Vivid Seats Inc. (NASDAQ:SEAT) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Dan Kurnos: It’s clearly showing the number, Stan. I guess the follow-up, I guess, on the AEG stuff, I mean, what is your appetite for further primary rather than secondary, or is this, as you said, more just a unique customer acquisition play?

Stan Chia: Yes, I think the appetite is always there for great deals that are accretive to us and wins for our partners, right? So I don’t know that I’d look at it as primary or secondary. I think I’d look at this as we bring great marketplace technology to the ecosystem with an ability to drive value to those who need distribution, as well as being able to allow sellers and fans to participate greatly. And I think, we found a great partner in the AEG who was willing to construct that deal in a way that made sense for both us and them, and wherever those opportunities exist, will be really aggressive in pursuing them.

Dan Kurnos: Intelligent deals in this marketplace. That’s a novelty. All right, Stan, appreciate it. Nice talking to you guys.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Maria Ripps with Canaccord. Your line is now open.

Maria Ripps: Great. Thanks so much for taking my questions. First, I just wanted to follow up on international. Could you maybe give us a little bit more color on the building blocks of your international infrastructure investments? What are some, maybe, some of those sort of more intense aspects of the investment cycle? And then any color you can share on the potential sort of markets that you have in mind?

Stan Chia: Yes, I think Maria, yes, I think it’s no small feat to certainly internationalize the platform. And I’m really excited and proud of the work that the team’s already done so far this year. As you mentioned, there are key building blocks that you have to build and invest in to be able to scalably launch across markets. And so I think about that as just as simple as it sounds, language capabilities that extend into the platform on the buy side, on the sell side, on the support and service side, making sure we understand, I think currency, again, on the buy side, the sell side, into making sure that we can both receive and remit payments, understanding local regulatory environments and ensuring compliance across the platform, right?

I think, if you look at those as the very large building blocks to make sure that the platform scales, that certainly takes up a lot of the investment work and then being able to then, customize that in a scalable manner to the markets that we decide to go live in is probably the later piece. And again, I think everything we’re seeing so far, we remain really excited about the ability and on track to do that before the end of the year. And as you talk about markets, we’ve looked across, I think, the landscape and certainly as others in the space have discussed, there’s just, I think, great opportunities across multiple markets. And so I think as we look at the international landscape, we’ll certainly be excited and happy to talk more about it as we start to go live.

Maria Ripps: That’s very helpful. And then secondly, sort of with generally stronger than expected Q1, how should we think about the seasonality of GOV and revenue sort of this year in context of your full year guidance?

Stan Chia: Yes, I think no significant shifts in how we think about the year, but I would highlight some of those exogenous reasons that we tend to shy away from giving precise quarterly guidance. Data peer in Q1, for example, pretty good, super bold dynamic with Las Vegas as a destination, pretty robust ticket prices corresponding to that. A pretty good college football playoff matchup, a lot of hype and interest around the NCAA tournament. So some of those particularly in sports, call it exogenous matchup driven, elements fell our way. And so in the spectrum of Q1 relative to the full year, we probably came in a little bit more robust than if those had gone the other way.

Maria Ripps: Got it. Thank you so much.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Matt Farrell with Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.

Matt Farrell: Thanks for letting me ask a question and congrats on the strong start of the year. Really exciting to hear about the momentum in women’s sports here at the end of Q1. I guess maybe as we think about the rest of the year and moving forward, how should we be thinking about the tailwind of women’s sports more broadly and maybe even hitting on maybe some of the second tier sports as well and just growth you’re seeing in those on the platform?

Stan Chia: Yes, thanks Matt. So I guess I’d start with sports represents a little under 40% of our GOV collectively. Within that, there’s multiple verticals across each of the major professional leagues, college basketball, college football, soccer, and then now as we think about the other sports category. So I’d dimensionalize that if you think about six or seven major pillars within a portion of the business that’s roughly 40%, you can think about any one pillar into high single digits of our overall GOV. What we’ve certainly seen is a lot of tailwinds behind soccer, tailwinds behind fighting, UFC in particular, but also some ex-[Indiscernible] cross-wrestling and then women’s sports. And so you can think of those tailwinds as probably driving well above category growth rates, but the overall adjustments you make just given the respective shares of each of these leagues represents of our sports book, which is a minority of our overall GOV position.

So a nice tailwind probably wouldn’t design a financial model around.

Matt Farrell: And then you’ve hit on a lot of the revenue synergies from the recent acquisitions, but anything you could add on the cost side and synergies there, is it helping to offset some of the investments internationally at all? Thanks.

Stan Chia: Yes, I’d say in both instances we acquired businesses that were, I think, run on the lean side of the spectrum. There are definitely pockets here and there where we’re able to consolidate some functions and capabilities, drive some efficiency, drive some shared learnings, bring vendors together to get some bundling benefits just from our stale. But I would characterize those as clearly secondary to the strategic and revenue opportunities that we’ve articulated.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Cameron Mansson-Perrone with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.