Vivid Seats Q4 2025 Earnings Call - Cost Cuts and App Momentum Set Stage for 2026 Growth Despite Q4 GOV Decline
Summary
Vivid Seats reported a painful Q4 traffic reset, with marketplace GOV plunging to $581 million from $994 million a year ago, but the new leadership leaned into cost cuts and product work as a clear counterpunch. Management hit a $60 million annualized savings target, simplified the corporate structure, and is pushing an app-first strategy tied to AI integrations, while reaffirming full-year 2026 guidance of $2.2 billion to $2.6 billion GOV and $30 million to $40 million adjusted EBITDA.
The quarter was marked by a mix of one-offs and secular moves. A lost large private label customer and weak concert onsales amplified industry-wide softness in Q4, but early 2026 trends show app GOV up over 20% year-over-year and improving cohort behavior. Management expects Q1 improvement, modest industry growth, and a return to volumetric growth in H2 2026, with a path to modest free cash flow as working capital shifts back to being a source of cash.
Key Takeaways
- Q4 2025 marketplace GOV fell to $581 million, down from $994 million year-over-year, driven by weaker concert onsales, a tough World Series comp, and the loss of a large private label customer.
- Total marketplace orders declined 32% year-over-year in Q4, and average order size dropped to $329 from $380 in Q4 2024.
- Q4 2025 revenue was $127 million versus $200 million in the prior year; adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $1 million, reflecting negative operating leverage on lower volumes.
- Management achieved the expanded cost reduction target of $60 million in annualized savings, spanning marketing, G&A, and stock-based compensation, with full benefit expected in Q1 2026.
- Corporate simplification moves were executed, including termination of the Tax Receivable Agreement and collapsing the dual class share structure, which management says reduces complexity and improves the tax profile.
- Company ended Q4 with $103 million cash and $390 million debt, for net debt of $287 million; Q1 2026 cash guidance is $125 million to $135 million driven by seasonally stronger working capital flow.
- Management reaffirmed 2026 guidance: Marketplace GOV $2.2 billion to $2.6 billion, adjusted EBITDA $30 million to $40 million, and expects Q1 GOV of $570 million to $620 million with adjusted EBITDA $8 million to $10 million.
- Marketplace take rate ticked up slightly to 16.8% in Q4 from 16.6% a year ago, and management expects near-term take rates to remain in the mid 16% range.
- App momentum is the strategic fulcrum: app GOV is up over 20% year-over-year through the first two months of 2026, and app share of GOV has risen more than 500 basis points since the enhanced app value proposition launched in Q3 2025.
- App cohorts are improving, with repeat rates increasing double digits, indicating early compounding loyalty benefits from the app and rewards program.
- Vivid Seats launched a dedicated app within ChatGPT and previously integrated a live events plugin, but direct AI-driven traffic remains tiny today, management estimates roughly 1% of direct traffic, while viewing AI as a long-term channel to surface value.
- Q4 industry volumes were down double digits per Skybox data, primarily from fewer concert onsales and the World Series comp; management now expects modest industry growth for 2026, not contraction.
- Management views intermittent mega events, like the World Cup, as meaningful GOV drivers, estimating the World Cup could contribute a few hundred basis points to annual GOV depending on matchups and interest.
- Capital plan and cash flow: expected capex and capitalized software around $15 million, taxes low single digits post-simplification, and net interest as the principal cash outflow; management estimates $35 million to $40 million of EBITDA is required to be cash flow neutral before working capital.
- Path to hitting the high end of guidance is execution driven: stable industry volumes plus product rollouts, app improvements, and full cost-savings realization should get them to the top of the GOV and EBITDA ranges; better industry volume or softer competition would make it easier.
- Private label business disruption weighed on Q4, but management signaled operational fixes and changes to private label approach that aim to return that line to growth beginning around Q3 2026.
Full Transcript
Operator: Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Vivid Seats Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Webcast and Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker’s presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question, simply press star one one on your telephone keypad. At this time, we ask that you please limit yourself to two questions. I would now like to introduce your host for today’s presentation, Mr. Austin Arnett. Sir, please begin.
Austin Arnett, General Counsel, Vivid Seats: Good morning and welcome to Vivid Seats’ fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. I’m Austin Arnett, Vivid Seats’ General Counsel. I’m joined today by Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer, and Joseph Thomas, Chief Financial Officer. By now, everyone should have access to the earnings press release we issued earlier this morning. The release, as well as supplemental earnings slides, are available on our investor relations website at investors.vividseats.com. Today’s call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, including those discussed in our earnings release, our annual report on Form 10-K and our other filings with the SEC. Today’s call will also include references to Adjusted EBITDA and net debt, which are non-GAAP financial measures that provide useful information to investors.
To the extent reasonably available, a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release and supplemental earnings slides. Now I’ll turn the call over to Larry.
Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer, Vivid Seats: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I’m excited to share what we are working on as we chart a refresh course for Vivid Seats in 2026 and beyond. We believe we have the right team and the right strategy to drive innovation, thought leadership and profitable growth in the coming quarters and years. I’d like to begin with an update on our leadership team. Austin Arnett, who provided opening remarks for this call, was named General Counsel in December. Austin previously led our corporate legal team after prior roles at Latham & Watkins and McDonald’s. Austin steps into the GC role with extensive legal expertise and substantial familiarity with our business. I’d also like to introduce Joseph Thomas, our new Chief Financial Officer.
Joe, who joined us in January, is an accomplished executive with a strong track record of driving financial discipline through data-driven decisions while supporting long-term growth initiatives. I’m excited to join forces with both of them as we embark on this new chapter for Vivid Seats. I’d also like to thank Ted Pickus, who served as our interim CFO during this transition. Ted’s deep institutional knowledge and steady hand were critical during a pivotal period for the company. I’m grateful for his continued partnership as our Chief Accounting Officer. With our new team in place, we have refined our long-term strategy and have quickly begun executing against it. Our strategy builds and expands upon Vivid Seats’ foundational strengths, our leading technology, our unique data, a relentless focus on efficiency, and an increasingly compelling and differentiated value proposition to customers.
I will spend a few minutes touching on our efforts across each of these foundational elements. Starting with our technology and product, we are redoubling our focus on product innovation and efficiency and expect this to benefit our results as we move through 2026. Across both our web and app properties, we are bringing a renewed focus on our core customer funnel to ensure a seamless user experience. Beyond this foundational focus, we are continuing to innovate in an increasingly AI world. In 2023, Vivid Seats became the first company in the live events industry to launch a live events plugin for OpenAI’s ChatGPT. That early partnership underscored our commitment to innovating at the intersection of technology and live entertainment. Building on that foundation, we recently introduced a dedicated Vivid Seats app within ChatGPT, further advancing our AI-driven shopping capabilities.
This new app is designed to capture real-time consumer intent and transform event discovery by making it more personalized, intuitive and efficient while reinforcing our position as a leader, shaping the future of how fans discover and access live events. This launch is an example of our continuous efforts to evolve our platform in a highly dynamic environment. Our path forward will combine innovation with a disciplined focus on efficiency. As previously announced, we significantly expanded our cost reduction program, increasing our initial fixed cost savings target from $25 million to $60 million. We have now achieved our increased target of $60 million of annualized savings with reductions spanning marketing, G&A and stock-based compensation. These savings position us to reinvest selectively in growth initiatives such as our enhanced app value proposition while improving our operating leverage as we return to growth.
We also executed our corporate simplification early in the fourth quarter, which included the termination of our Tax Receivable Agreement and the collapse of our dual class share structure. This meaningfully reduces complexity, improves transparency, and generates both immediate and long-term financial benefits. Taken together, our cost reduction program and corporate simplification are creating a more efficient, agile organization that can invest strategically for growth while maintaining financial discipline. Moving to the compelling and differentiated value proposition we present to customers. Vivid Seats is the most rewarding ticket company. We are centering the Vivid Seats message and experience around that simple but powerful fact. No one rewards fans more than we do. We’re sharpening our messaging to highlight how Vivid Seats delivers more value at every step of the journey, from rewarding prices to a seamless, stress-free shopping experience, to tangible rewards that deepen loyalty over time.
By delivering the most rewarding experience in ticketing, we seek to build long-term relationships with our customers and our app ecosystem. App users return more frequently, convert at higher rates, and rely less on paid performance marketing channels. We believe the combination of our rewards program and our lowest price guarantee represents the most compelling value proposition in ticketing. We are seeing encouraging trends as we pursue this strategy. App GOV is up over 20% year-over-year through the first 2 months of 2026. Since launching our enhanced app value proposition during Q3 of last year, we have seen app share of GOV increase by more than 500 basis points. We also remain confident that information transparency will only increase as AI continues to reshape how consumers discover and evaluate offerings across the Internet.
We believe we are well-positioned to benefit as AI-guided consumers increasingly gravitate towards platforms that are delivering the most value to consumers. While we are early in our execution journey, the trends we are seeing thus far in Q1 indicate we are making substantial progress and that our strategy is gaining traction. Accordingly, we are reaffirming our 2026 outlook. We continue to expect Marketplace GOV in the range of $2.2-$2.6 billion and adjusted EBITDA in the range of $30-$40 million. In addition, we are providing Q1 2026 guidance of $570-$620 million of GOV, $8-$10 million of adjusted EBITDA, and a cash balance of $125-$135 million.
Turning to the fourth quarter, while our results were challenging, they were largely in line with what we anticipated as we worked through a transitional period for the business. As we shared last quarter, a softer Q4 industry backdrop, private label declines, and ongoing execution of our strategic realignment were expected to pressure results. While these pressures played out as expected, we were encouraged by emerging momentum across our own properties. In particular, our app performance remained a bright spot, reflecting the impact of our ongoing product investments and enhanced value proposition. The trends we are seeing thus far in the first quarter confirm the actions taken by this new team are translating to tangible progress.
These indicators reinforce our belief that the path forward we have put in place is the right one and that the investments we are making will enable us to return to growth in the second half of 2026 and deliver sustainable, profitable growth for many years to come. With that, I’ll turn it over to Joe to walk through our fourth quarter financial results and outlook in more detail.
Joseph Thomas, Chief Financial Officer, Vivid Seats: Thank you, Larry, and good morning, everyone. I’m excited to join Vivid Seats and help shape the company’s next phase of growth. The business is a strong foundation and significant opportunity. I look forward to working closely with Larry and the leadership team to deliver long-term value. Turning to the results. In Q4 of 2025, we generated $581 million of marketplace GOV, compared with $994 million in the prior year period. Q4 of 2025 total marketplace orders were down 32% year-over-year, with average order size down to $329 from $380 in Q4 of 2024.
According to our Skybox data, industry volumes were down double digits in Q4, primarily due to less concert onsales and a difficult World Series comparison, which pressured results when combined with the loss of a large private label customer that occurred in early Q3 2025. Q4 2025 revenues were $127 million, compared to prior year revenues of $200 million. Our Q4 2025 marketplace take rate was 16.8%, up slightly from 16.6% in Q4 2024. We expect our near-term take rates to stay in the 16% range. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $1 million, reflecting the impact of lower volume and negative operating leverage. Importantly, we achieved our annualized cost reduction target of $60 million during the quarter.
While we saw a partial benefit from these efforts in Q4 of 2025, we anticipate full benefit starting in Q1 2026, with a more agile cost structure allowing for improved operating leverage moving forward. We ended the fourth quarter with $103 million of cash and $390 million of debt, resulting in net debt of $287 million. As a reminder, the fourth quarter brings seasonally lower working capital flow, with that flow reduction accounting for the majority of our cash outflows in the quarter. Q1 2026 is seasonally stronger in terms of cash flow. Which supports our guidance for a cash balance range of $125 million to $135 million by the end of Q1 2026.
We expect Q1 2026 Marketplace GOV in the range of $570 million-$620 million. This GOV level is consistent with Q4 2025, despite the fourth quarter traditionally being the strongest volume quarter of the year, which reflects sequential improvements in share. We expect Q1 2026 Adjusted EBITDA in the range of $8 million-$10 million. This represents a substantial improvement relative to Q4 2025 EBITDA and reflects consistent volumes, improved unit economics, and the full impact of our cost reduction efforts. For fiscal year 2026, we continue to expect Marketplace GOV in the range of $2.2 billion-$2.6 billion and Adjusted EBITDA in the range of $30 million-$40 million.
This outlook reflects an expectation of modest industry growth and continued competitive pressures, but also benefits from our cost reduction program and strategic investments in an enhanced customer value proposition. Back to you, Larry.
Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer, Vivid Seats: In closing, the positive trends we are seeing in the first quarter support our belief that we are now on the right path. We are seeing encouraging progress across numerous leading indicators, pointing to a return to volumetric growth across the business outside of private label. We are particularly excited about the app trajectory and believe the combination of a return to growth, a streamlined cost structure, and more efficient tax profile positions us to deliver growing profitability and cash flow as we execute our strategy. We are confident that Vivid Seats foundational advantages. Our leading technology, unique data, best-in-class efficiency, and a differentiated customer value proposition remain. With disciplined execution, we’ll support our return to profitable growth. With that, operator, please open the call for questions.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question or comment at this time, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, simply press star one one again. We currently ask, please limit yourself to two questions. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question or comment comes from the line of Ryan Sigdahl from Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Your line is open.
Ryan Sigdahl, Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group: Hey, good morning, guys, and welcome, Joe. Larry, want to start with you’ve dealt with unfavorable competitive dynamics for the better part of two years now. We’ve heard from that main peer that they plan to focus more on customer acquisition efficiency in 2026. Nice change. A fairly big change, I guess, in statement versus the user acquisition blitzkrieg that they’ve been going under. I guess, curious if you’ve seen any of that, and then how you think about the competitive dynamics heading into 2026 or as we start 2026, and how you plan to balance your customer acquisition efficiency versus the value proposition, the app, direct traffic, et cetera, et cetera.
Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer, Vivid Seats: Yeah. Thanks, Ryan. In terms of competitive landscape and competitive intensity, I think we have seen a degree of moderation, particularly as it relates to some of the peak intensity from StubHub in particular. Yeah, I think others in the space continue to be pretty aggressive, and I think there continues to be a meaningful priority placed on GOV and volume across a number of our competitors relative to fundamental unit economics and profitability. But I think we continue to see that over time, unit economics play out, financial realities ultimately win. And so I think we will stay the course that we’ve been on for the last couple of years, where there is certainly inherent tension between volume and profitability, but we’re gonna stay true to our unit economics.
In particular, the focus on the app ecosystem, the focus on the app value proposition is trying to enhance our lifetime value, which enables you, if you know you are keeping people in your ecosystem longer with a longer relationship with more repeat rates, you can still solve your unit economic question while being more aggressive on the customer acquisition front. We think we can try to accomplish both, right? Stay true to our unit economic frameworks and enable ourselves to drive better volumetric performance as we continue to execute against that.
Ryan Sigdahl, Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group: Very good. Just you mentioned ChatGPT plugin in 2023. Your main competitor press released, I guess, a relationship and partnership with ChatGPT a few months ago. I guess curious kinda how you fit with your competitive set within there. I think you also have Perplexity that you didn’t mention, but just talk broadly speaking about LLMs, if you’re willing to quantify kind of the percentage of whether it’s customers or GMV or anything there, that’d be helpful. Thank you.
Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer, Vivid Seats: Yeah. AI, as you can imagine, top of mind, an incredibly dynamic space. We haven’t yet seen consumer behavior in our space reflect the hype. It’s still a pretty small percentage, very small percentage. Probably 1% is the best estimate I would put out there for what we’re seeing in terms of direct traffic through the AI channel today. That said, I think we are fundamentally of the belief that this is a one-way street where AI will have more, not less impact, and that there are fundamental unlocks that AI can bring for the benefit of consumers in our space, the benefit of consumers across e-commerce with better information transparency.
We’ve been in a space where, you know, for many years, being at the top of a search was critical to driving customer awareness, and you could charge, in many instances, premium pricing to facilitate that. It hasn’t changed yet, but we are making the bet that there will be evolution there, where customers will be better able to surface differentiated value propositions over time, better able to research and compare. We do think there’s still a place, you know, in ticketing where the seat you’re in, the angle of your view, the side of the stadium, there’s a lot of deeply personal preferences. The desire to do detailed shopping, detailed comparisons, in an app, we think will be a longer term home for a lot of customers.
AI at the top of the funnel when people are researching their options, understanding the choices out there, we think will be meaningfully disruptive over the coming quarters.
Ryan Sigdahl, Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group: Mark Bet from my standpoint. Good luck, guys.
Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer, Vivid Seats: Thanks, Ryan.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Cameron Mansson-Perrone from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Cameron Mansson-Perrone, Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Thanks. Good morning. One follow-up on the industry trends. Just curious, you know, there’s the competitive dynamic, but then there’s also been some potentially favorable dynamics happening as well. Wondering if you’ve seen any benefit or seen anything in the marketplace in conjunction with the changes that Ticketmaster’s made around its resale platform and activity. As we look forward to 2026, you know, wondering how you guys are framing or thinking about the World Cup and any expectations around participating in that resale activity this summer. Thanks.
Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer, Vivid Seats: Yeah. Thanks, Cameron. On the industry front, Q4, not a great quarter. We saw it down double digits. I think we mentioned tough MLB comp, but in particular, concert onsales were down dramatically year-over-year. Those onsales picked back up in Q1, whether that was just normal variation and timing, or something reflective of some other planning or considerations on the Ticketmaster side, not clear to us. We haven’t seen any meaningful impact beyond that in terms of Ticketmaster’s overall posture or level of aggressiveness in the space. I’d say those kind of rumored changes or adjustments not to a degree that we could say we’ve seen, felt, or can measure, but we’ll continue to keep an eye on it.
You know, for broader industry overall, the last time when we gave guidance, we had pointed to expectations of flat over the year. I think with the Q1 on sales, we continue to feel equally as good, if not a little bit better, with World Cup volumes equally as good, if not a little bit better. I think stable to slight growth in the industry is our new estimate. As we look at the World Cup, you know, I think if you think of the benchmarks or the goalposts, a typical A-list tour would be like 1% GOV for the year. Taylor Swift be the other side of that, best ever, you know, mid- to high-single digits% of GOV.
I think World Cup as an event will end up somewhere in between. Where in between will be, I think, dictated by, you know, do you have great matchups? Does the U.S. play Mexico in the semifinals? That would be a dream. We think it’ll be substantial. A couple hundred basis points of GOV is our best guess.
Cameron Mansson-Perrone, Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Got it. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Daniel Kurnos from Benchmark. Mr. Kurnos, your line is open.
Daniel Kurnos, Analyst, Benchmark: Great. Thanks. Good morning. Welcome, Joe. I guess, Larry, just, as we think about your customer acquisition strategy around app, I know we’ve talked about it a little bit, but I don’t know if you want to take a second to kind of maybe flesh out, obviously, without giving away any trade secrets, how you’re thinking about driving incremental traffic beyond just, you know, pointing to the value prop. Like, are you thinking about different marketing channels? Are you thinking about better, more efficient ways to kind of get people to understand the message there? I have a follow-up for you.
Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer, Vivid Seats: Yeah. I think the last thing you said, having people clearly understand the value prop is a critical threshold element, where if we don’t do that successfully, we have no reason to believe people will come back more often. We’ll build a lifetime relationship. We’re mid-flight on it, but you should see continued improvements in the journey as an app customer. Your onboarding experience. How do we, you know, build that initial rapport with you, make it feel like a win-win, where you’re providing us your information and we’re providing you something of value in return to kick off on the right foot.
Well-situated messaging to drive home not only the everyday pricing, but this idea of ongoing rewards, ongoing benefits for loyalty and repeat purchasers, such that if you are a customer who has intentions of going to multiple live events per year for presumably decades to come, you can get peace of mind that you’ve completed your research, right? You’ll do the research in-depth, you’ll compare the pricing, you’ll validate the claims, and you know, once that validation is complete, you can, with peace of mind, buy from us. Yeah, I think the second dimension beyond making sure that once you arrive at the app, it’s very clear what we’re doing and why we are making claims about our value proposition. We have a very large database of people who have purchased from us over the years.
Really thoughtfully targeting and messaging that database of folks, you know, continuing to use growing AI capabilities to have personalized messages that could resonate, right message at the right time. You know, I think that’s the second major dimension. Over time, I think we’ll continue to explore complementary marketing channels that are outside of that core paid search funnel, right? Whether it’s, you know, social or other adjacencies. There continues to be an opportunity there, but it has been a, you know, relatively long-term play to build that awareness. That’ll be a steady-as-she-goes element.
Daniel Kurnos, Analyst, Benchmark: Got it. That’s super helpful. I’ll just ask if you care to opine on, you know, I know we’ve already had sort of the competitive question, but, you know, clearly, while you guys aren’t in primary, we’ve had movement from DOJ and Live Nation, and there’s always knock-on effects to the competitors that are maybe hybrid or trying to get in there into that space. You guys have tested the waters in primary in small doses in the past. Just curious how you think about regulatory, either from that perspective or the bulk seller stuff, might just impact overall industry dynamics, consolidation, you know, just anything that you would like to opine on how you think kind of the broader, you know, group adjusts to some of the regulatory stuff.
Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer, Vivid Seats: Yeah, I mean, we’ve certainly been through the term sheet. I think devil in the details is probably the operative phrase here, so we’ll wait for more to come out, and probably premature for us to comment in too much depth given the lack of detail on some pretty important provisions in the term sheet. From everything we’ve seen, I can’t see anything that would be deemed or even considered potentially adverse to our position in the marketplace. At least from our position, I don’t see a lot that’ll change anything meaningfully. Put the asterisks again for devil in the details, and we’ll see if there’s more to it.
Daniel Kurnos, Analyst, Benchmark: Okay, fair enough. Thank you, Larry.
Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer, Vivid Seats: Thank you, Dan.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Maria Ripps from Canaccord. Ms. Ripps, your line is open.
Maria Ripps, Analyst, Canaccord: Great. Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. Welcome, Joe. First, I just wanted to follow up on your Vivid App within ChatGPT. Can you maybe just talk about sort of the type of consumer that you’re attracting within ChatGPT and sort of conversion rate? And then do you maintain sort of the customer profile or customer data after that initial engagement?
Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer, Vivid Seats: Yeah. Thanks, Maria. You know, I think the ChatGPT app is a good example of, you know, you need to play in traffic while this world situates itself. As it sits today, finding apps in the LLM journey requires someone who’s looking for the app, right? You need to come in with a targeted search and seek out whether it’s ours or a competitor’s app, and it’ll then open up a different use case. But I don’t think it’s gone mainstream, right? I don’t think most people have unlocked how to access apps within the LLM journey. As a result, what you do see is folks who’ve come through LLMs and folks who come through that app convert at structurally higher rates.
What is probably too early to tell is that because you have a selection bias where the folks who are doing that are the most, you know, intent, thoughtful, tech-savvy users, and thus, you’re just revealing that their intent, versus the tool is fundamentally changing their behavior or journey. We’re looking at all the data with eager anticipation, but I don’t think we have clear answers yet on that. You know, separately to the broader question on your customer personalization.
You know, the more interactions you have with someone, right, where you can see if they’re logging in in Chicago and they’re searching Cubs tickets, and then six months later they search Bears tickets, you can start to create a profile of a Chicago-based sports fan, and make sure that they see content aligned with those sports preferences, and you perhaps de-emphasize comedy shows if they’ve never shown any interest. Over time, figuring out ways to round out that profile. There’s numerous sources that I think we’re increasingly focused on capturing more customer information to create a more bespoke experience. One of the exciting elements over the intermediate term that we think AI offers, aside from the top of the funnel, as you ingest more of this customer information, how do you create a fundamentally better experience for your users?
At the core of that is thoughtful personalization built around a growing dataset.
Maria Ripps, Analyst, Canaccord: Got it. That’s, that’s very helpful. Can you maybe give us a little bit more color on what you’re seeing on the supply side in concert sort of this year, and to what extent that’s a factor for sort of improving trends and returning to growth in the second half of the year?
Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer, Vivid Seats: Yeah. Thanks. You know, pretty nice lineup of onsales that has come out in Q1. You know, BTS is probably the highest profile of those, but you know, steady stream of meaningful artists coming out in January and February, Harry Styles, Noah Kahan, et cetera, which was welcome because the Q4 lineup was underwhelming. When you sum up Q4 and Q1, and we’ve seen this before, where timing moves a little bit between the quarters. It was a solid concert lineup. I think you know, maybe consistent with what we’ve heard out of Live Nation, where they continue to point to steady growth, you know, perhaps double digits for them across their global footprint, but still continued growth in North America on the lower end of that range.
I think everything we’ve seen from a supply side continues to support that perspective. You know, we had a little bit of hesitation based on how Q4 industry trends were shaping up, and it’s been refreshing to see Q1 strengthen from there.
Maria Ripps, Analyst, Canaccord: Got it. That’s very helpful. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Thomas Forte from Maxim Group. Mr. Forte, your line is open.
Austin Arnett, General Counsel, Vivid Seats0: Great. Thanks. I also wanna welcome Joe to the call. One question, one follow-up. Can you talk about your ability to capitalize recurring sporting events that are not always held on an annual basis, including World Cup, Olympics, and World Baseball Classic? In particular, when this type of event is in one of your geographies, how confident are you in your ability to get similar share of GOV as in other sports, baseball, football, et cetera?
Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer, Vivid Seats: Yeah. Thanks, Tom. You know, those intermittent sporting events, they’re a really interesting hybrid because as a general statement, if you were to look at sports versus our concert and theater customer journey, sports. You know, if you’re a Cubs fan, you’re a Cubs fan, right? You’re going to a Cubs game this year, you’re probably going to a Cubs game next year, and you’re probably going the year after that. Same with, you know, baseball, football, pick your sport of preference. And so the proclivity for repeat is just higher on sports, whereas concerts are more episodic. Even if you’re a lifelong diehard Taylor Swift fan, she’s in town once every five years, right? And maybe you get a ticket one time, and you’re not in town the next time, so you see her once in a lifetime, right?
Once every 10 years. The interest in Taylor Swift may or may not map to Sabrina Carpenter or pop star X. It’s a different relationship, right? It’s a bit more intermittent on all things concert, comedy, theater, relative to that more continuous sports relationship. These intermittent events kind of straddle those. You know, it’s pretty hard to say, like, what on any individual customer basis, their soccer preferences or their World Cup preferences in particular would be. Whatever we learn about them, it’s probably not gonna be that valuable going forward ’cause it’s gonna be 30 years before we get the World Cup here again. We can leverage folks who are MLS fans, are soccer fans, and target those folks in a thoughtful way.
We actually see then a mix of World Cup folks who it ends up being, you know, more new customers than you would see in a typical sports league, because there is that intermittent element, but less so than concerts, because you do have that stable base of sports fans who knows where they wanna come and buy a ticket from.
Austin Arnett, General Counsel, Vivid Seats0: Thank you. For follow-up, can you give your thoughts on cash conversion and free cash flow generation for full year 2026?
Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer, Vivid Seats: Yeah. Appreciate that question. Our major cash obligations are CapEx, interest expense, and taxes. The sum of those, we think will fall between $35 million and $40 million. A majority of that amount would be our net interest expense. Our CapEx and capitalized software, we think will be, you know, in the $15-ish million range. Then, you know, post-tax simplification, taxes will be quite a bit lower, so low single-digit $ millions. Thus, we need 35 to 40 of EBITDA before considering working capital to be cash flow neutral to generative. Then I think as we’ve demonstrated in spades this past few quarters, if you are growing GOV, working capital can be a source of cash, the inverse also true.
As we project a return to growth, which we’re feeling quite good about as we approach the second half of the year on a year-over-year basis and equally good earlier in the year on a sequential basis, we think working capital shift to being a source of cash, and thus we expect to be modestly but cash generative in 2026.
Austin Arnett, General Counsel, Vivid Seats0: Thanks, Larry.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question or comment, excuse me, comes from the line of Andrew Marok from Raymond James. Mr. Marok, your line is open.
Andrew Marok, Analyst, Raymond James: Hey, thanks for taking my question. One on the comps. I know you called out a difficult World Series this year as a headwind. I guess, as we’re looking forward into the 2026 trajectory, how are the 2025 championships and maybe special events in sports playing out from a comps perspective as we look into the model? Thank you.
Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer, Vivid Seats: Yeah, great question, Andrew. Yeah, I think if we were to just go through the calendar, we’ve already seen some benefit when you had the, call it, up, down, up in the Super Bowl. 2024 sort of peak experience with Vegas. 2025 with the kind of repeat participants in New Orleans was a bit underwhelming. Much stronger performance, Super Bowl, in 2026. As we look at the rest of the year, I’d say there’s nothing daunting. You know, I’d say it ranges from, you know, call it slightly below to slightly above average matchups. NCAA tournament was relatively strong last year. We’ll see how that goes in the next few weeks. Nothing I would say of note in terms of NBA or NHL.
You know, I love that Oklahoma City has 47 draft picks over the next couple of years, except for the fact that Oklahoma City is not the most dynamic market from a secondary standpoint. We’ll see if anyone topples them on the NBA side. You know, MLB was off of the peak Yankees Dodgers levels, but Yankees Blue Jays wasn’t bad. I’d say that was still above average last year. The MLB comp is probably the most daunting of the remaining major championships coming through the rest of the year.
Andrew Marok, Analyst, Raymond James: Great. Appreciate it.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Benjamin Black from Deutsche Bank. Mr. Black, your line is now open.
Austin Arnett, General Counsel, Vivid Seats1: Hi, this is Jeff on for Ben. Thanks for taking my question. Can you just talk a little bit about the puts and takes to getting to the high end, the low end of your guidance, particularly on GOV? Would you need to see the competitive dynamics kinda continue to soften from here? Or could you get to the high end with, you know, just, you know, better performance from events in the industry?
Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer, Vivid Seats: Yeah, thanks. It’s a great question. Our presumption is that we can get to the high end of our GOV and EBITDA range through our own execution. Steady performance from industry volumes consistent with current competitive intensity and continued delivery of a pipeline of product enhancements that we’re really excited about that we think will start coming out over the next couple of months and have a meaningful portion of the year to benefit in terms of the back half contribution. If we deliver and those enhancements flow through as expected, that’s the path to the top end of the range.
Andrew Marok, Analyst, Raymond James: Can we-
Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer, Vivid Seats: Certainly, if there’s better industry volume and/or a further shift in competitive landscape, that would make it easier and/or create a path to outperforming.
Andrew Marok, Analyst, Raymond James: Understood. Got it. Maybe just one quick follow-up on sort of the app share growth and the gains. You talked about the increase in the app yield. Is that more driven by bringing new customers to the app, or is it sort of just increasing the velocity or the repeat purchases of existing customers already using the app?
Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer, Vivid Seats: I’m happy to say yes to that. It is across both dimensions. We are seeing app sessions increasing year-over-year. We are seeing app repeat rates increase double digits when we’re looking at our cohort subsequent to these changes. You know, one of the things we talk about a lot over here is that when you’re playing a longer game with trying to build lifetime relationships and drive long-term repeat, the toughest day of that journey is the first day because you feel all the pain on the enhanced value proposition, but you haven’t given folks an opportunity to come back and repeat. We feel like we started the snowball down the hill, and now as we move through subsequent quarters and years, that benefit will compound. We’re seeing all the underlying.
You know, we talk about leading indicators that are flashing positive. That’s a perfect example. These repeat rates, the growing size of the cohort and the growing proclivity to repeat within them are the types of leading indicators that if you can stack over time, become a really powerful trend.
Andrew Marok, Analyst, Raymond James: Great. That’s helpful. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Ralph Schackart from William Blair. Mr. Schackart, your line is now open.
Ralph Schackart, Analyst, William Blair: Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Larry, you talked about sort of entering 2026 with a refined strategy.
Maybe talk about, I guess, maybe your top one or two key priorities or adjustments to that strategy. I know you talked about the app renewed focus. I’m not sure if that’s one or two of them, but just maybe if you could sort of highlight or underscore what those are and, you know, progress to date and kinda how that progresses through 2026. That’d be great. Thank you.
Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer, Vivid Seats: Yeah. Thanks, Ralph. Yeah, I think as you noted, parts of the strategy were starting to be rolled out back half of last year, executed throughout Q4, and will continue. The efficiency, the cost reduction program was the starting point of that. Reinvesting some of those savings into this structurally enhanced app value proposition was a part of that. I think when you look at what incrementally we’re pursuing, you know, I think there’s a refreshed focus on that core customer journey, where when someone has decided that they want to attend an event, a relentless focus on making that journey as quick, efficient, and pleasurable as possible for the customer. Don’t distract them with superfluous information, but make sure all of the relevant information is in front of them.
Make sure every step of the journey works efficiently, you aren’t introducing undue friction. That’s been an area where, you know, I think we were pursuing a lot of different paths and distracting a little bit. Ultimately that’ll manifest in, I think, an enhanced conversion profile, particularly on our web journey. We’re very excited about that. I won’t go into too much detail on this, but I think there’s some enhancements to our private label philosophy and approach that we’re working on that I think will get that business line returning to growth, as we lap the tough comps starting in Q3.
They’re a little more operational in nature, but if I were to say it in a word, getting back to being operationally elite is the core focus in addition to the cost efficiency and the app value proposition, each which has their own, you know, sub-elements where we’ll continue to build on the early gains and wins.
Ralph Schackart, Analyst, William Blair: Great. Thanks, Larry.
Operator: Thank you. I’m showing no additional questions in the queue at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s program. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a wonderful day.