Tech Entrepreneurs On The Path To Shake Up 50 Billion Dollar Event Ticketing Industry

Tech Entrepreneurs On The Path To Shake Up 50 Billion Dollar Event Ticketing Industry
Dylan Poulton
By Dylan Poulton



Not-for-profit event ticketing platform, Humanitix was one of four finalists to win $1 Million AUD in the Google.org Impact Challenge.

Last week, the Google.org Impact Challenge awarded a total of $5.5 Million AUD to Australian nonprofit innovators and social entrepreneurs using technology to overcome the world’s biggest social challenges. 

Founded by Adam McCurdie and Joshua Ross, Humanitix is the world’s first not-for-profit event ticketing platform to redirect “resented” booking fee profits to reduce global inequality and improve access to events for people with disabilities through cognitive technologies.

They will use the grant funding to improve the overall functionality and user experience of the platform and scale the business into global markets, ultimately improving the lives of millions of disadvantaged communities around the world.

McCurdie and Ross said: “We created Humanitix to address the rise in global inequality with the view that technology is the most powerful tool for change and hence the not-for-profit sector needs to embrace it – which is what we are trying to champion.

“Humanitix is an ethical alternative for event organisers, whereby at no extra cost, their events can change the world.”

In just over two years, Humanitix has gone from an idea based out of a Sydney home to processing over $9 million in ticket sales for thousands of events, from sports matches and gala dinners to music festivals and conferences. 

Event partners include the Football Federation of Australia, United Nations, Pararoos, Optus, Women in Media and Westfield, which uses Humanitix nationally across all of their centres. 

In addition to reducing global inequality, Humanitix is passionate about making live events more accessible for everyone, in particular those with disabilities who often feel marginalised from community participation.

Currently, they are working with Vision Australia to make the platform vision compliant and will now work with Google to advance the platform’s cognitive technologies, making them market leaders in this space.

“A key issue for people with disabilities in Australia is not feeling included in social events and community engagement.

“It’s incredibly exciting to have access to Google’s intel and global cognitive technologies to continue improving on making the overall experience of attending a live event easy and accessible for everyone,” concluded Ross and McCurdie.

Finalists in the Google.org Impact Challenge were required to do a 90 second pitch at Google HQ in Sydney on Thursday, 1 November, in front of a high-profile judging panel including Morris Iemma, District Commissioner of the Greater Sydney Commission, Dr. Alan Finkel AO, Australia’s Chief Scientist and Jacquelline Fuller, Vice President of Google and President of Google.org.

Along with Humanitix, winners included Xceptional and Hireup, with Orange Sky winning the People’s Choice Award in a public vote.

In 2018, Humanitix was announced as one of Westpac’s Top 20 Businesses of Tomorrow and “Social Entrepreneurs of the Year” in the Third Sector Awards.

The not-for-profit ticketing platform is currently backed by The Atlassian Foundation and advised by Centre for Social Impact at the University of NSW. 




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