Salt Lake City Startup: Text Me Tix Is The Ultimate Fire Sale Ticketing Startup INTERVIEW

No venue, promoter, sports team, or stadium likes empty seats. Not only is there a loss in revenue but if you go to a show or a ball game and the stands are not filled to capacity it looks bad. The problem lies in the fact that there’s never really been a good last minute ticketing platform.

Sure scalpers are abundant, especially outside of popular sporting events and concerts. You’ll notice that scalpers will charge a high premium an hour or two before an event, but once the event has started, or as the minutes countdown to show time or game time, those scalpers even lower their prices. Nobody wants to take a loss.

The ticketing space is a very difficult one to crack. TicketMaster/LiveNation has a stranglehold on most large venue tickets and they don’t seem to budge as the clock narrows down. Separate venues and groups that like to stick it to the man, like Pearl Jam, and of course your local bands have other alternatives for ticket sales.

Salt Lake City startup Text Me Tix, provides a really great way for venues, promoters and teams to fire sale tickets. The method of delivery is text messages, which according to Text Me Tix Founder and CEO Mark Harmsen, are read within 3 minutes of receipt. Why not use that urgency in the text message realm to sell tickets.

Text Me Tix is picking up a lot of traction. They just won the opportunity to pitch Zappos founder and Mr. Startup Las Vegas Tony Hsieh as the first place winner of the Crowdfunder.com, Crowdstart Las Vegas competition.

In the interview below Harmsen explains how Text Me Tix saves ticket buyers a lot of money and solves a huge problem for ticket sellers.

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