SeatGeek.com Launches (Live from TC50)

On my way to San Francisco yesterday, I was ironically thinking about how insane the airline ticketing industry can be: next to me, someone may have paid twice the money for his ticket as I paid for mine, and the seat in front of me may be filled by a woman who found the best deal of any of the plane’s passengers. There are several tools available to find great deals – from Travelocity to Kayak.com.

I also recently attended a Dave Matthews Band concert in South Florida – and wound up paying a huge premium for tickets that (I thought) would be sold out, but which ended up being available at the door. This has happened numerous times in the past – and I have yet to find a service that offers insight on when I should buy tickets for other events. Therefore, when this TC50 presenter took the stage, I was intrigued:

SeatGeek forecasts the price of sports and concert tickets on the secondary market, analogoous to what Farecast (now Bing Travel) does for airline tickets. For ticket buys this helps determine whether to buy a ticket immediately or wait for a price to drop. For sellers, it helps identify the optimal time to unload their tickets. SeatGeek’s crawlers have compiled millions of ticket transactions and have also aggregated other factors that influence prices. SeatGeek’s patent-pending technology uses this data to accurately forecast prices. SeatGeek offers a free version for buyers and will soon release a premium version for brokers and other sellers.

Not only is this great for buying concert tix, but for ladies looking for tickets to the big game – either for yourself or for the hubby – this site takes the guess work out of when you should buy those tickets. What are your thoughts? Is there a market for this service in the same way that we’ve adopted sites like Travelocity, Orbitz, and others for travel?