Young entrepreneurs: Luke Massie, Vibe Tickets

Name: Luke Massie
Company: Vibe Tickets
Age: 24
Website: www.vibetickets.co.uk 

Nobody likes buying tickets from ticket touts and being ripped off – especially as it’s now common for tickets for high-profile acts to often sell for 10 times their value on secondary ticketing sites.

With this in mind, Luke Massie sought to create an ethical ticket marketplace which would connect fans directly and allow them to exchange tickets for face value, or for free.

His idea would evolve to become Vibe Tickets, a “free, open and transparent” peer-to-peer ticketing platform and app which seeks to stamp out fraudulent activity and tricky operators by enabling fans to bypass the current secondary ticket market.

Having started the business in 2013, Massie not only took a huge risk in starting a ‘first of its kind’ business but – as a means to deter people from using re-sale sites – took on competition from heavyweights such as Viagogo, Seatwave and Stubhub.

Creating a unique service in a global industry while dealing with competitors would prove challenging for the most accomplished of entrepreneurs but not, it would seem for Massie, whose drive to cater to the needs of genuine music and entertainment lovers has paid off.

In the past four years, his Lancashire tech start-up has enjoyed incredible success with more than £600,000 raised in crowdfunding, over 33,000 app downloads, and a community of more than 200,000 fans across social media.

Determined to spread the message that tickets should not be resold for a profit, in 2016 Massie shared a stage with Sir Richard Branson at the live finale of the VOOM 2016 ‘Pitch to Rich’ competition – fighting off competition from thousands of start-ups – to pitch to the Virgin mogul, alongside Tyra Banks and SPANX founder Sara Blakely.

A start-up built on openness and transparency, Massie has still got some way to go to beat touts and industry resellers but with new developments to improve the app, total investment raised of over £800,000, and a mission to spread #GoodVibes, we’ll be keeping a close eye on Vibe’s progress this year.