Over the last 18 months or so, a mobile app called Gametime has helped sports fans book last-minute tickets to sporting events in cities across the U.S. Now, after growing nearly 600 percent year-over-year, the company has closed out on $13 million in funding led by Accel Partners.
Gametime provides a mobile-only platform that helps users find tickets to various sporting events near them. The company has an app that surfaces available seats, with the ability to purchase and redeem their tickets directly from a user’s mobile phone.
Purchases can be made in just a few swipes, and tickets can be shared via text and email with others who plan to attend. As a result, customers can choose to attend games at the last minute without having to worry about exchanging tickets or picking them up from a will call window.
That freedom and flexibility has led Gametime customers to go to games they probably wouldn’t have, and to get more butts in seats. And that drives more sales of concessions, and beer, and all the other stupid stuff people buy at the ballpark.
Over the last year, Gametime has expanded extremely quickly, with tickets available in 35 markets and for more than 150 teams. The company works with a number of teams to sell seats, as well as a number of third-party resellers and marketplaces to find the best tickets available.
According to CEO Brad Griffith, Gametime is betting that in the next few years, 80 percent of all ticket purchases will happen on mobile. As a result, it’s optimized to make buying tickets and getting into venues with nothing more than a mobile phone as simple as possible.
The company’s Series A round was capped with $8 million in new funding includes money from sports exec Casey Wasserman, Philadelphia 76ers/New Jersey Devils co-owner David Blitzer, and Trunk Club founders Brian Spaly and John Tucker. That comes on top of $5 million that the company had previously raised from Accel and a number of institutional investors, as well as angels and figures from the sports world including San Francisco Giants owner Jeff Mallett, Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadive, HotelTonight co-founders Sam Shank and Jared Simon, and Box founder Aaron Levie.
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