Ticketing platform Seated is being re-acquired by its founders, David McKay and John Griffin, four years after it was acquired by intimate live experience producer Sofar Sounds. McKay will lead the company’s return to independence as CEO.
Seated — dubbed an artist-first ticketing platform — was launched in 2017 to empower artists to take more control of their ticketing by enhancing tour listings for artist websites; it has since evolved into a central pillar of many major tours’ marketing and ticketing efforts. The platform’s offerings have now expanded to include SMS-based presale registration, audience-building and pixeling for ad strategy, official waitlists for sold-out shows, and direct-to-fan ticketing. Seated has come to work with big-name artists including Billie Eilish, Post Malone, Olivia Rodrigo, Lizzo, Eric Church, John Mayer, Morgan Wallen, Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars and Gracie Abrams in recent years.
“When we sold the company in February 2021, it was a very different time [for live events], and our vision of what a combined Seated and Sofar would become drastically changed once the vaccines came out. Our business was clearly moving in a different direction than Sofar,” says McKay. “To their credit, [Sofar] continued to support us and we stayed a fully independent operating team inside of Sofar for those four years, which actually made this a very clean split.”
The two entities began discussing a split when former Sofar Sounds CEO Jim Lucchese departed the company in 2024 to become the president of Berklee College of Music. Lucchese was replaced by former Atlas Obscura CEO Warren Webster, who McKay says is a “breath of fresh air for Sofar” but diverges from Seated’s goals of working with arena and stadium touring artists.
“Seated has achieved remarkable growth under Sofar Sounds’ ownership these last four years, becoming a vital partner to some of the biggest artists in the world,” Webster said in a statement. “We’re proud to have been part of that story, and as Sofar focuses on the increasing demand in our communities for live experiences, we’re thrilled that Seated will continue to grow with its founders at the helm.”
For the founders, the reacquisition is about doubling down on building tools for artists to sell tickets directly and develop stronger connections with their fans. The platform has recently done direct-to-fan ticketing for Noah Kahan, Shawn Mendes and Goose, while artists like Brandi Carlile, John Legend and Nathaniel Rateliff have used Seated to sell their own presale tickets, giving them more control over the ticketing experience and fan data. Seated has also helped artists use identity verification for resale and waitlist ticketing, reducing the number of tickets that end up with brokers.
Over the past year, the biggest residencies at Sphere in Las Vegas — including Eagles, Dead & Company and Kenny Chesney — also used Seated for data capture, demand insights and SMS presale registrations.
With ticketing being a hot-button issue in the last few years, McKay says he is excited to be independent again so that Seated can focus more on helping artists capture their fan data. Rather than spending all of their tour marketing on directing fans to ticketing platforms where they have to wait for a specific time for an onsale, McKay wants artists to be able to give their fans actionable items that get them closer to securing tickets.
“When tickets are not on sale yet, fans can sign up for reminders to get tickets, and when tickets sell out, we open up the fan waitlist,” McKay says, and all that fan data goes back to the artist.
“All the ticketing companies that you know and love — or don’t — are built with the tools to service their customers, which are the venues,” McKay says, adding that major ticketing companies are investing in box office computers, scanners and season ticket technology for sports teams. “Ticketing companies as a whole, the artist isn’t their customer.”
After playing Fenway Park in Boston, Kahan was set to perform at a local Vermont venue with only 5,00 tickets available. Instead of making fans rush to an onsale (where bots are the quickest to the tickets), the company had fans sign up with their information and their price range, and Seated was able to sort through to make sure all buyers were authentic fans. If fans needed a refund, they could click a button to return the ticket, and it would go to another fan on the waitlist. Fans who did not want a refund for their ticket could donate the money they spent to Kahan’s charity, with McKay stating that 15% of those who wanted a refund did so.
“That’s the biggest difference between an artist-led ticketing platform and a venue-led ticketing platform,” says McKay.