Austin-based festivalPass launches subscription service for live events

Would you pay a subscription payment every month if it meant you to simpler entry to live performance tickets? 

That’s the concept behind festivalPass, an Austin startup that has created a subscription market the place members pays a month-to-month payment to have entry to tickets to live shows, sporting occasions and different gatherings.

FestivalPass, which debuted in Could, is designed to scale back the hassles and prices shoppers face when shopping for tickets for stay occasions, in keeping with its founders, Ed Vincent and Stephan de Bernede.

The corporate’s platform presents tickets to 1000’s occasions together with music, way of life, movie, artwork, sports activities, meals and wine, and tech and innovation.  The platform additionally consists of discounted rooms at over 600,000 motels that may be booked the identical approach. 

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FestivalPass members subscribe to one in every of three membership tiers, that are priced at $19, $49 and $99 per 30 days. Larger tiers have decrease prices for tickets and members additionally accumulate credit by way of the plans that can be utilized to pay for tickets and resort rooms.

Vincent, the corporate’s CEO, stated festivalPass tickets include no extra charges, which signifies that even with the month-to-month subscription cost, that ends in decrease costs total. 

“No matter value you see on our web site, and while you use it for an occasion, that is the value you pay at checkout,” Vincent stated. “I really feel there was at all times this lack of transparency, the place you go on to many websites and it says $100 for the ticket and by the point you take a look at at $150 and I believe it is a very irritating expertise.”

Vincent, who moved to Austin from New York to construct the corporate, stated Austin’s standing as a hub for each stay leisure and know-how makes it the proper spot to construct out the corporate and develop the platform. .

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Whereas the corporate is launching in Austin, the platform presents tickets to occasions all around the United States and lists resort rooms globally. As soon as it grows extra in the US, the corporate additionally plans to function occasion tickets globally. 

“Since we’re based mostly right here in Austin, we will repeatedly develop and market and do attention-grabbing cool issues right here in Austin so we are able to mannequin out the successes we’ve n Austin in different cities alongside the best way,” Vincent stated. “However immediately anyone within the nation can join and so they’ll discover occasions in any metropolis they stay in.”  

Vincent stated the stay leisure trade is ripe for disruption. He pointed to Moviepass, a subscription serve that allowed individuals to see as many films as they wished in a month for a set payment. Moviepass shut down in 2019, however Vincent stated it confirmed the demand for some form of subscription-based service for stay leisure. 

“We wished to construct a membership subscription through which individuals can turn into a member of this group, constructed across the passions that they actually love, whether or not it is music, whether or not it is movie, whether or not it is meals and wine, whether or not it is sports activities, and truly nonetheless give them the worth of buying a ticket to the factor they love to do, but in addition do it inside a group to allow them to begin interacting with fellow stay occasion followers,” Vincent stated. 

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FestivalPass plans to barter perks with occasion venue house owners that can be added over time. Past ticket gross sales, the platform additionally recommends occasions and offers members early entry to ticket purchases and early entry to buy nonfungible tokens, collectible digital belongings you should purchase and promote, from artists.  

The corporate is also embracing rising applied sciences akin to blockchain and NFTs because it builds out its platform. Customers could make purchases with cryptocurrency, a digital asset that can be utilized to make on-line funds. Its additionally launching a “lifetime founder” NFT providing that offers purchasers a lifetime founder membership on the platform that offers them about $1,200 price of credit every year and quarterly occasions.