Great Seats

What Great Seats does

Great Seats is a privately held secondary ticket marketplace founded in 1979, operating as GreatSeats.com from Beltsville, Maryland (with primary market presence around Boydton, Virginia). The company purchases tickets from sellers and resells them to individual consumers at marked-up prices, earning revenue through transaction fees and price spreads on each sale. It serves general consumers seeking access to live entertainment events, including concerts, theatre, comedy, family shows, and sporting events across all six major U.S. and Canadian professional sports leagues (MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA, WNBA, MLS).

The core product is the GreatSeats.com e-commerce platform, which provides a browseable, search-driven marketplace with real-time inventory and pricing, performer/team/venue-specific landing pages, and a City Guides feature for location-based event discovery. The underlying technology stack is a standard online ticket marketplace with real-time inventory management; no proprietary AI/ML, no mobile app, and no public API are present. The company emphasizes trust guarantees — 100% authentic tickets, on-time delivery, side-by-side seating, and full refunds on canceled events — as its primary differentiators.

The business model is a direct-to-consumer, pay-as-you-go marketplace. Pricing is variable, set by event, date, venue, and seat location (observed ranges from $35 for budget MLS seats to $400+ for premium NHL seats), and the company does not publicly disclose its own service fees or markup structure. Distribution is almost entirely organic, driven by search traffic to thousands of indexed event/team/performer pages on GreatSeats.com, with a secondary Facebook social media presence and no paid enterprise or B2B channels.

Name

Great Seats

Legal name

Great Seats

Website

https://greatseats.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

1979

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Great Seats is a privately held, direct-to-consumer secondary ticket marketplace operating since 1979, reselling authenticated tickets for concerts, theatre, comedy, family shows, and major professional sports events across the U.S. and Canada via GreatSeats.com.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Secondary Ticket Resale

SIC

Services-Amusement & Recreation Services (7900)

akta.pro primary industry

Secondary Ticket Marketplaces (Resale/Exchange) (MPAGAJAB)

akta.pro secondary industry

Ticket Resale & Secondary Market Services (HSACALAN)

Keywords

• Secondary ticket marketplace
• Concert ticket sales
• Sports ticket sales
• Live event tickets
• Ticket resale platform

Headquarters

HQ city

Beltsville

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Markets served

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Digital Commerce or Content

Cost components

Supply Chain, Operations, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Personnel

Revenue model

1. Ticket Resale Commission: Great Seats operates as a secondary ticket marketplace, earning revenue through transaction fees on ticket sales. They purchase tickets from sellers and resell to buyers at marked-up prices while providing ticket authentication and delivery guarantees.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels1 record

Core offering

Great Seats operates a direct-to-consumer online ticket resale marketplace (GreatSeats.com) where it purchases tickets from sellers and resells them to buyers for concerts, theatre, comedy, family shows, and professional sporting events (MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA, WNBA, MLS). The company emphasizes 100% authenticated tickets, on-time delivery, side-by-side seating, and full refunds for canceled events, with variable pricing driven by event demand and seat location.

Product overview

Great Seats is a single, unified ticket marketplace platform offering authenticated tickets for live events. The core product is the GreatSeats.com website, which provides a comprehensive selection of tickets across concerts, theatre, comedy, family shows, and professional sports leagues. The platform includes City Guides as a navigation feature enabling location-based event discovery. The company has operated since 1979 and emphasizes ticket authenticity guarantees, competitive pricing, and customer satisfaction.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• GreatSeats.com Online Ticket Marketplace Online ticket marketplace enabling purchase of authenticated tickets for concerts, theatre performances, comedy shows, family entertainment, and sporting events across major professional leagues including MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA, WNBA, and MLS. Targeted at individual consumers seeking guaranteed-authentic tickets for live events.

Quantifiable outcome

• 100% authentic and valid tickets guaranteed
• +1 more outcomes

Segments1 record

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Scale indicators2 records

Recent moves4 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Direct peers

• TickPick: TickPick is a no-fee secondary ticket marketplace covering sports, concerts, and theatre. It is comparable to Great Seats in its consumer-facing resale model and multi-vertical event coverage.
• StubHub: StubHub is the largest secondary ticket marketplace in the U.S., offering resale tickets across sports, concerts, and theatre — directly comparable to Great Seats in product category, target customer, and secondary-market transaction-fee model.
• Gametime: Gametime is a mobile-first last-minute ticket marketplace focused on sports and concerts. It competes with Great Seats for similar consumers, particularly on sports inventory and impulse purchases.
• Coast to Coast Tickets: Coast to Coast Tickets is a smaller secondary ticket reseller covering concerts, sports, and theatre nationwide. It is comparable to Great Seats as a similarly-sized D2C ticket broker with overlapping inventory and customer base.
• TicketNetwork: TicketNetwork operates a broad secondary ticket marketplace with a large reseller network. It overlaps with Great Seats on secondary inventory, multi-vertical events, and online consumer checkout.
• Vivid Seats: Vivid Seats is a publicly traded secondary ticket marketplace covering concerts, sports, and theatre nationwide. It competes head-to-head with Great Seats on inventory breadth, pricing, and D2C e-commerce.
• SeatGeek: SeatGeek is a mobile-first primary and secondary ticketing platform with broad sports and concert coverage. Comparable to Great Seats as a digital ticket marketplace serving similar consumer buyers across the same event categories.

Broad incumbents

• Ticketmaster: Ticketmaster is the dominant primary ticketing platform with an integrated official resale exchange. While its core business is primary ticketing, its resale functionality directly overlaps with Great Seats and dwarfs it in scale and inventory access.
• AXS (AEG): AXS is a primary and secondary ticketing platform affiliated with AEG's venues and tours. It competes for the same consumer ticket-buyers and offers official resale that overlaps with Great Seats' value proposition.
• Live Nation Entertainment: Live Nation is the largest live entertainment company globally, parent of Ticketmaster and a primary promoter/venue operator. While broader than Great Seats, its integrated ticketing, concert promotion, and venue ownership create a competitive gravitational pull on inventory and consumer traffic.

Market position

Strengths1 record

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat3 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights5 records

Customer concentration

• Facebookfacebook.com/100057607894927
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/great-seats-inc

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Great Seats