When Phil Hutcheon started Dice in 2014, the CEO sought to answer one basic question about the concert industry: “Why is it that one of the best experiences that you can go to starts off in such a crappy situation?”
In the decade since, the hours-long queues, added fees and bloated prices associated with buying tickets for live music events have only gotten worse — just ask anyone who tried to score a seat to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour or Oasis’ upcoming reunion shows. But not on the Dice app.
The London-based ticketing software company prides itself on a transparent pricing model, features to prevent scalping and a social media-like algorithm that Hutcheon says makes going out easier than ever. Plus, Dice works directly with artists to ensure that they’re booking shows at the right venues — and at a fair price.
“[We’re] just taking that pain away from them, where they don’t have articles about how they’re exploiting fans,” Hutcheon says on this week’s episode of Variety‘s “Strictly Business” podcast, recorded from Dice’s swanky East London HQ. “If they use Dice, it’s gone. It’s a safe place for them to do it.”
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Because upfront pricing is, as Hutcheon touts, “in our DNA,” he says the company has “never had an artist approach us to do anything like that.” He cites a quote from essayist and statistician Nassim Taleb as one of the company’s key principles: “Ethics changes laws, not the other way around.”
“People are very emotional about music, which is why these [ticketing scandals] become really good headlines,” he says. “If you found out that an artist deliberately jacked up the prices or did these things, it’s like a betrayal.”
But it hasn’t been easy competing with huge companies like Live Nation and its subsidiary, Ticketmaster, the combination of which was sued in May by the U.S. Justice Department for monopolizing the live concert industry. For its first three years, Hutcheon made the tough decision to keep Dice local to the U.K., testing its features and building up a solid user base before launching in California in 2017.
“One of our early investors really pushed me not to expand outside of London until we got product-market fit,” Hutcheon recalls. “We saw all these other companies launching everywhere and I was like, ‘Surely, we’ve gotta go.’ And he was like, ‘No, just stay here.’ And we did, and all those other companies are kind of gone.”
Now, Dice is available in over a dozen U.S. cities, boasting more than 1 million monthly users in New York City — not far off from its loyal 1.3 million in London. And, last summer, Hutcheon joined President Biden at the White House to discuss the importance of ending junk fees as “the only non-American around the table.”
“My job is to reassure the others that it’s actually a really good business model,” he says. “I still don’t understand why people keep adding all these things, it just feels like you lose consumer trust. I think the more transparent everyone is, the better behavior it is on all sides.”
So with all its success, is Dice setting its sights on selling tickets to Swift’s next arena tour? Not necessarily.
“She doesn’t really need us, because it’s going to sell out anyway,” Hutcheon says. “The superpower of Dice is getting more of the mid-market, so venues between 200 and 12,000 [capacity]. I kind of like this world. I like the idea of using a lot of the aspects that get people to use social media to get them to go out more. I actually genuinely think that Dice helps people meet other people.”
However, Hutcheon did just get to put on his favorite show yet this past November — The Cure’s album release concert at London’s Troxy, a 3,000-capacity venue. Given frontman Robert Smith’s passionate views against dynamic pricing and hidden ticket fees, Hutcheon hoped to do him proud.
“[There were] 100,000 people in the first second trying to get tickets,” he says. “Two minutes, it’s gone, everything’s done.” Surfing Reddit after the onsale, Hutcheon was pleased to come across fans who, though bummed that they didn’t get a ticket, were much happier with the process.
Having attended the gig, Hutcheon says it was the perfect Dice show “from end to end: no scalping, tickets went on the price, everyone got in, great atmosphere.”
Listen to the full “Strictly Business” episode above.