Brando Rich

CEO / Co-Founder of CashorTrade

Story

In 2008, my brother and I returned to the live music scene after five years as the band Phish came out of hiatus. Tickets to their reunion show sold out immediately and were $2000 on the secondary market. This was frustrating. There was no more standing in line at a brick-and-mortar box office anymore. Brokers were now sophisticated with high-tech software and scalper-bot programs helping them buy up a large volume of tickets and relist them for exorbitant prices with online secondary platforms. 

As web developers for 17 years and live music fans, we felt there had to be a better option.  The idea of CashorTrade was born, a social network where fans would come together to buy, sell and trade tickets at face value and avoid scalping. We packed our bags and went on tour that summer with Phish and built the CashorTrade.org app on the road with laptops stopping at Starbucks coffees shops for the free WIFI on the way.  We set up a tent in the parking lot of each event and promoted the app. At the end of the summer we had 5,000 users and the fan base loved the idea. 

Fast forward to today, CashorTrade has built a global face value movement expanding across many social platforms as well as the app. Members are from every state in the country and from 46 countries. As we’ve helped real fans make friends and score millions of tickets at face value for their favorite artist or event, the time has come to integrate CashorTrade with events and partner directly with events and their primary ticket companies, as well as to participate in a reform of ticket legislation that protects fans and events.

Fix The Tix

CashorTrade has been added to the steering committee of NIVA’s FIX THE TIX campaign. As the only face value secondary ticket platform in the USA, we are in a unique position to represent real fans and convey the pain points they feel about the ticket industry, both the structure of primary ticketing as well as secondary. 

Value

CashorTrade has partnered with 50 artists, festivals and events in 2023. We are in discussion with several primary ticket companies to directly integrate with an API to help keep tickets at face value and move tickets to fans. We’ve worked directly with events in helping them increase their fan experience by offering a refundable option for their tickets when they find our they cannot attend, while filling their empty seats and increasing revenue from concessions as well as add a strong level of marketing exposure across a super base of fanatical fans.