Virginia-based ticketing services firm DTI Management has closed on a $75 million round of funding from CVC Capital Partners and New Amsterdam Growth Capital, an investment aimed at accelerating its growth within a rapidly changing ticketing industry.
In its four years, DTI Management has quickly forged a niche in ticket inventory management, working with teams such as the Cleveland Cavaliers, New Jersey Devils and Phoenix Suns to more closely manage their respective resale markets. Dozens of U.S. pro sports teams over the past two years have sought to consolidate their relationships with ticket brokers in order to gain greater control over pricing trends and data flow, and DTI Management, along with other firms such as Eventellect, have played a role. Firms such as these have helped teams avoid seeing their tickets selling for as little as pennies on resale markets by buying inventory and reselling it in a more controlled manner.
DTI Management also works with more than 100 individual ticket brokers providing software solutions and fulfillment services.
The funding deal represents DTI Management’s first outside investment, and CVC Capital owned a controlling stake in Formula One from 2006 until earlier this year.
“This isn’t about just the capital,” said Curtis Cheng, DTI Management founder and chief executive, who has spent nearly two decades in various facets of secondary ticketing. “This was really about finding the right partner, and this is somebody who fundamentally knows and gets our space and understands what we’re trying to do to bring much more transparency and efficiency to live event ticketing.”
The funding will be used primarily to expand DTI Management’s global digital distribution platform. But the company will remain firmly a business-to-business operation with no aspirations to become a consumer brand.
“There’s still a huge value gap in the secondary ticket market, and our mission it to go out and capture more of that value and return it to the rights holder,” Chang said. “We are merely a conduit to help move tickets and allow teams to know more about who is in their building. But there is much more we can still do.”
