London-based DICE, a fast-growing music discovery and events ticketing platform, announced that it has raised $122M (approx €104.4M) in its Series C round of funding.
Investors in this round
The round was led by new investor, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with follow-on investments from Tony Fadell’s Future Shape, Blisce, French entrepreneur Xavier Niel, Mirabaud Private Equity, Cassius and Evolution.
With the current round, Tony Fadell, iPod inventor & iPhone co-inventor, will be joining the DICE board to support further platform development and expansion into venues.
Tony Fadell says, “The concert business is a tangled mess of archaic tools and taxing ‘industry standards’ where artists are paid last. Venues shell out for marketing and are beholden to ticket conglomerates. Fans have to hunt for shows and regularly buy overpriced tickets from secondary markets or scalpers. This doesn’t make sense!”
“DICE re-engineers the entire live industry, not just a part of it: Venues are connected to fans and artists. Artists get transparency, access, and control. Fans easily discover local shows and global live streams, and buy scalper-safe tickets with a single click. I’m ecstatic to be joining the DICE board and to be part of another entertainment revolution,” adds Fadell.
Capital utilisation
The proceeds from this round will help DICE to expand its reach to artists, fans and venues, while hiring new team members, adding to its live stream offering, and launching an artist development program that will see the platform work with even more artists directly on their live strategy.
CEO & Founder of DICE, Phil Hutcheon, says, “DICE is rewiring the live experiences industry. We have proven that if you treat fans well, they go out more. We’re overhauling an unfair, inefficient system by pioneering a transparent, data-led, fan-first approach – building a scalable ecosystem that helps artists, promoters, and venues thrive. To have SoftBank as a partner enables us to expand into every market.”
Online ticketing marketplace
DICE was founded in 2014 by Phil Hutcheon. It helps fans discover and buy tickets to live shows and streams all over the world. Available in the UK, US, France, Italy, Spain, India, and Australia, and accessible to fans globally through its live stream offering, DICE is on a mission to get people out more.
Since its inception, the company has focused on remedying the opaque world of ticketing with its transparent “fan-first” model and a mobile-first platform to prevent the scalping of tickets.
DICE has clear upfront pricing, and features such as refunds on sold-out shows, and a popular “Waitlist” feature that provides fans with access to the most popular concerts and ensures that venues are at capacity, which in turn increases their revenue.
Additionally, artists no longer lose out on ticket sales as the company prevents secondary resale of tickets through its innovative technology. In 2017, DICE was credited by the UK Government in anti-scalping legislation, for its “innovative technology” that is helping to beat the scalpers.
The company has differentiated itself from competitors in its ‘unique’ focus on repeat fans, and its Discovery algorithm is responsible for over 40 per cent of tickets sold, hugely benefiting artists and venues.
DICE’s growth
Currently, the company works with over 3,600 venues, festivals, and promoters globally, including Brooklyn’s Avant Gardner and one of the world’s biggest music festivals, Primavera Sound.
In addition to physical events, when the pandemic started last year, DICE pioneered ticketed live streaming. Spanning music, arts, and culture, DICE has powered over 6,400 live streams to date.
Paid live streams gave artists direct access to fans and income around the world – to that end, DICE has set up a global network of venues to allow them to broadcast their live shows to expand their reach and commerce capabilities.
Direct access to fans is not just for live streams. DICE is empowering artists like Bicep to keep control of their touring. The electronic act grew from 300 to over 30,000 tickets per event in London as a result of their exclusive partnership with DICE.
With the current rate of growth, DICE claims to have over 49,000 artists and creators on its platform by the end of 2022.
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