How do you give a break to people who could use a little escape, including first responders, health care workers, and people on lower incomes?
Free or heavily-discounted tickets to sports, music and entertainment events, that’s what. And that’s the mission of Tickets for Good, a startup formed in Sheffield, England in 2019, and a 2023 graduate of the Comcast NBCUniversal SportsTech accelerator, powered by Boomtown.
Tickets for Good has delivered a big social impact: To date it has more than 250,000 verified users and has processed more than 500,000 tickets, saving fans about $12.3 million on the face value cost of tickets.
Free to sign up, members pay a nominal booking fee (less than $5) to access free or heavily discounted tickets, and have enjoyed a wide range of events, with a lucky few even attending gigs from Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish, and Idles, as well as major festivals like Parklife.
‘3D Model’
Stephen Rimmer, founder and CEO of the startup, said that Tickets for Good follows what it calls the “the 3D model” one based on donated, discounted, and distressed tickets. That helps offset the cost of living crisis in the U.K, which has increased pressure on families and individuals. A recent survey revealed that nearly 8 in 10 Britons had experienced a negative impact on their mental health due to the crisis.
To help, Tickets For Good aims to provide some respite. And while the top priority of the company is doing good, the company also helps its business partners create customers for the future by getting fans into games, matches, or shows.
“They might get “a free ticket now, then it’s discounted for the next event, and then eventually they become a future fan, a lifelong fan, paying full price,” Rimmer said. “It’s really about moving people through that funnel, getting them to the ‘Wow!’ moment.”
Fans for the Future
Rimmer said some people assume Tickets for Good is a charitable organization because of its name. “But we actually think that doing good can also be good for business – great for business in fact,” he said. “So it’s about moving people through this funnel as an audience-building technique as well as being philanthropic.”
In the Comcast SportsTech program, Tickets for Good partnered with Fandango, the entertainment company that sells movie tickets via its website as well as through its mobile app.
Will McIntosh, president of Fandango and NBC Sports Next, said what he immediately loved about Tickets for Good “was that it’s both a for-profit business model, but it’s also got this awesome pro-social benefit to it.
“And when you can combine those two together, which you rarely see, it just instantaneously was something that we thought made a lot of sense for us to partner with him on,” he said.
Movie Ticketing
Tickets for Good is ideal for entertainment providers who, at times, find themselves with underutilized inventory, McIntosh said. “We started with our tee time business, and we’re quickly getting Steve and his team involved with our movie ticketing engine as well.”
What’s next for Tickets for Good?
“The next step is to go 10x from here,” Rimmer said, noting that the company has “demand-side partners” as well as “a huge amount of pre-verified users” to connect them to. “We want to expand our awareness across the U.S., and give millions of people access to these tickets.”