Following an initially successful first season with the 49ers at Levi’s Stadium, mobile app VenueNext will look to expand outside of Silicon Valley due to some new investments.
The company announced today that they received $9 million in investments from Causeway Media, with participation from Live Nation Entertainment, Twitter, Aruba Networks and others.
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VenueNext is an app that is dedicated to providing fans with instant access to every service that a stadium offers. This goes from ticketing to ordering food to even providing a fan with directions for the nearest merchandise booth. So, a stadium-goer may scan their ticket with the same app that they use to get food delivered to their seat.
All of this data is then delivered to the venue’s owner, who can sift through the data to find concrete ways with which to improve the stadium’s operations. Levi’s Stadium hosted impressive results with the app after their first season. They reduced food and beverage prices by five percent, discovering ways for better inventory management; sold over $1.25 million worth of food, beverage, merchandise and parking; and finally they expanded the unique visitor database from 17,000 to 200,000.
With that $9 million, VenueNext will surely look to add even more features and amenities to their app. They are already looking to investment partner Twitter to perhaps include some new qualities to the app.
Causeway Media Partners, the primary investor in this round of VenueNext’s fundraising, is a three-man investment group, with a focus in sports. They have several other companies that they are partnered with, including a couple sports leagues—Street League Skateboarding and Formula E (all electric Formula 1 style racing)—and some media and marketing companies, in addition to those app-based companies.
It is touted that Orlando’s Amway Center could be VenueNext’s next home, with the company in talks with the Magic. No deal has been struck, but the five-year-old stadium would be an ideal place to test some of that newly found investment money.