34. Accent Media

Founders: Steve Machin and Gary Fisher
Founded: May 2012 (launched September 2014)

The global ticketing industry is huge, with the entertainment, travel and sports sectors requiring the sale of large numbers of tickets, and a viable online platform to do it through.

This adds up to a multimillion pound market, which London-based Accent Media is in an unrivalled position to exploit, thanks to its acquisition of the worldwide rights to the hugely valuable “.tickets” domain, after beating $3bn corporations at auction. After a change in the way internet names could be managed in 2012, Steve Machin and Gary Fisher recognised the potential to create a more trustworthy online space to buy tickets, and take on existing online ticketing giants.

Their company, Accent Media or (Dot Tickets), sells .tickets second level domain names with security and bundled ticketing services, and owns and operates premium names such as search.tickets – which are valued at between $1,000 and $100,000 a year. The company can also build its own ticketing businesses through partnerships with industry leaders and brands if domain names are too valuable to sell, and can retain a percentage stake of businesses that acquire its domains.

The business is still in its early stages, but after closing a multimillion funding round Accent is set to prove its lucrative concept to its investors, having already signed some major deals and with plans to sell around 3,000 tickets domains in its first year of trading. This is a business with serious potential, we can’t wait to see what the future holds.

Find out more about different domain name extensions in our guide to UK domain names