Music industry veterans Marcus Russell and Alec McKinlay (Ignition Management; Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Catfish and the Bottlemen) have invested in fan-to-fan ticket resale platform Twickets – as the fight against online ticket touts steps up a notch.
Twickets is also receiving backing from a group of established Spanish music managers and promoters, led by Neo Sala, founder of Spain’s largest concert promoter, Doctor Music.
The executives are investing in a new funding round, which has seen reinvestment from the entire original founding board.
This includes Ian McAndrew (Founder & CEO, Wildlife Entertainment; Royal Blood, Arctic Monkeys), Harry Magee and Richard Griffiths (Co-Founders, Modest! Management; One Direction, 5 Seconds of Summer, Olly Murs), Chris Wright CBE (Co-Founder Chrysalis Records, Heart FM, LBC), Tony Wadsworth CBE (former Chairman of EMI Music and the BPI) and Steve Parish (Chairman & Co-Owner, Crystal Palace FC).
The round opens today on equity crowdfunding platform Seedrs at www.seedrs.com/twickets, giving the public their first opportunity to invest in Twickets’ future growth.
The company aims to raise £700,000 to further drive its growth.
Part of that growth includes an agreement to become Crystal Palace FC’s official resale partner and an expansion into Spain via a partnership with Doctor Music.
The upcoming service will enable the Crystal Palace fans to buy and sell tickets through the platform at face value; the first time a Premier League club has used a face value ticket resale platform.
Twickets was launched In February 2015 by Richard Davies, the respected digital entrepreneur, founder of one of the UK’s first digital agencies, Good Technology, and owner of Future Platforms, one of the UK’s leading mobile app developers.
Davies said: “Our second round of investment is an exciting opportunity to further expand the business internationally, and welcoming top industry players like Neo Sala, Marcus Russell and Alec McKinley into the Twickets family is a great development.
“As well as this, investing through Seedrs is an opportunity for fans to be a part of our continued growth. We are also incredibly proud to become the first face value resale platform to represent a Premiership football club. Working with Steve Parish and the staff at Crystal Palace to facilitate fair resale of match tickets between club members is an exciting and important step for Twickets.
“We are looking forward to launching in Spain and working with our new partners at Doctor Music to offer Spanish music fans an alternative, ethical method of purchasing concert tickets.”
Steve Parish, Crystal Palace FC Chair, added: “I was really happy to invest in something that seemed an ethical way of solving the problem of secondary ticketing. It soon dawned on us that partnering with Twickets was a fantastic opportunity for the club, to make sure that when supporters couldn’t go to a match, they could get their tickets to other supporters.”
Doctor Music’s Founder and CEO, Neo Sala, commented: “I have been looking forward to the day that a service like Twickets launches in Spain to put a stop to touts who profit from everyone else’s hard work and take fans’ hard earned money to see the artists they love and support. I am pleased to be partnering with Richard and his team and look forward to Twickets Spain launching soon.”
The online ticket touting industry is estimated to be worth £1bn in the UK alone.Music Business Worldwide
