with Ticket resale business · Ticket resale business
LenderHawk analysis. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Acquisitions Anonymous.
A business can be marketed as SaaS while economically behaving like an affiliate-marketing or SEO business.
A 5x EBITDA multiple on $1.7M of cash flow is not high for software, but it may be normal for a lower-moat online brokerage model.
Ticket businesses live or die on supply; if venues, leagues, or brokers can cut off inventory, the asset becomes fragile.
Reported resilience through COVID deserves skepticism when the product depends on live events that largely disappeared.
A buyer needs domain expertise in ticketing and affiliate traffic before treating the business as a standalone acquisition.
Large incumbents like Ticketmaster and Live Nation can squeeze smaller intermediaries, especially when distribution shifts toward owned platforms.
AI shopping agents could erode the value of manual SEO lead-gen if consumers can ask software to source tickets directly.
The hosts judge the business by whether it controls durable access to supply rather than simply buying demand through marketing. If supply is easy to cut off, the business is weaker than the headline numbers suggest.
When to use: Use this when evaluating brokerage, arbitrage, and marketplace deals where inventory access matters more than software features.
The listing asked $8.5 million and showed $1.7 million of EBITDA, implying about a 5.0x multiple.
Heather and Michael reverse-engineer the economics from the teaser and note the price is not a typical SaaS multiple.
The business reported $12.5 million of revenue and $1.7 million of EBITDA, with EBITDA equal to cash flow.
The hosts use the broker teaser to size the deal.
The 2024 run rate was described as $9.6 million in sales in the first eight months of the year.
This was presented as evidence of growth in the listing copy.
The company allegedly had more than 260,000 email subscribers and over 90,000 social followers.
The hosts cite these figures as part of the broker’s marketing story.
The business was described as founded in 2019, but the listing also claimed it was more than 10 years old.
The hosts point out the inconsistency as a credibility issue.
The brokerage copy said the company had 13 employees in Florida.
This was part of the operational description in the teaser.
Heather said an SBA lender can generally finance about 3.5x adjusted EBITDA today.
She uses that rule of thumb to explain why high-multiple software deals require a lot of equity.
Verify the business history year by year before relying on the asking memorandum.
Why: The listing had a 2019 founding date but also claimed a 10-year operating history, which could materially change how durable the cash flow looks.
Treat ticket supply as the first diligence question, not the last.
Why: If inventory access is fragile or can be shut down by venues, the business can lose its core asset quickly.
Approach this type of deal only if you already understand ticketing and affiliate traffic.
Why: The hosts believe a first-time buyer would struggle to understand the supply chain, distribution, and platform risk.
Assume the lender may not understand the model and be prepared to educate them with clear mechanics.
Why: Heather notes that financing can hinge on the buyer’s ability to explain a nonstandard business model.
Be wary of heavy leverage when the moat depends on SEO and platform behavior.
Why: Search-engine and algorithm shifts, plus AI agents, could weaken the distribution model faster than debt amortizes.
Heather describes how a rich buyer once paid enough for a single playoff game seat that it effectively covered the family’s entire season-ticket package. The story illustrates why premium event inventory can be extraordinarily valuable when scarcity is real.
Lesson: Ticket arbitrage can be highly profitable when access to scarce inventory is durable.
Michael notes that families who used to broker tickets for a living have pushed their children into other careers like real estate and private equity. He uses that shift to argue the business has become harder, more competitive, and less attractive over time.
Lesson: Longstanding cash-flowing niches can still be bad acquisition targets if industry headwinds have intensified.