Seatwave is a long-time secondary marketing startup in the UK which competes with Viagogo. However, it appears to be tacking towards trying to out-innovate the competition by today releasing an iOS SDK. As far as we know this is the first time a ticketing company has done such a thing, and it could well boost the company’s traction, especially amongst the plethora of music iPhone apps out there which point towards live events.
The fan-to-fan marketplace which majors on sporting and concert events will now enable developers to monetise their apps through ticketing. The move is a major pivot away from the portal model of these ticketing sites towards a more distributed approach.
The “patent-pending” Seatwave SDK, which is optimised for iOS, allows developers to add ticket-buying functionality to their apps. Developers will earn up to 35% of the net revenue on each ticket sale. Since the tickets are bought within the app, developers may be able to get higher conversion rates on purchases than they would by linking off to a website.
The first partners for the app are radio apps including What’s On Air and Maxima 99.1 FM and music discovery apps like Music DNA ID, going live soon.
The iOS SDK supports French, Spanish, Italian, German and Dutch languages and payments are accepted in Sterling, Euros, US dollars and Canadian dollars.
Seatwave already has it’s own iPhone app, and this is an extension of the product, according to CEO Joe Cohen. He said users are finding it way more convenient to consume and buy web and mobile services as and when they discover them rather than be redirected elsewhere.
Seatwave has raised a total of $53M from investors including Atlas Venture, Accel Partners, Mangrove Capital Partners and Fidelity Ventures. The company was founded by Joe Cohen, formerly of Match.com and Ticketmaster, in May 2006 and began online trading in February 2007.