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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Ticket Firm Adds Social to Sports

The event ticket management firm previously known as TicketManager has re-named and re-branded itself as InviteManager to better reflect the services it offers clients. The name change took effect this month for the Calabasas company. Chief Executive Tony Knopp plans to make a big marketing push around the initials of the new name – IM – with slogans such as “IM Innovation.” “It helps to identify what (clients) are doing with our brand,” Knopp said. The privately held company was founded in 2007 and has received $28.5 million in funding from Point Judith Capital in Boston, Kayne Partners in Los Angeles and other investors. The company’s product started out as a software platform for managing tickets – sports, concerts, theater, etc. – used by companies to entertain clients. In time the service expanded to include finding, requesting, approving and distributing those tickets. The software also tracks which employees and clients attended specific events and whether sales resulted. “This is enabling them to understand who is utilizing those services and why, and the (return on investment) that comes with providing those services,” Knopp said. Quantifying entertainment spending is a big piece of what InviteManager can do for clients, which include American Express Co., FedEx Corp. and Oracle Corp. The software can generate more than 200 reports measuring the effectiveness of taking clients to events, dinners and conferences. “Even if it’s not sports tickets, people are taking (clients) to dinner, they are taking them out to golf, they are taking them to a concert or festival or to a table for 10 (at an event),” Knopp said. Another important feature of InviteManager is in cutting the red tape associated with the regulations governing client entertaining. Understanding IRS sections or the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act when it comes to expensing tickets, dinners and other entertainment can be complicated. The InviteManager service can remove any doubt about that value, Knopp said. – Mark R. Madler

Mark Madler
Mark Madler
Mark R. Madler covers aviation & aerospace, manufacturing, technology, automotive & transportation, media & entertainment and the Antelope Valley. He joined the company in February 2006. Madler previously worked as a reporter for the Burbank Leader. Before that, he was a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago and several daily newspapers in the suburban Chicago area. He has a bachelor’s of science degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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