Vivid Seats Inc.

Good morning, and welcome to the Vivid Seats third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Following management's prepared remarks, we will open the call for Q&A session. I would now like to turn the call over to Ashley DeSimone.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Vivid Seats third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. I'm Ashley DeSimone, Managing Director at ICR. Joining me today to discuss Vivid Seats results are Stan Chia, Chief Executive Officer, and Larry Fay, Chief Financial Officer. By now, everyone should have access to the company's third quarter earnings press release filed earlier this morning. We have also provided supplemental earnings slides. The press release and earnings slides are available on the Investor Relations page of Vivid Seats' website at www.investors.vividseats.com. During the course of this call, management may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements include statements related to Vivid Seats' anticipated financial performance and operating results, market opportunity, the future impact of COVID-19 on their operations, and their business strategy and plans. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees and are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements. Please refer to today's press release and the company's filings with the SEC, including the risk factor section in the company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2021, filed with the SEC for a detailed discussion of the risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made today. On today's call, we will refer to adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP financial measure, as we discuss the third quarter's 2021 financial results. You will find a historical reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to actual GAAP results included in the press release issued earlier today and available on the company's investor relations page at www.investors.vividseats.com. And now I would like to turn the call over to Stan. Stan?

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today on our first earnings call as a public company. I'm Stan Chia, Chief Executive Officer of Vivid Seats, which I've had the privilege of leading since November of 2018. As you know, we began trading on the NASDAQ several weeks ago. We are excited and humbled to have this amazing opportunity and look forward to this new chapter. I would like to thank our existing investors who rolled all of their equity as part of the business combination, our new partner, Todd Boley, who has already provided meaningful financial and strategic benefit to the business, and our new public shareholders as we embark on this journey. Most importantly, I want to thank our teammates at Vivid Seats for their relentless dedication and commitment through such a challenging environment last year and also for their fanaticism in creating exceptional experiences for all of our customers. These efforts not only culminated in us becoming a public company, but also resulted in record-setting financial results in our third quarter. Our third quarter performance reflected our highest single quarter results across all of our key financial metrics, as the team delivered $713 million in Marketplace Gross Order Volume, or GOV, $140 million in revenues, and 42 million in adjusted EBITDA. Given this is our first earnings call as a public company, I will spend a few minutes providing some background on who we are, our mission, and what we believe makes us different. Vivid Seats is a leading online ticket marketplace committed to being the ultimate partner for connecting fans to the live events, artists, and the teams they love. We provide leading technology platforms and services that connect fans of live events and ticket sellers but the simple mission of enabling fans to experience it live. Attending live events creates lifetime memories, and we believe our marketplace delivers a seamless and trusted experience to help fans safely buy tickets to the events they want. We differentiate ourselves by offering tickets across a wide range of events with competitive pricing supplemented by a dynamic and unique loyalty program, Vivid Seats Rewards. We endeavor to provide our fans with exceptional value so they can attend more of their favorite events and make lifetime memories while doing so. Our ecosystem connects millions of buyers with thousands of sellers, resulting in over 17 million annual ticket purchases across 200,000 events. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we were able to set the minds of Vivid Seeds customers at ease and assure them of cash refund options or loyalty awards credit, which we paired with a donation to charity. We are proud that we were able to offer our buyers who wanted or needed cash that option. But we also offered the alternative of enhanced future buying power by way of offering rewards cash loyalty credit for 110% of the full value of the order total. We want our fans to know that Vivid Seats is a safe and secure place to buy tickets backed by our 100% buyer guarantees. designed to give them peace of mind. Because we are a two-sided marketplace, we also strive to enable our sellers to manage their inventory and complete transactions seamlessly. We offer Skybox, one of the most widely adopted seller ERPs in the industry, to sellers free of charge. We continually upgrade this platform to support evolving seller needs. As I noted earlier, we had a record-setting quarter we generated $713 million of marketplace GOV, $140 million of revenues, and $42 million of adjusted EBITDA. Larry will provide more details later, but this performance builds on the positive momentum demonstrated last quarter and reflects the desire of fans to return to their favorite events. While the emergence of the Delta variant in August of this year raised caution, Venue operators responded by instituting admittance protocols that focused on requiring proof of vaccination and or a negative COVID test to ensure live events remained safe. As a result of these efforts, as they say, the show went on with many fewer cancellations or postponements than we saw in 2020. Beyond our financial performance, I am very excited about the enhancements we made across our user experience and loyalty program. Our product and technology teams were hard at work last year, focused on innovating across our consumer platform, and we brought many of those efforts to life in the third quarter. As a proudly Chicago headquartered company, we timed the product release schedule to coincide with the return of Lollapalooza, an iconic Chicago weekend music festival held in late July. Our new product suite encompassed redesigned web and app experiences, all carefully designed to enhance the user experience with search, discovery, and personalization as well as under-the-hood performance and system enhancements. And best of all, all of these customer-facing elements were styled with the visual identity of our new brand. At the same time, we enhanced our already unique loyalty program, Vivid Seats Rewards. Vivid Seats Rewards now allows every fan to earn 10% in value on every ticket purchased, and when combined with our competitive pricing, is one of the strongest economic propositions out there. We didn't stop there, though. we've continued to add value for our fans by adding perks that augment the actual event experience. At launch, we announced a unique perk with DraftKings that rewards our users with free DraftKings dollars as they attain new loyalty tiers, as well as our Surprise and Delight program, where our users will occasionally receive surprise upgrades to better seats or access to unique events. At our first event, Vivid Seats Rewards members received exclusive access to Tao in Chicago for an intimate Lollapalooza after party, jointly hosted by our partners at Rolling Stone Magazine and featuring an intimate performance by Roddy Ridge. We've also continued to forge partnerships that will continue building exceptional experiences for our customers. We've announced our partnership with Klarna, adding the ability to give even more of our customers the convenience they need to experience it live. Finally, we continue to seek ways to support our community through a number of programs like our continued partnership with Music Cares. In the third quarter, we supported those in our industry impacted by Hurricane Ida and have now donated millions of dollars since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. With that, I will turn it over to Larry to review our financials. Larry?