Dynamic Pricing Partners grew out of a side hustle Jonathan Marks and a friend, Peter Sauer, started while they worked at Bank of America around 2008. They essentially served as brokers, buying tickets and selling them for more money. Marks’ future wife would help him stuff envelopes, lick the stamps and mail the tickets to buyers.
Sauer passed away in 2012, dying suddenly from an enlarged heart during a pickup basketball game. Marks, who was working at LinkedIn, was shaken and eventually decided to commit to the ticketing hustle he’d created with his late friend. By 2014, Marks had officially created DPP and by 2017, the business had taken off thanks to a slight pivot toward helping teams get the most out of ticket sales and not just individual buyers.
Jonathan Marks
Chief Business Officer, Elevate Marketplace, Elevate
Age: 39
Born: Cleveland
Education: Cornell University, B.S., hotel administration
Family: Spouse, Emily Walsh; children: Kenley (6), Roman (4), Eliana (1)
What my friends/family think I do all day: Talk on the phone to my clients and go to sports events!
How I deal with stress in the workplace: Focus on what we’ve accomplished and what we will accomplish going forward.
Cause supported: Polycystic Kidney Foundation, given the disease runs in my family.
App I use most: The old fashioned phone app!
First social media platform I signed up for: LinkedIn.
Social media platform I use/follow the most today: LinkedIn.
Person in sports business I’d most like to meet: Mark Cuban.
Most pivotal decision in my career: Going to LinkedIn, after being laid off from Bank of America in 2011, and not returning to finance.
Sports business leaders should be more mindful of … : Developing young leaders.
Marks’ pitch to college athletic departments was “here is what we believe based on the data we’ve seen … how we think you make more revenue.”
“And just by saying those words, it started to change how teams started thinking about brokers,” he said.
By 2023, Elevate had acquired DPP, renaming it Elevate Marketplace, and the $30 million venture had grown to $180 million in revenue. Last year alone, Elevate Marketplace generated an estimated $200 million in revenue for the agency’s clients, which reside in every major sports league and property. That crucially includes college athletics, in which Elevate Marketplace has given its parent company a productive beachhead since ticketing is one of the first interactions between a sports property and a fan. Elevate Marketplace accounts for 90% of Elevate’s new business origination in the college ecosystem and has enabled the firm to increase its scope of work with headline clients such as Alabama, Notre Dame, Penn State and Southern California.
“If we’re able to go to a team and say we can generate ‘X’ revenue above what you did last year, usually that will resonate,” Marks said.— Bret McCormick
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