New Event Ticket Comparison App, TickX Sees Great Success

by Startacus Admin

Ever hear about a gig or event too late or find that it’s really difficult to get a ticket? Are you tired of seeing nothing but mainstream events advertised and feel that others deserve just as much love?

Well, you’re in luck - those days may be a thing of the past, thanks to an innovative new startup. TickX is a game changing search engine and comparison app for event tickets. It is very user friendly and enables you to buy the best priced tickets in mere seconds! You might might be thinking ‘what if nothing tickles my fancy?’ but with an assortment of 34,239 events to choose from – you’ll spoiled for choice!

We were lucky enough to get the chance recently to speak with the man behind the idea, Sam Coley. He told us all about TickX and why he thinks it has seen immeasurable success in just 5 months!

Hi Sam! Thanks so much for chatting with us. First off, we’d like to congratulate you on the success of your business so far. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and TickX?

Thank you – that’s very kind.

I’m Sam and a 22 year old co-founder of TickX. After 6 years running of running a successful IT company, TickX is my next big project – a game-changing search engine and comparison site for event tickets across the UK.

At TickX I head up the development of all our platforms and its powerful ticket comparison engine. Whilst Steve, my fellow co-founder, heads up the sales and marketing, along with developing our relationships with our many ticketing partners.

What exactly inspired you to start TickX? Was it a sudden burst of inspiration, or was it an idea that grew over time?

Steve who was studying at Manchester University approached me about a year ago because he was frustrated with the efforts involved when browsing the web, to search for events.

Music, comedy, sport, clubs, theatre, festivals - Manchester has got the lot, and as a third-year student with an appetite for entertainment, Steve had become fed up of having to browse through hundreds of venue and promoters’ sites or the dozens of online ticket sellers. The fact there was so many layouts and so many claims to offer the ‘best’ deal, Steve decided there must be a better way!

He had a vision of a single platform, where users could search all events, compare all prices and find the best price tickets in seconds.

Having experienced the same pains myself, when Steve approached me with the idea I instantly connected with it, knowing I had the technical skills to achieve the vision and so together we have formed TickX.

You have had immeasurable success with TickX in just 5 months and I understand that you were recently named runner-up of VentureFest’s Investment competition – congratulations! Can you tell us about your successes to date and how you have achieved this is in such a short amount of time?

Yes, since launching, the interest we have had has been amazing - things have been moving very fast and that’s the pace we want to keep up!

Already we have now partnered with and integrated 12 leading ticket sellers who understand the value TickX can bring to drive their sales - this is because we provide an additional marketing channel for them to engage with and attract more customers.

After meeting Liz Cable, senior lecturer for digital marketing at Leeds Trinity University, she kindly offered to run a focus group on TickX with us and her students. The interest we had from the students was so strong that she directly referred us to Venturefest.
After going through the rigorous application process, we ended up making the final and then finished as runners up - only marginally missing out on the top prize. Venturefest exceeded our expectations and as a result, we’ve met some incredible contacts who we look forward to working with moving forward.

We love how your platform is so localised! It’s fresh and a good thing to see in the market. Do you have any concerns about competition or anyone else trying something similar?

Thanks! For us it has always been key that our users can search ‘events near them’ or pinpoint an exact location they want to go out!

Our vision is to replicate the successful models of sites such as Go Compare and SkyScanner. It is clear that comparison sites offer strong and sustainable growth potential as they dominate in almost every vertical sector; Hotel, Travel and Insurance to name a few. Somehow however, the events industry has been left out and it’s a gap we are now moving in to fill - by making TickX a one-stop shop when planning a day or night out.

However, whilst what we are doing is innovative in the marketplace our main competition is artist trackers such as BandsInTown and Songkick. These inform users of their favourite music artists’ upcoming tours.
But TickX offers more than just music. TickX compares prices for club nights, gigs, festivals, sports, comedy, lifestyle, theatre and comedy. So whoever you are, TickX will provide the easiest way to find the best events, for the best prices!

To improve our service and stay on top of our competition we are currently building ‘MyTickX.’ This allows users to save their preferences, which will give us valuable data that we can use to drive ticket sales.

We love all things business here at Startacus! Can you tell us if you have any future plans to include business events on TickX?

We are keen to continue to evolve by listening to our users – since launching we have had a real demand to include business events on our platforms, so you’ll be pleased to hear that it is already in our development plan! One of the great values in our business, is that the technology has been built to be scalable so that we can move quickly when needed.

Finally, given that TickX has just started its journey, do you have any big plans for the future or any recent happenings that you’d like to tell us about?

Well it’s all go at TickX at the moment with more ticket sellers coming online, a new app version being released and additional features coming to our website in the coming weeks.

With all our success to date being achieved without investment we are now also busy meeting investors keen to help us achieve rapid growth over the coming year.



We’d like to thank Sam for taking the time to talk to us. We wish him and TickX all the success for the future – it’s clear that big things are ahead! If you want to find out more about TickX, you can visit their website here. Don’t forget to follow them on Twitter too for the best ticket deals out there!

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Published on: 8th April 2015