We initiate on SEAT with a Strong Buy rating and $5 PT. Vivid Seats is a top online marketplace in North America for secondary event tickets, connecting buyers and sellers across Sports, Concerts, and Live Entertainment on its core marketplace and Skybox reseller toolset.
Beyond the mature marketplace narrative, Vivid Seats has quietly established take-rate resilience and pricing power that position the business as an outlier across ticketing peers. The market's focus on near-term GMV declines distracts from the durability of 16.3% take rate in FY25E, and re-acceleration to 16.8% in FY26E, which drives our top-line well above consensus.
Our model incorporates not only fee defense, but also international expansion levers and a re-acceleration in the resale segment, which we expect to deliver incremental $15–31mn in 2 years, despite a contracting core marketplace. This top-line momentum supports our target multiple of 1.15x forward EV/Sales, a reasonable step above depressed levels, but still at a discount to peer group, reflecting residual regulatory and macro risks.
While privacy and compliance discourse may drive medium-term volatility, we expect these headwinds to moderate as regulatory risk settles post-2025. The implied R/R is a rare setup, where valuation reset upside meets underappreciated operating tailwinds, and therefore outsized upside.
International and Resale Segment Expansion: A Large, Underappreciated Growth Lever
We view Vivid Seats' (persistent) take-rate strength as both a lead for pricing power and a structural moat in the fiercely competitive secondary market channel. Structurally, SEAT has held take-rate at 16.3% in FY25E (guided to 16.8% in FY26E), despite underlying marketplace Gross Order Value (GOV) running through cyclical softness.