July 17, 2009 - Touring
Earlier this year, singer/songwriter James Taylor wanted to help fund the Natural Resources Defense Council through the sale of his concert tickets, so he turned to the online ticketing platform Tickets-for-Charity. Taylor is one of many artists using the recently launched ticketing company to raise money for more than 30 nonprofit organizations.
Tickets-for-Charity connects with artists, managers, venues and promoters before a tour to set aside an allotment of tickets to be sold on its Web site. It then prices those tickets based on the going rate in the secondary ticketing market. For each one sold on TicketsForCharity.com, the original face value of the ticket is paid back to the artist and the difference is donated to charity. Tickets-for-Charity earns money on the ticket service fees.
For example, "if the secondary market is pricing a $50 ticket at $500, then we'll try and capture that $450 for charity," Tickets-for-Charity CEO Jord Poster tells Billboard, noting that the price and donation are charged separately on the buyer's credit card. The average donation per sold ticket is about $150, he says.
The purpose of Tickets-for-Charity is to give concertgoers the opportunity to help others. "All we're doing is creating a socially positive option for consumers when they can't find what they want," Poster says. "Rather than paying $400 to a broker or scalper, they can pay $400 to Tickets-for-Charity. The difference is that most of the benefit is going to charity rather than a secondary reseller."
The Web site launched in June, but during an 18-month testing period, the site raised about $3 million from concerts by Taylor, the Rolling Stones, the Police, John Mayer and Lionel Richie, among others. Poster expects to raise "hundreds of millions of dollars" for nonprofits in the future. This summer, the company is working with Brad Paisley, Coldplay, Carlos Santana, Diana Krall, Kenny Chesney and Sugarland, among others.
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