As the leading online platform for buying and selling event tickets, Ticketbis finished 2014 with a turnover of €54 million – a figure almost double its turnover of 2013 (Update – July 2023: The startup seems to be no longer in business under this website, and we therefore deactivated the original link).
The fruitful year for Ticketbis has lead to an expansion of its workforce to over 350 employees and an office in Asia supported by raising €5 million in funding. CEO and Cofounder Jon Uriarte stated: “We are very satisfied with having met our objectives and with the growth we’ve achieved in each of our key markets. 2014 has been an incredibly interesting year for the industry with several major events having taken place worldwide. We’ve managed to successfully meet the market demands by expanding our presence within the five continents.”
The startup has proven to be a safe bet to investors thanks to its growth, which is mainly due to the company expanding its operations into new markets, and consolidation in European and Latin American markets. In total 50% of turnover comes from Europe, mostly from countries like the UK, Spain, Italy and Germany, while 40% comes from Latin America, with most sales coming from Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and Chile. Finally, after only one year of operations in Asia, the continent already accounts for 10% of the total revenues. Prospects in the region are highest in advanced markets such as Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong.
Ticketbis finished the year with over 22 million unique users; so far, 45% of site’s traffic comes from smartphones/mobile devices and this trend is on the rise. Because of this, the main challenge for the new year will be, in Uriarte’s words, to “advance the mobile version of site by improving usability and mobile conversion rates”. In addition, Uriarte notes that “after a year widespread of rapid growth, we expect 2015 to be full of challenges especially in terms of improving our product and strengthening our position in all markets in order to offer better quality service and to take full advantage of the potential in new markets.”
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