Eventbrite gave a yoga teacher the same box office as a conference planner. Organizers set up a page, sold tickets and checked guests in at the door, and Eventbrite took a small fee on each ticket. It filed to go public in 2018, after a decade of steady growth and its recent purchase of Ticketfly, a ticketing company for music venues. Live events were booming. Eventbrite served the long tail of small organizers.

Ticketing Beyond the Arena

Julia Hartz, Kevin Hartz and Renaud Visage started Eventbrite in 2006. Back then a few large companies controlled ticketing, and they served arenas. Neighborhood venues were left out. The founders bet that the internet made it possible to serve millions of small events with the same software. Julia Hartz later became chief executive, and she led the company through its public offering.

When the Events Stopped

Eventbrite priced at $23 a share in September 2018 and jumped on its first day. Then the 2020 pandemic halted live events. The business took a hard hit, and the company cut staff to survive. It rebuilt slowly as events returned. In late 2025 the Italian software group Bending Spoons agreed to buy Eventbrite for about $500 million in cash. The deal closed in 2026.

Cover: Fireworks at Ryogoku (Ryogoku hanabi), from the series "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei)", Utagawa Hiroshige. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for fireworks over a river (live events).