paris and Madrid), allowing them to discover the best events in their city. Using a recommendation algorithm, the app features personalised listings and transactional capabilities for everything from music festivals and gigs to theatre, fashion, restaurants and pop-ups.
Integral to Fever is its data-led editorial arm, the Secret Media Network, which includes the hugely popular Secret London social media channel. All of the Secret Media channels, including Secret London and Secret NYC, have an in-house editorial team who use the platform’s data to create targeted content that in turn allows the company to better inform and refine the event offering on the Fever app.
With this large distribution power and the benefit of firsthand consumer behavioural data, Fever is able to reveal and predict untapped demand for events which do not yet exist. It has begun to use this data to create its own unique Fever ORIGINALS series of events, driven by the interests of Fever and Secret Media users. Fever’s data scientists are able to identify the necessary characteristics for an event to succeed, which helps to mitigate risk, not only for Fever, but also for the event and experience promoters and organisers it partners with. Fever plans to use the funding to continue to build up its Fever ORIGINALS offering in the cities in which it operates.
This risk mitigation helps to ensure that each Fever ORIGINAL experience is financially viable. The wide reach of Fever’s social following, and the strength and depth of its partnership base, allows Fever to operate a ‘marketing fee’ monetisation strategy, which is significantly more lucrative than the ‘booking fee’ model operated by the ticketing industry. Fever’s current cities have been growing self-sufficiently over the last 12 months, at a rate of 100% year on year, since reaching break-even.
Javier Nuche, Managing Director of Diversification at Atresmedia, commented: “With this investment we are consolidating our presence in the fast-growing experience economy and digital marketing space. Fever’s ability to mobilize a digital audience together with its optimization technology has proven extremely valuable for advertisers and will create very significant commercial synergies with Atresmedia, in our goal to offer the best communication solutions to our clients.”
Fever CEO Ignacio Bachiller stated: “At Fever, we don’t just want to sell tickets to our users, we want to inspire them. By using our data-driven approach and the audience that our Secret Media channels provide, Fever is fast becoming the go-to platform for entertainment inspiration globally. To date, our success comes down to how we leverage anonymised behavioural data from our highly engaged online audience, which then allows us to offer new, exciting events to our users, especially when a clear, untapped demand appears. We’re bringing consolidation to a highly fragmented market for entertainment and will use this backing to bring back discovery to the events space. Inspiring our users will always be our priority, and this backing will help us continue our drive to bring the experience economy into the 21st century.”
The funding round follows Fever’s 2016 Series B and 2015 Series A funding. Real Madrid footballers Sergio Ramos and Guti, as well as three times Grammy Award winner Alejandro Sanz, are among the early stage seed investors.
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