The wait is over for Taylor Swift fans. Tickets for T-Swift's "Reputation" stadium tour are officially on sale, and Ticketmaster is helping her fight the fraud bots. Together, the pair created an exclusive program called "Taylor Swift Tix". Amy Howe, COO at Ticketmaster joined us to discuss how it not only helps the company and the artist, but also the fans.
One problem plaguing the ticket industry is scalpers and fraudulent bots. The goal of the exclusive program is to ensure tickets get directly into the hands of fans. Ticketmaster issued a warning about unofficial sellers who offer to sell tickets before they even have them.
Howe also touched on Ticketmaster's collaboration with the NFL. With the NFL playoffs around the corner, Ticketmaster is working to make sure fans get access to tickets using its 100% Verified Tickets platform, which ensures the ticket is real. The deal also marks a transition to the first fully digital ticketing system in sports.
Neonvest is a platform connecting startups and entrepreneurs with experts in the VC space. The startup says it's in the process of raising a seed round of approximately $2.5 million from a mix of angel and institutional investors. Aakash Shah, co-founder of NeonVest, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
The Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy company invested $80 million in Verdox Inc. to facilitate efficient, lower-cost technolog to remove carbon from the air and emission sources. CEO of Verdox, Brian Baynes, joined Cheddar News to discuss the investment, how the company's tech works, and where he sees it going. "We anticipate that with technologies like ours, we potentially can get to the scale of about a million tons per year within 5-10 years," he said. "And then ultimately we need to be doing this at the scales of billions of tons per year and ultimately about 10 billion tons per year in the year 2050."
Amazon closed its deal to buy MGM's many content brands for $8.5 billion, and Michael Pachter, a managing director at Wedbush Securities, joined Cheddar News to discuss the e-commerce giant's second-largest acquisition to date and how he thinks it will all pay off. "To make a movie today, you just can't even think about it for less than 30 million bucks, so 4,000 movies, I mean that's several billion dollars worth of assets," he said, noting how it would also add to Amazon's little-known ad-supported IMDb TV service. "I don't know that the IMDb TV guys actually talk to the Amazon Prime Video guys, but a lot of content, it makes the value of a Prime subscription much, much greater, and people are far, far less likely to churn even if they're only buying one package every three months."
Beer brand Heineken recently revealed its foray into the metaverse was something of a joke, but how serious are brands taking the latest craze in general? Cheddar's Alex Vuocolo takes a closer look.
Christina Cacioppo, CEO and Co-Founder of Vanta, joins ChedHER to discuss the importance of a security team for startups, and gives advice to other female founders out there.
