Eventful, which competes with Zvents for leadership (and affiliates) in the fast changing local events marketplace, has just completed a new $10 million C round lead by Telefonica Capital. Also participating are alumni investors, including Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Bay Partners. In all, $19.6 million has been raised.
CEO Jordan Glazier notes that the company now has 1,200 partners using the API and syndicating data, including The LA Times, Topix, Ripple TV and leading mobile application providers such as Earthcomber, Loopt and uLocate. More than eight million users have registered for the service, and there are typically six- to-eight million events to choose from.
The new money will basically be used for expanding sales and marketing, says Glazier. “We are expanding our lead in the local events space, kicking in on monetization, and our revenue is growing, for both online and mobile.” There has been especially strong interest in the company’s iPhone application, he says.
In addition to announcing the new round, Eventful has also announced a new comprehensive marketing deal with Ticketmaster that includes reciprocal advertising, direct access to Ticketmaster sales, and use of Eventful’s community features, including its email matching platform, which sends targeted email to users based on their stated interests. Indeed, music events are the real backbone of the service, although author and comedian appearances also score high.
Another top feature is Eventful’s “demand” service, which allows users to vote to bring a musician or other public figure to a community. 50,000 performers have registered for the service, and 75,000 “demand” events have taken place already.
The demand feature has been especially active for politics in this presidential election year. The Obama campaign has used the service to mail out 2.5 million emails to help strategize where the Obama-Biden ticket should make appearances. The campaign has received 131,854 “demands” in 8,034 communities.