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A new student-founded website called MaizeTix launched Aug. 9, aiming to provide students with a platform to buy and sell University of Michigan sports tickets. Founders say they created the website to prevent ticket scamming, an issue that students trading tickets may face. MaizeTix is unique, according to its founders, in that it is a student-only website, which allows students to purchase student section tickets.
Engineering sophomore Alex Zhang, one of MaizeTix’s four founders, said the idea for the website came from recognizing that ticket scamming is a collective problem but is one that could be solved.
“What really started (MaizeTix) was that ticket scams are a shared experience for all of us, and it’s a worry that we all have to deal with,” Zhang said. “We decided we have a solution and we might as well implement it. We just needed a way to create a secure platform for students to trade tickets on, and that is how we started MaizeTix.”
The website currently offers football and men’s ice hockey tickets but plans to expand to include men’s basketball. To use the website, students need to verify that they are U-M students through an email confirmation. Following this, they can either sell tickets for a football or hockey home game or purchase them from a range of listings.
Engineering sophomore Ryan Davis, MaizeTix co-founder, said MaizeTix offers several benefits to ensure users feel safe and supported throughout the purchasing process.
“Basically when someone buys a ticket, they can expect to get their tickets within a few minutes,” Davis said. “We can also guarantee the authenticity of any ticket that comes through our site because we physically have it in our athletics account. Also, if a student ever wants to cancel selling a ticket before it is bought, they can just click a cancel button and the ticket will get sent back in a couple of minutes.”
Engineering sophomore Vaibhav Chennareddy said when buying a ticket for the Fresno State football game in August, MaizeTix felt easier and more secure than other platforms he has used. Chennareddy said the use of Stripe, a common payment method, on the website felt especially secure.
“I thought it was extremely easy,” Chennareddy said. “It was quick, reliable and safe especially as I am used to buying tickets off of Snapchat because I do not have a season pass. In contrast to that, this process was a lot faster and also safer because I saw they’re using Stripe. I felt safe putting my banking details and credit card information on their website.”
Kevin Yanos, a lecturer at the Center for Entrepreneurship and mentor for the MaizeTix team, said the MaizeTix website was carefully designed to prevent errors that could result in a loss of credibility.
“It seems like everything has gone very smoothly since launch,” Yanos said. “They put a lot of preparation work into making sure things don’t fail because the main reason they built this was they were sick of seeing people get scammed and sick of getting scammed. They knew if things didn’t work right away they’d lost that trust immediately, so they were hyper-cautious.”
Engineering sophomore George Huynh, MaizeTix co-founder, said the founders have been excited about the traction MaizeTix has had so far.
“Currently we are sitting at just over 3,000 verified users that signed up with our website, and we have just over 100,000 in transaction volumes with tickets being bought and sold,” Huynh said. “We’re really excited about the usage and transactions we have had through our site so far.”
Rackham student Avalon Lebenthal, president of Children of Yost, the student section for the Michigan Men’s Hockey team, said MaizeTix has also partnered with the Children of Yost to increase promotion and marketing of hockey tickets.
“The MaizeTix founders reached out to me this summer and asked if we would be interested in helping them promote MaizeTix, as it is a safe, reliable student-to-student website,” Lebenthal said. “Season tickets just recently went out so once everything is up to date we are going to help them with marketing, posting on the GroupMe and on social media to get the word out there. They already have a lot of traction with football so we are just helping them spread that to hockey as well.”
Engineering sophomore Karl Rizzo, MaizeTix co-founder, said the site charges an additional fee from buyers, which is primarily used to cover operating expenses.
“So in every transaction, we charge $3 and 5% of the total ticket cost,” Rizzo said. “Most of our fee just goes to operating our business. Stripe takes 2.1% and 30 cents and then we have some other costs associated with running the server and a variety of business expenses. We are getting very little in our pockets out of this because we thought it would be a really cool project. We just hope that scams become a thing of the past at some point.”
Engineering freshman Jonathan Ding, MaizeTix user, said this fee felt worth it due to the security of the site.
“I think it just helps you have peace of mind,” Ding said. “That is what you are paying for at the end of the day. To know that you are getting what you are paying for is what makes it worth it to pay the extra charge.”
Daily Staff Reporter Alyssa Tisch can be reached at tischaa@umich.edu.
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