A Platform Built for Sellers
Most people know how frustrating it is to have extra tickets they can't use. You bought them with the best intentions, planning to attend with friends or family. But life happens, someone gets sick, plans change, or work gets in the way. Now you're stuck trying to recover your money through a complicated, time-consuming process with no guarantee of success.
Ticket Buyback was created to solve exactly that problem. It's the first platform that gives you an instant "Sell It Now" option for your tickets, skipping the usual hassles of listing, waiting, and pricing.
Meet Max Kaplan, the founder of Ticket Buyback. His story starts on his father's shoulders in the parking lot of the Rose Bowl, where his passion for the ticketing world first began.
Early Lessons in Ticket Resale
Growing up in Southern California as the oldest of four kids, Max spent hours outside stadiums with his dad, trying to score tickets. Starting as young as four or five, Max would sit on his father's shoulders and raise two fingers to signal they needed two tickets. Those early experiences sparked a lifelong passion for sports and the ticket ecosystem that would eventually shape his career.
"As early as I can remember, I would be trying to get tickets for us to attend games. Every year we would go to the Rose Bowl and hustle tickets," Max recalls. "That initial rush of trying to get a good deal has never really gone away."
Max and his Dad attended Rose Bowls, Dodgers playoff games, Stanley Cup playoffs and countless regular season matchups. But it was managing Dodger season tickets that taught him the harder lesson: having tickets isn't always the win you think it is.
"We had season tickets to the Dodgers, 81 home games," Max explains. "My dad couldn't attend 40 to 50 games each season. We'd share them with friends when we could, but some games just went unused. We needed to sell them, and the process was exhausting."
That frustration, watching valuable tickets go to waste while spending hours trying to sell them, planted the seed for what would become Ticket Buyback years later.
Building Expertise Across the Industry
Max didn't just stumble into the ticketing industry. He built his expertise systematically, working across multiple sports leagues and experiencing every angle of the business.
At just 15, he landed his first job as a community engagement specialist for Chivas USA (now LAFC). On game days, he'd walk around with surveys, help fans with the prize wheel, run focus groups, and take special guests on tours to meet players and watch practices. It was hands-on experience in how teams engage with fans and manage the live event experience.
From there, Max moved to the NFL Network in Los Angeles, where he worked summer jobs while he was an undergrad at Princeton working as a researcher. He created scripts and content for live television shows, the pre-game, halftime, and post-game coverage millions of fans watch every week. On occasion he would be right on the field, helping the NFL Network with its coverage of Thursday Night Football.
It was his work with professional sports teams across the NFL, MLS, and NHL (he worked on projects for the New York Islanders) that gave him real insight into how tickets move through the industry. Eventually, he operated his own ticket resale company employing over 50 people.
The Education That Made the Difference
Beyond his practical experience, Max studied applied mathematics at Princeton University, a background that would prove crucial to solving the ticketing problem.
"I've tried to use that skill set, that data analysis background, to find ways to better value and utilize tickets across the ecosystem," he says. "The goal was allowing tickets to go from people who have something come up or who got sick and get them in the hands of people who want to attend."
This combination, years of hands-on ticketing experience paired with his data analysis skills, positioned Max uniquely to see both the problem and the solution that others in the industry had missed.
The Ticket Resale Problem Nobody Was Solving
Through all his experience, Max noticed something frustrating: the entire ticketing industry was built for buyers, not sellers. If you want to buy tickets online, it's simple. A few clicks on any major platform and you're done. But selling tickets? That's a completely different story.
There's no "sell now" button anywhere in the industry. Instead, sellers face a complex, time-consuming process:
- Research the market: What are similar seats selling for? Are prices going up or down?
- Make an educated guess: Pick a price and hope it works
- Wait and wonder: Will anyone buy at this price?
- Repeat constantly: Check back in a few hours or days, adjust your price, and start over
"You might spend days managing a single listing," Max notes. "And even after all that work, there's no guarantee your tickets will sell."
The industry grew, but selling tickets stayed difficult. After years of experiencing this problem himself, the frustration was impossible to ignore.
The "Aha" Moment
Max's breakthrough came from applying his Princeton mathematics background to the problem he'd been living with for years.
Throughout his career, he'd been using data analysis to evaluate ticket values—studying sell-out rates, price trends, section availability, and market patterns. He realized he could automate what sellers were doing manually: analyzing the market and determining fair prices in real time.
"I thought, what if we could take all this data, current market prices, price trends, seat location, opponent matchups, day of the week, and create an algorithm that gives instant quotes?" Max explains. "Not just a suggestion, but an actual offer to buy the tickets right now."
The concept was simple but revolutionary: instead of making sellers do all the work, Ticket Buyback would take on the risk by purchasing tickets directly.
"We're inventing a new category right now," Max says. "Every other platform is a marketplace connecting buyers and sellers. We're the only company actually buying the tickets from you."
Breaking Industry Norms
Armed with his idea, Max faced a crucial decision: how should this company operate?
Most platforms in the industry work as marketplaces, connecting buyers and sellers while taking substantial fees from both sides. According to industry standards, these fees typically range from 20% to over 30% per transaction.
Max chose a different path, informed by years of watching companies hide fees in fine print or add unexpected charges at checkout.
"When you get a quote from us, that's exactly what you get," he emphasizes. "If we offer $51.50, you receive $51.50. No hidden fees, no percentage cuts."
This commitment to transparency became core to Ticket Buyback’s identity, a direct response to the frustrating practices Max had observed throughout his career.
The pricing model works because Ticket Buyback operates on modest margins, typically around 10%, by purchasing tickets and reselling them. This means the company takes on all the risk: if prices drop or tickets don't sell, that's their problem, not the seller's.
"We can't guarantee that we would give the best price, but we hope to give a competitive price," Max acknowledges. "We are the only company taking risk in buying the tickets from the seller."
Simplifying Season Tickets
Consider baseball season: 81 home games. Most season ticket holders can't attend even half of those games. Traditional platforms force them to list and price each game individually, essentially becoming part-time ticket resellers on top of their full-time jobs.
"You're managing 40, 50, maybe 60 different listings throughout the season," Max says. "You're basically becoming your own professional ticket reseller, even though I'm sure you have a full-time job and it's not what you want to be doing to spend your time."
Ticket Buyback's season ticket feature changes that equation completely. Enter your seat details once, and the platform generates instant quotes for every remaining game. Sellers can choose which games to sell and how many tickets per game all in a single session.
"In one step you can get an instant quote for all of your unused tickets for the rest of the season," Max explains. "Maybe you sell two for this game, four for this game, three for this game, zero for this game."
Looking Forward
The vision for the future is clear: become the leading seller-focused platform in an industry that has historically underserved sellers' needs.
"I hope that we can be the leading seller-focused ticket resale website," Max says. "Every site currently is trying to optimize the buyer experience and none of them are really trying to create a good, easy seller experience."
A Solution Built from Experience
Ticket Buyback exists because Max lived the problem, not once, but repeatedly throughout his life and career.
The result is a platform that does one thing exceptionally well: it makes selling tickets easy.
No research required. No pricing guesswork. No waiting and wondering if your tickets will sell. Just instant quotes, transparent pricing, and certainty.
"If I were to describe our company in one sentence," Max says, "it's an easier way to sell your tickets."
For anyone who's spent hours trying to list their extra tickets or watched them go unused, that simplicity changes everything. Ticket Buyback makes selling as effortless as it should be, because no one should spend hours selling what took seconds to buy.
And if you're curious to see how this vision comes to life, you can explore more on our homepage.