Inc. Magazine Features TodayTix Partnership with Great Hill

Inc. Magazine
By Jennifer Conrad

In 2019, TodayTix co-founder and CEO Brian Fenty had interest from investment firms and strategic acquirers for his ticketing startup. Founded in 2013 by Fenty and co-founder Merritt Baer, the New York-based company launched as a smartphone app for buying discounted theater tickets.

In May 2019, private equity firm Great Hill Partners acquired a majority stake in TodayTix for $73 million. Great Hill managing director Michael Kumin had been an angel investor in the ticket outlet StubHub, and in TodayTix, he saw an opportunity to create a major ticketing and events platform. He also liked working with founder-led companies.

"Founders usually have a way of looking at an industry a little differently, which is why they find opportunity," Kumin says. "They historically have been really good on product-market fit strategy and looking into the future in a way that a lot of slower-moving incumbents are less well positioned to do."

Since Great Hill's founding in 1998, the Boston-based firm has raised over $19 billion across nine funds, investing in health care, financial services, technology, business services, and consumer brands. Part of what won over Fenty and Baer was Great Hill's experience scaling tech-enabled brands such as Wayfair and the RealReal.

"We were already big enough that we wanted to find a partner that said, 'We're going to make this a huge success together,'" says Fenty. "We had great alignment strategically. We had the same long-term thesis, about the power of live and the way that technology and marketplaces could work with live."

By the end of 2019, TodayTix's annual revenue grew to $100 million. In February 2020, TodayTix acquired Encore Tickets, a U.K.-based competitor. Within a month, live events ground to a halt because of the coronavirus pandemic, and customers started asking for their money back. Great Hill worked with the TodayTix management team and outside advisers to structure an additional round of financing from Great Hill and others-both debt and equity-to keep the company solvent for the next 18 months.

"Not only were we not making money, but they had to put a lot more money in," Fenty says. "Every investor loves to say they have a contrarian investment style. Great Hill, at least in my experience, they were willing to be contrarians."

As the pandemic lumbered on, the company made a handful of additional strategic acquisitions, including purchasing the live events company Secret Cinema, which hosts immersive theater versions of films such as Grease and Pirates of the Caribbean. Doubling down on the future of live events during a global pandemic might seem reckless, but for Fenty, it was a prescient strategic decision. "When we come out of this, the world is going to want to see new types of content and come together," Fenty recalls thinking.

Kumin concedes that the acquisition "took some guts," adding that he, Fenty, and Baer were in lock-step. "You have to be ready to win the rebound, which we did," he says. "There was a balance between financial management, financial stewardship, and also being on our front foot."

Meanwhile, the engineering team at TodayTix stayed busy making improvements to the tech platform, such as automating personalized marketing and developing customer-service chatbots. The company also developed a white-label ticketing platform marketed directly to theater owners and producers as live events picked back up.

Beyond the funding and steady hand during unprecedented times, Fenty says he learned a lot about financial reporting and how to talk about his business from the team at Great Hill. "As a founder and when you're on a rocket ship, it's easy to convince yourself you know the important metrics," he says. "Great Hill was able to give us real rigor and a way of looking at our business that we weren't familiar with historically. Our board decks, daily reporting, dashboards, and KPIs were elevated."

By 2025, ticket sales on TodayTix platform were five times what they were at the time of the acquisition, and potential acquirers started taking notice. In October 2025, TodayTix was acquired by Mari, Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel's new live events company, whose portfolio includes tennis tournaments, food festivals, and the Frieze art fair. At press time, it was in the process of acquiring Broadway and West End theater owner ATG Entertainment.

While Mari had obvious synergies in live events, it wasn't the highest bidder for TodayTix, according to Fenty, who says he turned down multiple higher offers. Mari felt like the right home because of its "innovators culture," he adds, and the fact that Emanuel shared his point of view that live events were a great foil to the "AI mayhem."

Great Hill, which invested a total of $123 million in TodayTix, used a portion of its proceeds from the sale of TodayTix to acquire a small stake in Mari. Both Fenty and Merritt have stayed on after the sale: Fenty as CEO and head of growth at Mari; Baer as the lead producer for Secret Cinema. Fenty credits Great Hill with allowing him to land on a sale structure that worked both for the firm's investors and for the management team that would continue to work on growing the business.

"Most investors would've said, 'We'll take the highest bidder and good luck to you,'" he says.

Disclaimer: This content was originally published by Inc. Magazine on October 27, 2026, and is reposted here without edits for informational purposes. Past performance is not indicative of future results. References to TodayTix and any transaction amounts or operating results are provided for illustrative purposes only, are not a recommendation of any investment, and are not indicative of the performance of any other Great Hill Partners investment or fund. It should not be assumed that future investments will be comparable or profitable. Brian Fenty is not a client of Great Hill Partners or an investor in private funds managed by Great Hill Partners (or its affiliated entities), and was not provided any cash or non-cash compensation for his participation in Inc. Magazine's coverage. TodayTix is a former Great Hill Partners portfolio company that was acquired by MARI, in which Great Hill Partners is a minority investor. As a result, Mr. Fenty receives compensation in connection with his employment by MARI. Great Hill Partners' investment in MARI could create a conflict of interest since Mr. Fenty has an incentive to make positive statements about Great Hill Partners and his experiences to maintain goodwill with Great Hill Partners. These statements describe Mr. Fenty's experience with Great Hill Partners and/or its supervised persons and may not be representative of the experience of others. It should not be assumed that future investments will be comparable or profitable. For a list of all Great Hill investments, please visit www.greathillpartners.com.