Buying a ticket to a live event, be it sports, music, or theater, is a piece of cake on the Web. There are online services galore that help users find and purchase tickets at their desired price. But does the price you pay actually equate to the true value of the ticket? Put differently, could a ticket for a different location in the same venue for the same price (or even less) be the better one? Say hello to SeatKarma.com which believes that the true value of a ticket is a combination of its price and its location in the venue. The company’s tagline: “No two tickets are the same!”
SeatKarma’s search engine covers 99% of tickets available for purchase online by retrieving live ticket information from a couple of hundred secondary market ticket brokers. The cost comparison is then augmented with venue mapping available for approximately 1600 venues. 1300 of these are “live maps” which place a marker on the section where the seat will be located. The remaining 300 are small venues such as bars where seat mapping doesn’t apply. The company claims it now has more live maps than any other comparison engine on the market.
SeatKarma has a really cool feature where 140 venues in its system have actual “Court View” photos of the perspective you’ll have of the court or field from your desired seating location. These 140 venues include all the US professional sports venues for the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, as well as the some of the top NCAA football venues.
There are also twenty 3D maps that were custom drawn for theater venues with complicated seating arrangements (balconies, Mezzanine levels, etc). More will be added over time. Eventually SeatKarma plans to have all the major venues drawn in 3D as well. Baseball stadiums are also currently being mapped in 3D and are due to be available on the site in time for the start of the new baseball season April 1st.
The company’s business model is based on affiliate commissions generated by selling tickets through brokers. Ten percent of the revenue will be given to charity every month.
Here’s the killer part: SeatKarma is just a couple of MBA graduate students from Texas A&M University—Ohad Nezer and Chris Nicolaysen—that pulled all of this off for only $30K… You just gotta love that!
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译文:
SeatKarma 可助你找到场里最好的座位
在网上订购现场活动的票，无论是运动赛事，音乐会还是剧场，是一件轻而易举的事情。许多网上服务可以帮助使用者找到符合他们理想价格的座位。但是，给出的价格真的与实际座位的价值成正比吗？换句话说，同一场馆的不同座位，同等价格或甚至与低价的票，难道就没有好座位了吗？SeatKarma.com认为票的真实价值在于价钱和场馆里具体位置的结合。公司的时髦用语：“没有两张一模一样的票！”
SeatKarma的搜索引擎可覆盖网上订购的99%的有效票，它通过从上百个二级市场的售票代理的搜索出两三家的实况入场券。然后大约1600家场馆，价格比较会与可利用的场馆地图一起增长。其中1300家场馆会有现场地图，会标记位置的具体方位。剩下的300个场馆都是类似与酒吧这样的小场馆，所以不提供座位地图。公司声称拥有目前市场上最多的现场地图。
SeatKarma有个非常显著的特征，它的系统里140个场馆有实际的“场区视野”透视图图片，这样你就可以看到从你的理想的位置看到场区或地域。这140个场馆包括所有US的专业运动场馆，比如NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL,还有一些最顶级的NCAA的足球场馆。
除此之外，它还提供20张3D地图，这些地图是专门为剧院场馆制作的，地图提供了复杂的座位安排情况（露台，夹楼结构等等）。很多是添加过时的。最后，SeatKarma计划拥有所有重要场馆的3D地图。为了四月一日到来的棒球赛季，能够及时找到合适的位置，棒球场馆现在也有了3D地图。
公司的商业模式就是基于联系代理，这些代理通过中介贩卖入场券。每个月，10%的收入将会捐助慈善结构。
这里是吸引人的部分：SeatKarma只不过是德克萨斯州A&M大学的两个MBA大学生——瓯海·南瑟和克里斯·尼古拉撒——只用了30美元就使得这一切赢得了巨大的成功。你只要喜欢就好！