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Baseball legend Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez and his business partner Marc Lore have started their own ticketing and fan-experience company called Jump to compete against the industry's troubled leaders.
The funding was led by Forerunner Ventures, Courtside Ventures, Will Ventures and Mastry Ventures, Bloomberg reported.
With initial funding of $10 million from Rodriguez and Lore, the total amount now stands at $30 million.
The ticketing industry has faced intense criticism in recent months after several high-profile issues involving botched ticket sales.
Executives from Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation Entertainment came under fire on Capitol Hill earlier this year for failing to prevent computer bots from scooping up tickets to be re-sold at an upcharge on the secondary market.
Now, Jump hopes to compete against other ticketing services through a model known as dynamic ticketing — where ticket prices fluctuate in real-time based on demand. The same model is used for things like airline tickets and booking hotel rooms.
Jump co-founder and CEO Jordy Leiser said the company hopes to work with existing ticketing services and make events more personalized, Bloomberg reported.
Leiser said the $30 million in funding will be used to create a robust workforce but the company will take several months to develop.
Rodriguez and Lore are no strangers to high-level business dealings. The two are currently in the middle of a three-step plan to take full control of the NBA's Minnesota Timberwolves and WNBA's Minnesota Lynx.
