Industry Press / 05.16.19
TodayTix Announces $73 Million Growth Equity Investment Led By Great Hill Partners
New York, NY (May 16, 2019) – TodayTix, the digital gateway to shows, arts and cultural experiences that has delivered continued triple-digit, year-over-year growth, today announced a $73 million growth equity investment led by leading growth oriented private equity firm Great Hill Partners. The investment brings total capital raised since its last public financing round to $90 million.
Founded in 2013, TodayTix quickly established itself as a disruptor within the theatrical ticketing industry, creating a central place for audiences to discover and explore the shows and experiences in their city, and easily purchase the best-priced tickets. The company’s expanding media services, global reach and mobile-first platform brought a new digital-savvy audience of 5 million global customers to the $17.5 billion theater industry in the U.S. TodayTix has sold more than 4 million tickets to date, accounting for eight percent of all Broadway tickets sold annually and four percent in London’s West End.
TodayTix’s success is credited to its landmark partnerships, data-driven decision making and its design-focused platform that learns how audiences plan, discover, buy and share tickets. Because of its roots at the transactional level, TodayTix facilitates innovative engagement among consumers and partners – on Broadway and beyond – powered by the company’s easy-to-use technology, expansive trove of customer and marketing data, tuned-in customer base, and expanding media services and original programming business, TodayTix Presents.
“By understanding the ways next-generation audiences purchase and experience shows, we can forever change the way people discover art in their cities,” said TodayTix CEO and Co-Founder Brian Fenty. “Our audiences, married with a community of visionary content creators, establish an unprecedented ecosystem of engagement between the two sides of live entertainment. While ticket sales are the bedrock of our relationships, these are only the beginning of our content and discovery ambitions.”
Working closely with its 1,300 partners, TodayTix realized that the ticketing platform itself only serves a small portion of the industry’s needs. The company compiled actionable analytics and created access technology to work with more than 900 productions through TodayTix digital Lottery and mobile Rush programming, sparking the spontaneous nature of a younger audience and introducing a new generation to the venues.
"From our humble beginnings in 2013, to our current global business on three continents serving millions of culture lovers, TodayTix has changed arts and entertainment ticket buying for the next generation. This investment from Great Hill Partners will allow us to take our ambitions to the next level; we couldn’t be more excited about the road ahead,” said Merritt Baer, TodayTix Co-Founder and President, Head of Europe.
With Great Hill Partners’ investment, which was facilitated with guidance from Methuselah Advisors, TodayTix will be able to enter its next stage of growth. This involves internal modifications, including closing out secondary purchases of original investors, but will focus more on outward-facing growth and utilizing the company’s proprietary data-driven audience feedback to offer new shows, arts and cultural experiences and double down on expanding its technologies in discovery and personalization for both consumers and partners.
“TodayTix is rapidly changing the way millennials and other consumers connect with live cultural experiences,” said Michael Kumin, a Managing Partner, Great Hill Partners. “We look forward to working with Brian, Merritt and their talented management team to expand the Company’s product and service offerings and accelerate its push into new geographies.”
To start to explore, visit the TodayTix website and download TodayTix for iOS or Android.
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About TodayTix
TodayTix is the premier digital gateway to shows, arts and cultural experiences. Through its mobile-first, design-focused ticketing platform, TodayTix is the place for audiences to discover, explore and engage with the best entertainment their city has to offer.
TodayTix works with more than 1,300 partners to provide the best-priced tickets available in 15 markets around the world, including New York City, London’s West End, Toronto, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Seattle, Washington DC, Chicago, and Australia. Through innovative digital Lottery and mobile Rush ticketing programs, TodayTix has generated more than 11.6M digital lottery entries and 2.3M social shares through 900 activations to date, engaging the spontaneous nature of a younger audience and introducing a new generation of audiences to the venues.
Since launching TodayTix in New York City in December 2013 by life-long friends and Broadway producers Merritt Baer and Brian Fenty, the company has engaged more than 5 million users to connect beyond ticketing into new cultural experiences that bring human interaction back to our digital world.
About Great Hill Partners
Great Hill Partners is a private equity firm that has raised over $5 billion in commitments since inception to finance the expansion, recapitalization, or acquisition of growth companies in a wide range of sectors in business-to-business and business-to-consumer industries including software, financial and healthcare technology, digital media, eCommerce, and internet infrastructure. Great Hill targets investments of $25 million to $200 million. For more information, visit www.greathillpartners.com.
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