Ticketfly
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Ticketfly was a San Francisco ticketing company founded in 2008 by former Ticketmaster executive Andrew Dreskin, serving independent music venues, promoters and festivals with ticketing software plus marketing tools — it sold $250M in tickets in 2013 alone. Pandora bought it for $450M in October 2015 to sell concert tickets alongside streaming, but just two years later sold it to Eventbrite for $200M — a $250M loss — as Pandora refocused on its core subscription business. Eventbrite kept it running briefly, but a May 2018 hack that compromised ~27M accounts took the site offline, and in November 2018 Eventbrite announced Ticketfly's shutdown, folding its music features into the new Eventbrite Music platform.
02 / Ticketfly FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Ticketfly was squeezed from both ends. As an independent it never had the scale to dent Ticketmaster, so it was sold in 2015 — and neither owner made it work. Pandora paid $450M and sold two years later for $200M, a $250M loss, refocusing on streaming. Eventbrite then decided one platform was better than a 'hodgepodge of 12 platforms,' sunsetting the brand after a May 2018 hack that exposed ~27M accounts knocked the site offline and eroded venue trust. Dozens of Ticketfly employees left or were let go after the acquisition, draining the institutional knowledge that made it special. In the end the indie-venue ticketing business it served couldn't sustain a standalone company.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Company founded
Ticketfly was founded.
- Operations ended
Ticketfly ended operations.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
In October 2015 Pandora acquired Ticketfly for $450M, planning to sell concert tickets alongside its streaming service.
- 02
In June 2017 Pandora sold Ticketfly to Eventbrite for $200M — $250M less than it paid — refocusing on core subscription streaming; the deal closed September 1, 2017.
- 03
In May 2018 a hacker intrusion took Ticketfly offline and compromised the data of ~27M users, followed by a class-action lawsuit.
- 04
In November 2018 Eventbrite announced it would sunset the Ticketfly brand and merge music features into the new Eventbrite Music platform; the Ticketfly app was discontinued and account/purchase history remained accessible only until year-end.