SEATERS©, the New York based technology company, has had an initial close of $2 million of a $2.5 million seed round. The 15 current seed investors include Chris Burggraeve, former CMO AB InBev; Dave Elmore, the founder of Sportsmark, owner of baseball teams and the Maverik Center in Salt Lake City; the incubator iMinds; and Duco Sickinghe, the former CEO of Belgium’s largest listed cable company and advisor to CVC Capital Partners. SEATERS©’ patent-pending innovative technology enables the electronic redistribution of empty seats for sold-out sporting and music events. Even though an event is sold-out, music and sporting events have between 1% to 10% empty seats at an event. Sources of empty seats include no shows for sponsor and corporate seats, (season) ticket holders and event organizers. Redistributing seats with SEATERS© has several benefits to organizers and sponsors, including increased food and beverage revenue, stronger negotiating position with TV rights owners, lowering the scalped ticket prices and presenting a better image—no empty seats. Ticket seekers get seats at a fair price and enjoy a transparent objective communication! SEATERS©’ creates a new tertiary market estimated at $1.6 billion worldwide and also takes a share of the $90 billion primary & secondary markets. The newly created tertiary market is official and legal, with tickets at fair prices. Initial customers of SEATERS© include BNP, Volkswagen and the Belgian Champions’ League soccer-team, RSC Anderlecht. The SEATERS© team includes significant domain experience, with one of the founders having been the official ticketing agent for FIFA and the International Olympic Committee. Furthermore, the founders have professional experience gained at Unilever, McKinsey & Company and Stanford, as well as a cumulative 30+ years of entrepreneurship. Advisors include Bob DuPuy, former President of Major League Baseball; Paul Williamson, former Director of Ticketing for the London 2012 Olympics and Dr. Pascal Courty, global ticketing expert quoted by the Wall Street Journal and Professor in Economics at the University of Victoria in Canada.