Eventbrite's Surging IPO Shines Light on Fragmented Event Tech Sector
Skift Take
Eventbrite is a different beast than most event management companies out there since it also acts as a ticketing marketplace for consumers. This doesn't mean that the wider event space won't benefit from the increased awareness of event technology as a growing and profitable sector.
Now that Eventbrite's long-awaited initial public offering is here, with the 12-year-old company emerging as a newly-minted Unicorn, the spotlight is shining on the overall event technology sector.
The company's stock rose nearly 60 percent post-IPO, from $23 to close at $36.45 Thursday on an up day for the market, although its stock price declined slightly on Friday.
It seems like a big win for the visibility of the event technology sector among investors. The only other big-ticket IPO of note for the sector was Cvent in 2013; in 2016, though, the company was taken private by a private equity group after a few stagnant years.
"It's still early days for the Eventbrite stock but the fact that the stock price has risen 60 percent in 24 hours is not something to gloss over," said Dan Berger, founder and CEO of Social Tables, a platform for venue sourcing and event management. "This is the first event management software company to go public since Cvent (as most major liquidity events happen through mergers and acquisitions) so it's great to see a sleeping giant industry like ours getting Wall Street recognition."
Could this mean sustained interest from investors and venture capitalists in the highly-fragmented event technology space? Well, it's complicated, according to top executives across the event tech sector.
While Eventbrite nominally fits into the event tec
