Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - Buying a $1Million Tickets Brokering Business Deal and Lifetime Masters Golf Tickets - Acquisitions Anonymous 290

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

In this episode of Acquisitions Anonymous, Mills, Heather and Bill reveal a fascinating deal: a 35-year-old online ticket brokering business with a unique twist. The company specializes in the secondary market for highly sought-after event tickets, bragging a devoted clientele and generating substantial revenue. However, the deal comes with its own set of challenges and risks. While the business offers lucrative opportunities, particularly with its affiliate program for travel agents, there are concerns about its transferability, dependence on speculative ticket purchases, and potential legal issues with ticket resale. We explore various angles, highlighting the pros and cons of acquiring such a business and offering insights into the complexities of evaluating and structuring deals in similar markets. Check out the listing here: https://www.websiteclosers.com/businesses/35-year-online-ticket-brokering-company-secondary-marketplace-for-concert-sporting-event-theater-tickets-sba-pre-qualified-80-000-affiliates/109347/Thanks to this episode's sponsor: Have you thought about exiting your current online business or buying one to start a new journey as an entrepreneur but have no idea where to start? Unlock business opportunities with Boopos.com!  Boopos is the #1 platform for buying and selling profitable online businesses with built-in acquisition financing for qualified buyers. At Boopos.com, you can source opportunities from Boopos exclusive listings and other marketplaces or bring your own proprietary deal flow for approval. Boopos can offer pre-approved financing for recurring revenue businesses, allowing you to access fast funding with no personal guarantees. Want to find out more? Go to go.boopos.com/michaelgirdley, sign up, and get qualified to sell your business or find your next deal.---Learn how to buy a business.If you are interested in buying a business but unsure how to start, you should check Michael's Buy a Business Course.You will learn:• Build a thesis for the type of business that's right for you‍• Learn how to stand out in a sea of buyers• Create a working, scalable Deal Engine getting you leads• Maximize your chances of finding great dealsShow Notes: 00:00 Intro 02:30 Heather's business trip 04:18 A Ticket brokering business 10:25 One-man business challenges11:19 Dropshipping inventory13:06  Speculation Business16:47 Travel +events + Affiliates18:49 Ins and Outs of the Business22:14 Is this a Pre-qualified business?24:56 How Mills would run this business29:36 Final Thoughts31:48 Thumbs up /Thumbs downSubscribe to weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking here Do you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show! Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations. For inquiries or suggestions, email us at [e-mail]

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Acquisitions Anonymous, the internet's number one podcast on buying, selling, and operating small businesses. And this week is Masters Week. So if you just watch the Masters wrap up yesterday on Sunday, April 14th, we've got a fun deal for you. This is one of the largest ticket brokers of Masters tickets out there. We've been based in Augusta, Georgia. We have some speculations to who it might be. This business proved controversial among the host today. It's me and Heather and Mills. One of us loves it. One of us hates it. And one is ambivalent. There are a couple different, it's kind of a few different businesses within a business. If you're curious about the ticket brokerage industry, this is an episode. I think you'll really enjoy. So without further

do, here's this week's episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. Have you thought about exiting your current online business or buying one to start a new journey as an entrepreneur, but you have no idea where to start? You can unlock business opportunities with bupos.com. Boopos is the number one platform for buying and selling profitable online businesses and the first with built-in acquisition and financing for qualified buyers. At bootpost.com, you can source opportunities from boot posts exclusive listings, other marketplaces, or bring your own proprietary deal flow for approval. Bootposts can offer pre-approved financing for recurring revenue businesses, allow you to access fast funding with no personal guarantees. Do note, this is their biggest differentiator.

So what do you need to sign up as a seller or buyer? Sellers, your business needs to meet these thresholds, 24 months operating your business, trailing 12 months revenue over 100K and 18 plus months of track record. A buyer you need to share your credit score if you're looking for financing, proof of funds, and sharing your LinkedIn profile. And that's it. Whether you're an entrepreneur looking for the right opportunity to acquire and establish profitable business or a founder looking to exit and sell your business at the right valuation

with dedicated support, Boopo's expert M&A advisory team is on hand to help you through every stage of the process. Want to find out more? Go to go.boopos.com slash Michael Gurdley, sign up and get qualified to sell your business or find your next deal. All right. We got the trio here today on Acquisitions Anonymous, Heather and Mills. How are you guys doing? Hey, Bill. I'm good. I'm done with about five weeks of business travel. So I'm happy to be back in Southern California. Heather, it's actually sunny too. Heather, I'm dying. Talk to good weather.

What do you know now about ETA that you did in five weeks ago? Mostly the people that I get to get to talk to and some of the stories that I get from them. I don't think I learned anything new about ETA, actually. But I did meet a lot of great people that, some of which I had already known just on the phone, but it's always great to connect with people in person. So we had a great time. That's so cool. And where did you go, Heather?

Gosh, I went to a conference in Scott Steele. Then I went to the BYU ETA conference. We sponsored that. Then I did the Harvard ETA classroom, which I always love. It's super interesting. Then we did the UCLA ETA event. That was here locally, but a long, long drive for us. And then ultimately, New York for the Columbia ETA classroom.

And also we hosted a meetup at the Axial headquarters. So we were super busy. We did a lot. Heather, you're from all? Yeah. Roller warrior, for sure. And for people listening, this is all for Heather's business, Vizzo Capital, who helps acquisition entrepreneurs connect with SBA loans.

So that's why she put it in the five weeks on the road. That's right. Was it just for fun, although it was fun. I bet. Which also means if you are listening to this and you are an entrepreneur who needs an SBA loan, Heather, as you go too. So you can drop her. I think you find her at visocap.net if you need to ask me.

Thank you. And we're super excited. We just launched some software for our folks to use, make modeling easier, and just and the whole lender Q&A portion of it easier. So we're super excited about all the efficiencies we're getting from that. Awesome. All right. Well, I don't have a cute segue from that to our deal today.

But it is an interesting deal today. Mills, you brought this one to us. Yeah. This one caught my eye. It's website closers. And it's a 35-year online ticket brokering company. And my first question was, how can you do online ticket brokerage for 35 years? But maybe they modified their business.

But it's a secondary marketplace for concert, sporting event, and theater tickets, SBA pre-qualified, which is Heather's favorite. And they have 80,000 affiliates, which is just nuts. So it says website closers presents 35-year-old ticket brokering. business specializing in the secondary market for sought after concert, sporting events, theater seats garnered a reputation of the highest caliber built with a devoted clientele and distinguish itself from rivals through honesty, transparency, exceptional customer support. The market in recent years, the demand for sporting events has surged. People are scrambling to find seats. I'm kind of summarizing as I go here, but basically supply and demand and balance.

People want tickets. They're hard to find, and this company helps you find them. So it says the company website displays between two and three billion dollars worth of tickets at any given time. Like, what's the big one in this space? Stubhub. Stubhub. Like, that's what I feel like we're talking about right now. But maybe that's many multiples.

I don't stub up for selling website closers. Yeah. Yeah. It makes me think, right? I mean, what are they doing? Like $80 billion worth of tickets at any given time? Let's see, most clients, it's like most competitors mislead clients by hiding substantial fees, which I have heard people talk about, like the fees just, you know, debt by 1,000 cuts.

So they list tickets at their total all-inclusive price and they built a reputation for good customer support. It says many consumers have called the company for nearly 36 years to gather information or advice about whether or not it's a good time to buy tickets. They are accessible daily via phone, text, messages, email, and live chat until 10 p.m. Sounds like a very on-demand business, you know, not quite 24-7, but close to it. The key value proposition of the business is that they are the only one offering travel agents, a dedicated opportunity to earn a commission. The owners judiciously implemented an affiliate program for these professionals, whereby they each have a personalized website to send their clients to and receive a percentage of the sale.

This has proven incredibly lucrative and contributed to over $2 million in revenue in 2023 alone. They have more than 80,000 affiliates and they're adding approximately 100 a day. That's actually really impressive. I think that this is probably just good old grassroots like business development. How do you get 80,000 travel agents? It's probably a lot of experimentation. But all right, the tickets are-

Are there 80,000 travel agents, remaining in the world in 2024? We need somebody to fact check this for us and let us know because that, I mean, yeah, probably, right? I would think so, Bill, because you could have a lot of stay-at-home moms who are also a travel agent on the side and, like, don't actually occupy an office, you know, eight hours a day. Well, for what is worth, the National Bureau of Labor and Statistics, which is the top result in Google for this, says that traveling, that there are 50,000 people employed in this

industry in the entire United States. Somebody is lying. It's either the Bureau of Labor Statistics, BLS.gov, or website closers. Yeah, and this, I'm on BLS.com right here. So, I don't know. I cannot wait for somebody to do a deep dive on this forest. All right, tickets sourcing. Tickets are procured in various ways, primarily inventory.

is shared to the website through an API with a prominent open ticket distribution platform that has over a thousand other resellers uploading to them. They also buy stock purchase from season ticket holders for major sports leagues like MLB, NFL, NHL, and NBA. They also work with popular associates who have access to larger groups of tickets for major events like World Series and Super Bowl. They buy them through the general public and Masters golf tournament. This is very appropriate.

The Masters just ended. We're recording on Monday, and it just ended yesterday. We should have released this episode like a week ago. That would have been better. But Masters Golf Tournament badges are also acquired from patrons. Let's see. Their top seller is the Masters. Wow, this is getting better and better.

It counts for 25% of sales and 35% of their net margins. Super Bowl follows popularity, contributing between 10 and 50% 15% of annual revenue at 15% margins. $2 million is derived from sales for miscellaneous events, which presents tremendous growth potential. Yeah, I would say so. That would be how you want to grow this thing. They allocate a minimal budget marketing, and the travel agent arm was developed through grassroots efforts to get the brand recognized in that industry.

Let's see any other highlights here before I go on too long. two full-time employees work in the capacities of data entry and bookkeeping and a part-time member works in sales. So you basically have two and a half full-time employees. Asking price is $7 million, cash flow of $1.1 million, and their revenue or gross income, they call it, is just a little over $9 million. They've been around since 1989. Four employees, including the seller, it sounds like.

So they're asking, you know, a little under a seven times multiple. What do you guys think about this one? Can you imagine how much the owner's hair must be on fire in this business? I mean, this guy is doing $9 million of revenue selling tickets to every event under the sun. It sounds like his personal cell phone number is like out there in the world for all the buyers. And he has functionally no help. Yikes. And he's been doing it, by the way, for $30.

five years. So this stuff is like absolutely second nature to him. Like, I am picturing coming to this business and like your phone literally melting from all the notifications and you don't know what, and you're like drowning. This is terrifying to me. Yeah. And it's incredible. Like this guy would be like the godfather of getting master's tickets. You know, like two weeks ago, this guy was probably, it sold through all of his inventory and he's just ready to go like muck it up. at the Masters. But, you know, for the probably two or three months before the Masters, his hair is on fire because people are like, no, I'll pay you $10,000. No, I'll pay you $15,000. Like just hurling money at him to get past. Yeah. Right. I mean, what's interesting about this

business is it seems so unlike my world, it seems like it's a combination of what I would call drop ship and taking on inventory. So he said they're connected with a bunch of ticket marketplaces, included a major, major prominent open ticket distribution platform. So this is basically like a whole bunch of different ticket brokers sharing revenue. And then if somebody sells the ticket, it connects in the back end to the guy who actually has the ticket. And the guy who actually has the ticket sells the ticket to the customer and the person who found the customer is making a commission, you know, along the way. And never actually takes possession of the ticket or does only minimally or, you know, I'm sure it's all technically automated. So that's like functionally drop shipping.

I would bet the margins are less on that part. But it says they also have this bit where stock is purchased from season ticket holders and the master's badges are requiring from patrons and all that stuff where it seems like there is capital at risk here, which this is like running, you know, a fruit business where all your stuff has an expiration date of a couple months. And if you hold it too long, it goes to zero. So the level's sophistication to hold into. inventory in the tickets business is so much higher than it is to broker tickets in the ticket

business. So that to me is right where I would go to on the diligence is how much capital do I have to have at risk at any one time as far as inventory. What are my margins like when I do risk my own capital versus what are my margins like when I don't want to use the brokers? I imagine the only way he's gotten access to this many master's tickets is through risking his own capital. I just didn't understand that right away. Yeah. And a lender would too. I mean, what they're doing effectively from a lender's perspective is speculating on those tickets. You know, like you said, they have a finite life and he's got to know, or this owner has got to know what price to pay for them. That's really huge because they've got to have a sense of how

much they can sell them for. And they might have to sell some at a loss sometimes. I'm sure it's happened. I'm sure this is the kind of business where you can go back and kind of dig through the historicals and find out that sometimes they weren't buying at the right price and they had to sell at a loss. So I think it's basically like speculating in a sense. I think that's really tough for at least an SBA lender to underwrite something like that. Well, I think it's also hard because you are exactly right. You're speculating. You're probably make your money on the buy. You get a good deal on these tickets and you kind of know what they're worth and you're going to make money on the spread. Transferring that knowledge, like, do you know what, you know, I don't know, Bruce Springsteen goes for in Minneapolis versus what the Rolling Stones go for in Tampa?

You know, the amount of, you know, tribal knowledge there. And the other thing is you are competing against technology is 2024. You're competing against technology and AI that knows how to price this stuff to perfection. So, like, I mean, I'd imagine like this is essentially trying to compete against high frequency traders. Like you try to play against stub up in this market. You're going to lose. You know, they know exactly what it's worth. And if you're paying more than them, you're probably wrong.

Unless, though, this guy, like now where the outfit would be is, does this guy have a hookup at the Masters and how is he, you know, that no one else can touch? But then the question is, does that transfer to you? Or is it this guy, is this guy member at Augusta National or, you know, who knows? Yeah. Yeah, that part of the business is kind of scary to me. Go ahead, Mills. Yeah, no, I agree. And, you know, Augusta National is ruthless. I mean, people get escorted out and said they can never come back again if you run at the course. Yeah. As, you know, just a viewer, just as a person who's there.

I just put this thing in the chat, though, you guys, that's from the Augusta Press. And I don't know if this is the guy or not, but this is where I'm picturing. This guy's name is Jimmy D. and he sells tickets. Bill's going to pull it up for people who are on YouTube. But Jimmy D. sets up on Washington Road in Augusta and has been reselling tickets for the Masters for 30 years out there. He lives in Miami and he comes to town for this.

If this isn't the guy, this is his twin. I mean, this is the same thing almost, except obviously the business we're talking about is much more online. this guy is a little bit more boots on the ground and sets up a tent in like a motel parking lot that they let him rent space. It seems like there's some ambiguity what I'm getting. And I know people who know a lot more about this because Augusta is an hour away from us. And a lot of people come to stay in Columbia because there's better just accommodations and food and stuff like that. But like this is a very gray area. I think that, you know, Augusta National is just ruthless.

And so this is 25% of your business and 35% of your net income that, you know, could go away overnight if they decide that they want to actually enforce some of this. Yeah, it used to be called ticket scalping when I was young. Yes. Yeah. Now it's called ticket brokering. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, the part about the business that looks interesting to me, like the master's part looks really.

scary for all the reasons we just mentioned. The part that looked interesting was the travel agents, even though they may have overestimated how many there are. I've looked at a business before that was around marathon running and travel. They kind of blended the two. So if you wanted to run a race, but you wanted to also combine it with travel, go somewhere cool to run the race, they helped you kind of plan that out. And they were actually looking at acquiring a more travel agency kind of business to kind of blend the two even more. So I think there's a trend towards, you know, combining travel with events more than just regular tourism that I think this company is taking advantage of in some way. That's interesting to me. I want to learn more

about that. Yeah, I mean, they said it's doing about two million bucks of revenue comes from the travel agent or the affiliate side. I mean, the first thing I'm doing is diligence whether these affiliates are actually travel agents or whether it's a bunch of Google AdWords arbitrages. But if that business is growing fast, I mean, how is this guy? I mean, this again comes back to staffing this business. He's got like minimal help. And he has somehow built up a system that is generating 100 new leads a day for affiliates. And he's built it to two million bucks a year of revenue of the nine that he has. So this is, you know, a good 25% of his business is this affiliate side, you know, I think what you've got here is like several businesses in one that you

have to diligence separate. You have the master's business. You have the affiliates business. You have the API like drop what I call the drop ship business. And then you've also got the balance sheet intensive speculation business. We're making tickets on your balance sheet. So I mean, I see four businesses in one here that you have to diligence and understand separately. Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah. And since the bulk of the one point, One really is the masters. That's what you're paying for in the price. And it seems a little rich.

I mean, this is ripe for some sort of revenue share, apprenticeship. I mean, like, what you should do is go work for this dude for two years. Learn tricks to the trade and gradually buy end of the business. I mean, you can't just cannonball into this on day one. And hope Jimmy D calls you back when you want to know what the accurate price for the Sons versus Clippers is, you know. I think what you hope, right? And I'm not so naive to think this is that you get more info on this business and you realize

there actually is a website and like there is some back in that is doing most of this. But I would give that like a less than 5% chance. You know, I think it is mostly this guy. And when you meet, I mean, I bought tickets one time for my wife's uncle in Charlotte Bill, this uncle that I've told you about. And he's like, oh, yeah, just meet my guy, meet my ticket guy. Call him when you're on the way up here to go to like the hornets or whatever. And I call the guy.

And he's like, yeah, just meet me at this exit. Get off the exit on, you know, the off ramp. Go straight across and meet me on the on ramp. And I'll be parked in my Buickla Saber, you know, and I'll just hand you the tickets. Like, this is the world, you know, that these guys operate in. And they are just so, you're right. They have so much institutional knowledge about like, hey, two weeks out, the ticket is worth this, but they're doing like, you know, a beautiful mind kind of stuff in their head.

One week out, it's worth this, but they have all these events, all the different pricing dynamics. Oh, all of a sudden there's rain in the forecast. The whole pricing model changes. Like, they do all that just instantaneously. Right. Yeah. Yes. I mean, this is the classic, I think Brand Bishra calls it the hustler with help.

Right? Like the classic. Like, this guy is a hustler. and he's got a couple part-time remote people doing data entry, customer service, etc. And this guy, I mean, bless him, has willed a $9 million revenue, $1.1 million, ebidot business into existence, kept it that way for 30 years. I'm sure he has done well. It's just so hard to transfer these things.

This is like a perfect example. You know, everybody talks about the silver tsunami and like all these businesses have to transfer over the next couple decades. This is a perfect example of why I think the Silver tsunami argument is overblown. Yes, you're just right. This guy is right there in all those numbers. Every metric you see about small business owners and he's got a couple employees, he's got $9 million revenue, he's got a million plus and EBITDA.

And like if you don't know anything about the business and you just look at the income standard, you go, this is one of those Silver tsunami businesses, some searcher is going to buy. And then you learn about it and you go, there might not be any enterprise value here at all. Like, I don't know if this is transferable. Just considering the guy he's hustler with help. The only way you'd knew that, like, there's no debt on this thing. I mean, you would be insane to borrow money to buy this, but you would, like, you've got

to struck, you've got to do some sort of apprenticeship take over. But that's really hard because he doesn't have anyone in the business that can do that. So you got to come in cold, you know, say, I'm going to do a couple years of my life. He's got to trust you to do that. it's got to work out. You know, these things are tough to transfer. They really are. All right.

Bull case, though. You go ahead. Yeah, well, they are advertising SBA prequalified, as you know, one of my favorite things. And you just said it. This probably shouldn't have any debt on it because it's a really scary transfer. Even if you were to get an SBA loan, they're asking $7 million. You can't afford more than about 3.7 turns of EBITDA on an SBA basis these days. Or you won't have enough DSCR debt service coverage rate.

ratio. That's about $4 million here. And they're asking seven. So someone wants to come along and put $3 million of equity if they were to pay this price. So it makes you kind of question, what sort of pre-qualification is that? That's not really anything. And I doubt that the lender really spent any time thinking about, is this business really transferable? But their underwriter sure will if they ever, you know, if you get this under LOI, you go into a loan process. The next group of people in the bank is going to start asking those questions and it's probably going to be a no on the financing. Heather, is this one of those like blacklisted businesses too? Like I know that there's just a certain, you know, sets of categories like it can't be,

you know, vice businesses. It can't be like payday lending. It can't be any money lending, right? Would this be one of those categories, ticket brokering or something like that? It feels like it's in the gray area because they speculate. There is a, there is a, rule like against businesses that speculate like a real estate developer, that's speculation, that's not allowed. I would think it's kind of in a gray area. You could argue both ways a little bit here, but once have lender really understood what they're doing and it's such a big percentage of sales, I think whether eligible or not, most lenders would just not want to lend here. It's too risky. Yeah. And there could be, to your point, how does he pay for that stock,

that inventory? Is he using a line of credit? Now, I've seen a few. businesses. I've talked to a few people lately where I said it's not transferable primarily because you're never going to get that specialty line of credit that the seller has. I've seen some deals where a seller was doing some equipment rental and equipment. Yeah, it was like equipment rental, basically. And he used a line of credit to buy the equipment and to hold it. And the buyer is a new buyer to that business is never going to qualify for a line of credit like that. That lender's not going to do it. So, I always look for, if there's specialty financing required, that's really kind of unique,

that's probably not a transferable business. The new buyer is not going to get it, especially if they're going to be putting SBA-type leverage on the balance sheet at the same time. The other lender is just not going to want to deal with a new person and more leverage on the balance sheet. All right. Both case on this. All right.

Because I actually kind of like this. All right. At a reasonable price, okay, that's the huge caveat. the beginning at a reasonable price. You basically work one month out of the year doing the master's, which people like, there's professionals in every industry who would fall all over themselves to be the guy holding all the cards when it comes to master's tickets. That would be incredibly valuable in a few different ways. But you basically streamline this business down to maybe travel agents. You're no longer the hustler with the cell phone. You're just

plugging travel agents into this ticket sharing API and you're just borrowing somebody else's back end and you do the Masters one month out of the year and maybe your revenue goes to half, right? You get 25% of the revenue, which, you know, give or take, let's just say it's about two, two and a half million bucks in revenue from the Masters and then, you know, another two million dollars and growing on the, you know, travel agent referral. And then anything else that you just point to the API is incidental, but you're not the guy who's just constantly answering his phone and hustling in his head. And at a reasonable price, you're probably working like maybe two months out of the year. As a small, maybe you can split the business up mills. Maybe you can take the

all the other stuff that's not what you described, sell it off at a reasonable price and just ride into the sunset as the master's guy until you die. Or, I mean, worst case, you just shudder it, Right. I mean, you would have to basically due diligence this with this seller and say, this is the only part that is viable. And so there's a, you know, a reflection of that in the purchase price. There's a lot of volatility around making this transition. I'm your guy. You know, I will, I will be here and I will ride shotgun with you as we navigate this transition. And you've got to compensate me for the risk that I'm taking with a reduction in purchase price. But this is the best possible path to you getting any liquidity from this thing if you ever want to, like,

have your phone separate. Yeah. I think that would be super fun. If I was unemployed right now, I'm going to be on the pizza boat in the Caribbean and you're going to be on the side of the road in Augusta, Georgia selling master tickets. Yeah.

You got it. Well, but there's got to be, I mean, to your point, though, Mills, right? Like, there's got to be a successor of this thing somewhere.

Like somebody who is wired in with the golf club and loves the math. the masters and wants to live in Augusta and do this thing to your point, a couple months a year. Like, there's got to be somebody he can bring into Apprentice and hand us them down to. I think the big risk is, like, I found another article earlier about this where Augusta National sent a letter to a season ticket holder, which they closed. They closed. I think there's some crazy thing. Like, they closed the, you can get in the lottery and win them, but like for the actual annual passes. They closed it in like 1978. The wait list was so long. You just can't

get in. You have to get in the lottery. I think it's a, you know, one and two hundred chance every year or something like that for just a regular ticket, season tickets for a day. But there was this article where Augusta National had sent this letter to somebody and said, hey, we became aware that

you were selling your tickets through a third party and you're off the list down. You can't come back and we're going to refund you $150. Oh. Because the base value of the tickets like the actual sticker price is not that. I mean, Augusta National makes almost all of their money on the TV rights. That's where the bulk of it is. It's not on the, you know, permitted cheese and exiled sandwiches. Yeah. So what you're saying, though, is that this

business kind of operates on violating the rules, at least the ticket holders who are selling the ticket. So, I mean, would you have legal diligence? Yeah, I think it is figureoutable. But I think it is probably in a gray area. But I think there's enough things like this that Augusta National knows, right, somebody has to buy and sell these tickets. There's another rule that I saw just in the quick Googling while we've been recording is that you can't buy and sell them within 2,700 feet of the entrance because they don't

want it to be that typical like thing where, you know, people are just holding tickets up in the air because it dilutes the perceived value. Interesting. All right. So there's two businesses here. There's the master's business and the and the Roller's four businesses. But let's simplify it to the master's business and the ticket brokerage and speculation business.

Do you think the master's business we agree with you need an apprentice or something like this? You know, does the ticket brokerage business trade? You know, maybe not with debt, but you think this, this is viable? Makes you wonder why a bigger, you know, a bigger player hasn't done this. Like, do they need it? Does it actually take away from them? If StubHub owns all of the kind of back-in and inventory, if they own the marketplace,

do they need this? This is just a referral source and they might cut out a little bit of like revenue share. Probably not. Yeah, I wonder, like, maybe it's just, I don't want to call it a bottom feeder because that's not fair, but it's like an eddy feeder. You know, like maybe they've got carved out some type of SEO. They've figured out, they've got a niche of buy-beard. that got good prices on this website at one point, and so it keeps checking it.

You know, and these businesses exist in the eddy feeders exist in every industry, right? And the behemots just don't notice them because they're, the stubbub is like, we're numbers one, two, and four on Google. And these guys are three and some other small fish is six. And, you know, and you just don't worry about it as stub hub. Because stubbub is like they can't allocate an intern to steal this guy's $9 million worth of revenue. You know, so he lives in the Eddie and he has a nice business. But the thing about Eddie feeder businesses, though, is they can be very hard to grow because

you rent smack it to stub up. And it's not that stubbub squashes you. It's just like you run into stub hub and bounce off. Yeah. You know, like you can't outrank, you can't move from number four on Google to number three because you'll never outrank stub up. You can't ever get, you know, a certain, more than a certain number of critical mass of tickets because stub hub is the market.

and that people just go there and they price better. And, you know, so a lot of times that Eddie feeders can be really good, small businesses, but is really tough to greater growth thesis form. Yeah, and you're not even big enough to be in their crosshairs. Like, you're the fly, you know, that's buzzing around their ass. And, you know, they're just like, we didn't even know you were there. Correct. So at the end of this episode, we're going to give thumbs up, thumbs down.

Are you getting the book on this business or are you moving on to the next one? Heather, we'll start with you. Of course, the lender is going to say thumbs down. It's illegal. It's, you know, the SBA won't qualify. You know, I don't want to go sit in the heat in Augusta. Oh, no. Definitely not.

Heather's out. Heather's out, retired to the worm farm. Yeah. Mills, in or out. Two thumbs in, man. I can't wait to get the book on this. I'm dying to know. If it's Jimmy D, I'm going to look him up.

All right. Mills is in. So if you stop hearing Mills on the podcast, it is because he is on the side of the road. And he got to Georgia, no closer than 2,700 feet to Augusta National, slaying tickets with Jimmy D. Hey, you know what? Bill, the podcast is going to be a huge referral source because you know who wants tickets to Augustin National? Everybody.

And I'm going to be there. That's right. And, you know, we can afford them small business owners who listen to these podcasts. So Jimmy D, if you'd like to sponsor the podcast, you know where to find us. For me, I am out on this one too hard pile for me. Just too hard pile. Very interesting business, but I'm out on the too hard pile. All right.

Well, that wraps up another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. So here is what you all can do if you listen. If you like our friendly banter about M&A deals, here's what you need to help tell a friend about our podcast, someone that's interested in small business. you can follow us on Twitter and on YouTube, our main platforms. And if you are out there and you need an SBA loan, Heather is your go-to. So drop Heather an email at bizocap.net. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you on the next episode of Acquisitions and Honors.