Ticket Platform Granted Launches As Live Events Emerge From Pandemic

Christian Hetrick

Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.

Granted
Image courtesy of Granted

The idea of launching a live event ticket platform during a global pandemic didn’t phase Shayma Hesari.

Hesari and Matt Ampolsky began working on the idea for an “experiential” ticket platform during the summer of 2020, when concerts and sporting events were cancelled en masse. But Hesari said they never doubted that fans would return to venues once it was safer to do so. In the meantime, they hired developers to build Granted, the Santa Monica-based ticketing platform that publicly launched Tuesday.


“There should have been a lot more concern, but I think we were just on a mission,” Hesari quipped. “Personally, I’m just a massive risk-taker when it comes to disruptive spaces.”

Granted, which soft-launched in February 2021, aims to disrupt the ticketing industry in a number of ways. Beyond selling tickets to shows, the startup offers fans VIP experiences such as meet-and-greets with artists and athletes, and hosts auctions that benefit a charity of a given talent’s choice. Granted also accepts cryptocurrency as payment and has minted NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, for athletes like NFL running back Saquon Barkley.

The company also announced Tuesday that it raised a $3 million seed investment from Ampolsky, who doubles as Granted’s co-founder and angel investor. (Ampolsky is an entertainment industry investor who also serves as CEO of Santa Monica-based events agency Confirmed360.) Among other things, the money will be used to grow the Granted’s seven-employee staff and build a marketplace where fans can resell tickets. Currently, the tickets offered on Granted are funneled from third-party companies used by ticket brokers.

Online ticket sellers were hammered during the early days of the pandemic; the industry saw a nearly 56% drop in revenue in 2020, according to market research firm IBISWorld. Yet online ticket sales showed signs of a rebound during the second half of last year, as vaccines rolled out and governments lifted restrictions. Ticketmaster, owned by Beverly Hills-based Live Nation, reported its highest-ever quarterly operating income in the third quarter of 2021, after posting a $197 million loss in the year-earlier period.

“I think [ticket retailers] will recover to the pre-pandemic levels—and probably even go higher, because people have been tied down so much,” according to Gerard Tellis, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. “But a lot depends on the intensity of COVID.”

Granted has generated nearly $500,000 in gross sales since soft-launching last year; it plans to triple that figure this year through the VIP partnerships it has lined up alone, Hesari said, including events with rapper The Kid LAROI and the actor Rotimi. Among others, Granted has previously worked with former Los Angeles Lakers star Shaquille O’Neal on an auction, and it offered VIP packages for last year’s boxing exhibition between retired ex-champion Floyd Mayweather and YouTuber-turned-fighter Logan Paul.

The company ultimately aims to develop a secondary ticket market that pays royalties to artists. Hesari noted that many artists make the bulk of their money through touring these days—and though many artists make a very healthy living that way, she added that the amount they collect from their events is smaller than you would think after ticketing agents and other third parties get their cut.

“It's really important for us to continue to make [artists] feel both motivated and empowered by their fans,” she said.

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Happy Friday Los Angeles!

EVgo Inc., a leading Electric Vehicle (EV) charging company based in West Los Angeles, has seen substantial growth under CEO Badar Khan. The company now operates over 3,400 fast chargers across 1,000 sites nationwide, strategically placed in high-traffic urban and suburban areas to enhance convenience for EV users. EVgo’s model focuses on owning and managing its charging stations to ensure a seamless experience, reflecting its commitment to supporting the mass adoption of electric vehicles and facilitating the transition to cleaner transportation.

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      The Los Angeles data center market is experiencing a significant supply crunch, ranking 12th in growth among top markets since 2020 with only 265 megawatts of colocation inventory (data centers where businesses rent space to store their computing hardware and servers). Despite this, demand is surging, driven by AI, cloud, and hyperscaler needs, with AI accounting for 20% of new data center demand nationally. This scarcity is creating a highly competitive environment, with vacancy rates at a record low 3% and asking rents rising 13-37% year-over-year. For Los Angeles, this presents both challenges and opportunities in the big picture. The city's strategic position as a global entertainment hub and its connectivity to international markets through subsea cables make it an attractive location for data centers. However, the limited inventory and rising costs could potentially hinder growth and innovation in the tech sector. To maintain its competitive edge, Los Angeles will need to address these constraints through new developments, such as GI Partners' 16 MW addition at One Wilshire, and by focusing on high-connectivity, high-power capacity submarkets. The city's tech community should prepare for a landscape of increased competition for quality data center space, higher costs, and the need for innovative solutions to meet growing demand, particularly in AI and cloud services. While Los Angeles faces a challenging data center supply crunch, its strategic advantages and ongoing developments offer a promising path forward.


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