SeatGeek raises $550,000 and secures WSJ deal

Ticket price forecaster that tells when fans to buy will now feature in The Wall Street Journal

[This article has been updated with details about the latest round.]

SeatGeek, a ticket search engine for music and sports fans to find the best possible price for events on the secondary ticket market, has added on $550,000 to a $1 million Series A raised in July.

Contributers to the latest round include Founder Collective, NYC Seed, Stage One Capital, Trisiras Group, PKS Capital and angel investors Arie Abecassis, Sunil Hirani, Thomas Lehrman, Allen Levinson and Mark Wachen.

Founded in 2009 by Jack Groetzinger and Russ D'Souza, the New York City startup has raised a total of $2 million.

”SeatGeek has a strong vision of how to tap into the multi-billion dollar secondary ticket market,” said David Frankel, managing partner of Founder Collective. “Their service is really streamlining the event ticket buying process for consumers and the SeatGeek management team is executing impressively.”

Don’t think that SeatGeek is just another ticket aggregator, though. The site has developed algorithms to forecast ticket prices and, with these forecasts, inform customers about the the best time to look for cheap tickets for a particular event.

Skeptical? Me too.

But to the company’s credit, SeatGeek has sealed a revenue-sharing deal with The Wall Street Journal. The prominent newspaper has agreed to link directly to SeatGeek from its Sports and Local sections, something that should do wonders for increasing the site’s visibility.

Just in time for the partnership, SeatGeek has revamped its site design (putting more emphasis on its price forecasting), added maps of venues, and fleshed out a concert listings page. Here's a sample event page:

SeatGeek will use its latest funds to expand its product and engineering teams.