Ticketing website Eventbrite has filed to go public

Eventbrite

• Eventbrite, a ticketing and event management company,
  has filed to go public. 
• The company sold 46.7 million tickets on its site last
  year, and posted a loss of $38.55 million. 

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Eventbrite on Thursday filed a document with the Securities and
Exchange Commission for an initial public offering, or IPO.

The San Francisco-based company didn’t set a target amount it
hopes to raise, which is typical of first S-1 filings, but said
it hopes to use the proceeds to increase its capitalization and
financial flexibility, and to pay off its debt which currently
stands at $66.36 million. 

For the year ended December 31, 2017, Eventbrite said it sold
46.7 million tickets and posted a net loss of $38.55 million —
and those losses appear to  be shrinking. The
company said it lost just $15.58 million in the first six months
of 2018.

To put Eventbrite’s sales into context, LiveNation — which owns
Ticketmaster —
said in its 2017 annual report that it sold “nearly 500
million tickets,” but still lost $6 million for the year.

Eventbrite, however, is focused on smaller scale creators, and
allows anyone to create a ticketed event on its site. It makes
money by skimming off any paid events ticketed
on the site.

“To help event creators more easily and successfully engage
attendees, we’ve created a platform for attendees to discover and
connect with creators, finding the right experience for the right
moment,” founders Julia Hartz, Kevin Hartz, and Renaud Visage
said in the filing.

“Our technology not only helps event creators reach their
audience but also helps improve the daily lives of attendees all
over the world.”

For 2017, CEO Julia Hartz was awarded total compensation of $7.24
million, which included stock options on top of her $335,000 base
salary. Randy Befumo, the CFO, raked in $2.8 million, while
Matthew Rosenberg, the chief revenue officer, made $2.4 million.

In its 12 years as a private company, Eventbrite raised $332
million in venture capital over nine fundraising rounds. Tiger
Global and Sequoia capital each currently own about 20% of the
company, while T. Rowe Price owns about 7%,
according to CrunchBase.

Goldman Sachs is the lead underwriter for the public
offering. 

“The global market for live experiences is large and rapidly
increasing in size and diversity,” Eventbrite said in the filing.

“We believe that a significant portion of our market opportunity
is represented by categories that were previously not well served
by event management technology. The landscape of services to
manage the complexities of planning, promoting and producing
events is highly fragmented. Creators use a variety of approaches
and solutions to achieve these goals. We believe that the breadth
of functionality on our platform, combined with its ease of use,
has enabled creators to build businesses and introduce new types
of live experiences.”