TickPick Announces WE Fest And Riot Fest Partnerships

TickPick, the secondary ticketing marketplace that prides itself on not charging fans any buyer fees, announced partnerships Tuesday with two major U.S. festivals: WE Fest in Detroit Lakes, Minn., and Riot Fest in Chicago.

This partnership means TickPick will be the place to go for face-value tickets without any fees for both events. 

Founded in 2011, TickPick is a relative newcomer to the secondary game. The company became a music industry player when it took over secondary ticketing duties for Firefly Festival from StubHub in early 2018.

Since then, TickPick acquired the resale platform Razorgator after its owners declared financial insolvency, and bought stake in ticket inventory aggregator Rukkus, which claimed to have more than 300,000 customers. 

TickPick co-founder and co-CEO Bretty Goldberg told Pollstar last year that he runs a lean operation and believes that as the platform gets more users, the company will continue to grow.

“We’re continuing our growth path by making smart acquisitions, developing partnerships, and constantly improving our technology for the industry’s best customer experience,” Goldberg said in a statement after buying stake in Rukkus. “Rukkus brought in several hundred thousand valuable customers, and they also built a very impressive seat-view capability that is much more immersive than the ‘virtual’ views offered by many of our competitors. This purchase and our recent acquisition of established player Razorgator are part of our customer growth strategy and our focus on refining our tech to remain the premier site to buy sports and entertainment tickets.”

TickPick’s claim to fame is its elimination of buyer fees and restrictions keeping seller fees from 10 to 12 percent, meaning its own margins on each transaction are lower, but that fans always get the lowest possible price.

This year’s edition of WE Fest will be held Aug. 1-3 and will feature Chris Stapleton, Keith Urban, Brooks & Dunn, Jake Owen, Jamey Johnson and many more. 

This year’s Riot Fest will be Sept. 13-15 and will feature Blink-182, Slayer, Bikini Kill, The Raconteurs, Rise Against and many more. Riot Fest had been with Ticketfly, and was affected when the company went offline following a malicious hack on May 30 of last year.