A war on ticket scalping

Ant Taylor was at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London when he realized that he wanted to revolutionize the ticketing business. He waded through crowds to get into the beach-volleyball venue, only to find near-empty sections and rows of unfilled seats. “We’re in the middle of London, and this is the goddamn Olympics, and we’re

talking about an arena of maybe 7,000 people,” he recalls. “Meanwhile, outside the stadium, there are all these people who want to be there — and only scalpers to serve them. That’s when it hit me at a visceral level: This is not OK.”

One year later, Taylor founded Lyte, a ticketing system that’s designed to empower fans while weakening scalping. Fans put down their credit card information in advance when an artist, festival, or venue announces shows on the horizon, guaranteeing them a ticket for later, but not yet charging them. Lyte’s ticket reservations aren’t the whole of its business, but it’s keen to explore similarly fresh projects.

One of Lyte’s early clients is Coachella; more recently, the firm secured nearly $40 million in funding from investors like Quincy Jones, alongside several VC firms. In the past year, Lyte has also forged ticketing partnerships with musicians like Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Jacob Collier. “We want to change the entire nature of how people think about the ticket-buying process to make it more intuitive, [like] other e-commerce experiences,” Taylor says. “Ultimately, we’d like the experience to be as good as the event.”