A Broadway producer and investor in the blockbuster hit “Hamilton” is seeking to revive the mostly dormant market for ticket options, with a primary initial focus on sports.
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TRINCHERO
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The New York-based ShooWin, set to begin a public beta period this week before a broader debut this fall, is the work of Chief Executive Brisa Trinchero, who has won Tony Awards for productions of “Pippin” and “Porgy & Bess,” is behind the highly popular “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” and is an investor in “Hamilton.”
Trinchero last year acquired an exclusive license for intellectual property from Illinois-based Forward Market Media to use as the initial foundation of ShooWin.
In the ShooWin model, fans buy options, starting at $20, for the right to purchase face-value tickets for in-demand and contingent sporting events should their chosen team reach that given event. The core idea is to provide protection for fans from price speculation on the secondary ticket market, and allow die-hards to attend marquee events that otherwise would be beyond their budgets. If the fan’s chosen team does not reach the game, the future expires and the fan loses the fee.
The company has a pilot program in place for options around the coming College Football Playoff, and is in talks with several prominent college football bowl games. An expansion into other sports and ultimately performing arts is planned.
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ShooWin has a pilot program in place for the next College Football Playoff.
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“There is a great sense of urgency out there to provide some relief and help for fans to be able to get into events,” Trinchero said.
ShooWin, however, seeks to revive the largely failed marketplace for ticket options, forward market tickets, ticket futures, and other similar products. Over the past decade, several outfits including The Ticket Reserve (later known as FirstDibz), OptionIt, and Yoonew unsuccessfully sought to build a large mainstream following for various forms of ticket options.
In many cases, the concept of ticket options proved too difficult for many fans to grasp, and some outfits were focused heavily on creating an online marketplace for those options that would rise and fall in value based on on-field and on-court events. The options on ShooWin will be tradable, but Trinchero said she is playing down that component of the offering.
“This is really much more about consumer and fan engagement. This isn’t a B-to-B platform,” she said. “We want to gamify this concept as much as possible.”
Rick Harmon, founder and chairman of Forward Market Media and a co-founder of FirstDibz, said he will soon sunset his operations in ticket futures with the debut of ShooWin.
“I’ve spent 15 years working on this, but I’m effectively handing the ball off now to Brisa and her team,” he said. “A lot of what we did was a B-to-B, white label software service. But she has built an elegant model that will be a mobile-first platform for true fan engagement.”
ShooWin is backed by a $1.25 million investment led by BBG Ventures, an AOL-supported venture capital firm in New York focusing on early stage startups with at least one female founder.
Access to face-value tickets for in-demand events has been a prominent industry discussion in recent weeks, after “Hamilton” creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda and Nathan Hubbard, formerly of Twitter and Ticketmaster, each wrote essays decrying the use of automated ticket bots.
