Eric Baker of Viagogo

I had dinner twice last night in London. One was organized Goldman Sachs, who represented me during Ya.com’s sale to T-Online, and the other by my partners, in FON Index Ventures.

It was not easy to run from one dinner to the other with my friend and partner Tariq Krim, founder of Netvibes who is also a member of FON’s European Advisory Board. Somehow in the middle of this hectic night I found myself talking to Eric Baker of Viagogo. I was very impressed with his business model. This is what Viagogo’s site says about him:

Viagogo is the brainchild of CEO Eric Baker, the founder and former President of StubHub.com, the leading online secondary ticketing company in the United States. Baker, who left StubHub.com in 2004, is determined to bring to Europe the same benefits of secondary ticketing that he delivered to teams and fans in the United States. StubHub.com has a string of similar partnership deals with American football, basketball and ice hockey franchises.

So after he founded Stubhub, Eric Baker came to Europe to start a similar project. The market? Tickets re-sale (sports events, concerts, theaters), a market, according to what Eric told me, of 7 billion euros in Europe. Amazing.

I am sure Eric will do extremely well.. I think Viagogo will take a big part of this market and, ironically, Viagogo will play a big role in helping reduce ticket prices by creating a re-sale market.