EQ Tickets is a social ticketing platform built to create more connections around music, sports, and other live events. With over 20 years of experience in the sports, entertainment, and music industries, co-founders and brothers Aaron and Ryan Caradonna and artist-executive Matt Raposo (Rapta) are addressing high resale ticket prices head-on. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Ryan Caradonna and Rapta to learn more.
Background Of The Founders
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): Could you tell me more about your background?
EQ Tickets (Ryan Caradonna): Aaron and I are brothers who were obsessed with going to events like sports games and concerts growing up. We’d show up hours before a game to try and get autographs from our favorite players, but in order to do so, we would have to scan the internet for affordable tickets.
My love for events led me to work in the ticketing space with various artists and venues. Similarly, my brother Aaron was drawn to the entertainment space, pursuing a career in entertainment law. He represented talent and reached out to artist Rapta, developing a relationship over the years. Ultimately, when the idea for EQ Tickets was being formed, we saw a problem that we were uniquely positioned to tackle so we went all in.
EQ Tickets (Rapta): My experience touring as a music artist exposed me to the inconvenient and outdated practices prevalent in the ticketing industry. This inspired me to create innovative solutions for artists and creators alike. Joining forces with Ryan and Aaron was a pivotal moment, as they brought a different perspective to the table—the fan experience. It was this blend of complementary skill sets and the right timing that provided us with a unique opportunity to create a superior product for both fans and creators.
We started by offering event tickets with lower fees to make ticket buying more accessible. Now, we’ve expanded to launch our new social features, allowing our users to create a social profile, where they can get updates on all the cool events and concerts happening in their network. It’s a completely different kind of experience than what’s currently out there.
Formation Of EQ Tickets
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): How did the idea for EQ Tickets come together?
EQ Tickets (Ryan Caradonna): We’re fans and artists ourselves who’ve directly felt the impact of ticket sellers charging up to a 30% markup in fees alone, with the average ticket price more than doubling over the past 5 years.
These high ticket markups are leading fans to extremes like looking for 2nd jobs or going on a strict budget. We know how important the fan-to-artist connection is and the incredible experience of seeing your favorite performer. Attending these cool events and performances shouldn’t be that painful. That’s why we’re determined to bring some sanity back.
We set out to create an entirely new experience and founded EQ Tickets by fans for fans. It’s more like you’d expect if Instagram were a reseller of tickets, combining the best social features you already enjoy with the best prices on tickets that you’ll love. This is more in line with what people want and how they already engage and discover cool things from other folks in their network.
Favorite Memory
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far?
EQ Tickets (Rapta): The potential for artists, athletes, teams, and entertainers to connect with their fans is boundless. Witnessing EQ Tickets receive such an enthusiastic response from our users as we begin this journey has propelled us to keep innovating. Seeing the social features go live this month and witnessing such a positive response from the team’s hard work was such a great moment.
EQ Tickets (Ryan Caradonna): Agreed. Seeing our collective vision come to life with social features and being received so well by users was a pivotal moment. It’s a testament to our mission of bringing together fan-centric communities across industries, and we’re excited about what’s to come. Also, generally, working daily to listen to customer needs and build products for them is my favorite working memory.
Core Products
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): What are the company’s core products and features?
EQ Tickets (Ryan Caradonna): EQ Tickets is a one-stop shop for the total fan experience, offering the most affordable tickets by up to 30% less than competitors and a first-of-its-kind social feature to foster fan community building across the entertainment industry.
Our vision is to cultivate fan communities in a way that goes way beyond the transactional model, where you’ll have access to cool social features that elevate the amazing experiences you have at concerts and events that you can share, talk about, and discover with friends. We can offer tickets at a lower price because we’re not adding crazy fees other sites charge.
We’re also launching a platform where, if you’re an event organizer, you can seamlessly spin up a page to sell your own ticketed events. We listened to the needs of event creators, and are bringing key features that they need–easy-to-customize branding, transparent customer data and advance payments–to the market with the launch of our creator platform.
Challenges Faced
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): What challenges have your team faced in building the company?
EQ Tickets (Ryan Caradonna): The secondary resale market is charging upwards of 20% of the face value for tickets, in addition to added delivery fees and other junk fees. On top of that, it marks up the average ticket price by 30% or more.
Our goal was to create a solution to eliminate high junk and added fees, and we had to develop a platform to do so. We found that we can charge around a 5% markup fee on secondary tickets to continue offering our services without price gouging or hidden costs.
All tickets listed on the EQ Ticket marketplace are provided in partnership with Ticket Fulfillment Group, which is managed and owned by professional ticket resellers and pre-screened individual sellers who have already purchased those tickets. Everything is verified and 100% guaranteed.
Evolution Of EQ Tickets’ Technology
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): How has the company’s technology evolved since launching?
EQ Tickets (Ryan Caradonna): In addition to offering up to 30% cheaper tickets than competitors, we had a vision to bring ticketing into the future. We are the first ticketing platform to integrate social features that help users connect with friends, share interests, and discover what’s happening in their community.
Users can get started today by creating a social profile where they tag friends in upcoming events, bookmark events they like, and share updates on what they’re attending with friends. We’re fostering online fan communities and curing FOMO for event-goers everywhere. It’s all part of our mission to create an immersive experience for fans that’s been missing from event ticketing to date.
Furthermore, as mentioned, in addition to secondary tickets, we offer users the option to use our platform for primary ticketed events of all sizes, like tailgates and small concerts. Those events typically range from $30-$40 per ticket. At the core of EQ Tickets, we’re bringing sanity and transparency back to ticketing.
Significant Milestones
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones?
EQ Tickets (Ryan Caradonna): We closed a $2 million seed round backed by early Apple investor Fred Warren of Sage Venture Partners.
We used that funding to perfect our services and recently launched from stealth, offering our trusted ticketing platform alongside our new social feature to cultivate the ultimate fan experience. Now, users all over the country can post their events, share concerts they are attending, and buy tickets for less on EQ Tickets.
Funding
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): Are you able to discuss funding and/or revenue metrics?
EQ Tickets (Ryan Caradonna): We’re not disclosing our revenue at this time. Still, I can tell you in the first few months of our platform going live, we did over $100K in ticket sales and continue to grow with 30% of purchases from repeat customers and a 100% retention rate for primary event creators. We’re excited to continue growing EQ Tickets to offer the most comprehensive ticketing inventory for fans on the market.
Total Addressable Market
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing?
EQ Tickets (Ryan Caradonna): The combination of Secondary and Primary markets that we are looking to disrupt is upwards of $20bn.
Differentiation From The Competition
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): What differentiates the company from its competition?
EQ Tickets (Ryan Caradonna): We’re entirely different from purely transactional sites.
Our goal is to become a trusted destination for fans and the cool experiences and communities they want to be a part of.
Our users have access to the most affordable tickets to big events and can post their own ticketed events on our site. Our users now have access to a trusted platform where your profile is at the center of the experience, and you can like, post, and share your experience with like-minded fans while discovering new events and concerts you won’t want to miss. You can think of us as an Instagram meets Stubhub… or as the FOMO cure for you and your friends.
Future Company Goals
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): What are some of the company’s future company goals?
EQ Tickets (Ryan Caradonna): We’re going far beyond ticket sales to cultivate a personalized entertainment community that strengthens the connection between artists and fans.
We want to evolve connections for fans and fan-centric communities, so we’ll update new features for our social hub, continuing to offer the best prices and the most extensive inventory. We strongly believe we can be the go-to destination for event discovery, utilizing an algorithmic feed showing events based on your interests and social connections. Look out for new exciting updates coming soon.
Additional Thoughts
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): Any other topics to discuss?
EQ Tickets (Ryan Caradonna): EQ Tickets was born through our joint collaboration and vision to create an elevated fan experience at an affordable price point.
We appreciate all the support we’ve received and are excited to continue building new offerings for a ‘connected fan experience’ so you’ll always know what’s trending and popular in your community, and you’ll never miss out on a cool event again.
We’re filling what we see as a huge void in the market today; that’s something that we think fans will appreciate, enjoy, and keep coming back for because there’s value that no one else is offering.
