Regardless of team allegiance, most sports fans agree: Ticket processing fees are the worst.
Another thing a lot of sports fans seem to agree on lately: It’s incredibly fun to bet (legally) on athletic events. In the United States alone, online sports betting is projected to reach USD9.65 billion in 2024, with the number of users projected to reach 54.7 million by 2029.
TicketBook is a startup aiming to create a better experience for users, tackling fee frustrations while harnessing the growing sports betting market.
A digital marketplace that allows sports ticket buyers to earn back processing fees, TicketBook is a convenient place to browse events, select tickets and place bets on the games they attend. If the user wins their bet, their fees are returned to them and can be used for future ticket purchases.
The company was initially conceived during a startup weekend hosted by YNG, the community of young adult children (ages 18-30) of YPO members, in collaboration with YPO’s strategic relationships Techstars and Goldman Sachs Private Wealth Management in March of 2023 in Boston. The goal of the event, championed by Anaya Barmecha of YNG New York, Yohan Khan of YNG Boston, and Micah Chase of YPO Gold New England, was not only to give YNG members an in-person opportunity to meet and connect, but also to provide a safe space to create and build out innovative ideas with world-class resources and mentors providing support throughout along the way.
And while co-founders Jack Dretler, Ariel Aldrin and Foster Counts all hail from different backgrounds and locations and didn’t even know each other before that long weekend, these three YNG members are now betting they can make waves in the sports industry.
“People intrinsically want to be more involved in whatever event they are attending and watching. We’re leveraging that and think we could take it to the next step,” says Aldrin.
“Our goal is to be more than just admission to an event,” adds Dretler, who serves as the company’s CEO. “We’re looking to revolutionize the sports ticketing industry.”
From idea to reality
More than 50 YNG members at the startup weekend met with representatives from YPO, Goldman Sachs and Techstars and were invited to make a one-minute pitch for their business ideas. Five businesses were selected to move on, and the young professionals split into teams to focus on their respective business ideas for the next 48 hours.
Dretler was approaching college graduation from Bentley University in Boston, and while he’d never engaged in any YNG events — and there was a snowboarding trip with friends taking place on the same weekend — he had the makings of an idea and was curious to talk through it with other business-minded young professionals.
Counts was a recent Southern Methodist University graduate living in Dallas, Texas, USA, and working at his family’s photography software company. He had just started to dabble in YNG’s mentoring program and online events, but he had never traveled to attend one before.
Aldrin came into the startup weekend with entrepreneurial experience, having launched a company based out of her home in Indonesia. She had already graduated from Berkeley and was currently pursuing her MBA at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. While she didn’t have a set business idea in mind, she’s been involved in YNG before and the weekend gave her a chance to meet other young professionals and gain more experience.
The trio quickly found each other that first night, united by Dretler’s idea focused on tickets and sports betting, and along with three other YNGers, they spent the next two days creating a business plan, working with experts from YPO, Techstars and Goldman Sachs.
“I think the competitive aspect really helped us fine-tune our idea,” says Counts, who serves as TicketBook’s CFO. “It’s all about adding entertainment value to the ticket you’re buying and making the process something you don’t dread. Because for some, that processing fee is enough to affect your decision on whether you buy the ticket at all.”
By the time their team took the top prize — an opportunity to receive continued mentoring from Goldman Sachs Private Wealth Management leaders and a meeting with one of Goldman Sachs’ Growth Equity teams — Counts says the win validated that what they’d created was something special.
— Foster Counts share
Aldrin, the company’s COO, agrees. “For us, it made sense to keep working on it. People naturally dropped off, just being busy with school or internships, and we were happy that the three of us stayed along for the ride. We also found that our backgrounds complemented each other very well.”
Maintaining momentum
Coming off their success in Boston, Aldrin, Dretler and Counts returned home but set up weekly calls to keep things moving.
They decided to submit TicketBook for the VIP-X accelerator program in Philadelphia, where Aldrin was living and attending The Wharton School. They were one of seven startups selected for the intense three-month program and the only one that was virtual. The program gave them more validation as well as support through advising, coaching and resources.
The year since that initial YNG startup weekend has also been filled with talking to experts in fields related to sports betting and ticketing, collecting data to make their product the best it could be, and working with their developer to create the platform, as well as harnessing the knowledge and support of their advisers, Bhanuka Harischandra, Founder and CEO of Surge Global, and Greg Krug, Senior Director at Navigate, a sports vendor consulting firm.
Betting on themselves
“We’re very proud to be in a situation where we can show potential investors exactly what our company looks like,” says Dretler. “We can take them through our business model, walk them through a clickable prototype, and show that this is something that’s going to be big in the next 12 months.”
They share that there has been a lot of interest in TicketBook, and that they are currently fundraising for their first round of investors through October 2024, with an anticipated launch of a beta test of the platform in Massachusetts by the end of 2024. They are also looking into different partnerships with both buyers and sellers, since they are working within a two-sided marketplace.
TicketBook has been Dretler’s sole focus since his graduation, Aldrin graduated from Wharton this May, and Counts has continued to work on the idea alongside his family’s company. The trio combats issues of time and distance with their weekly check-in calls, and all three stress the importance of clear communication and supporting each other.
“Motivation can falter when you’re not sitting in a room together,” admits Dretler, adding that the weekly calls and checkpoints get them back on track when they fall out of sync.
Being in three different locations has had a surprising benefit, allowing each to harness three different networks to work toward their shared goal.
“I think one of the things that has kept the three of us together is that we really believe in the idea, and we are building something we would want to use ourselves,” says Counts, explaining that, combined, they bring ample experience in attending concerts and sports events and betting on sports. “We know what we want to see in the market, and we know it does not currently exist. So we’re trying to bring that to people like us.”
Techstars and Goldman Sachs Private Wealth Management are YPO strategic relationships. YPO members can learn more on Connect+.
