Innercrowd raises €750,000 for international expansion

A sold-out festival is no longer a given. A crowded festival market and rising costs are making festivalgoers more selective and leading them to hold off longer on buying a ticket. Lowlands in the Netherlands and Wacken Open Air in Germany were among the major festivals that saw this reflected in their ticket sales this year, while WOMAD Glasgow was cancelled following disappointing ticket sales. In the European Festival Survey 2025, only 17 percent of the festivals surveyed were fully sold out. As a result, it is becoming more important for organizers to get existing fans to commit to their event early and to build a loyal community.

From early bird to ambassador

Innercrowd helps festivals activate their most loyal fans early in the sales cycle. Fans who sign up for a presale or early bird sale gain access to a WhatsApp shop where they can buy their ticket directly inside WhatsApp. AI agents support these interactions by handling one-to-one conversations with fans at scale, answering questions and helping them move towards a purchase without requiring a marketer to be online. On average, these campaigns deliver 50 percent higher conversion rates than traditional presale campaigns via email. Because fans buy their tickets earlier, they also have more time to share content and get their friends excited.

“Festivals are increasingly competing for the attention of the same audience,” says Benjamin Havenaar, co-founder of Innercrowd. “People see a huge amount of content and advertising every day. That makes it harder and harder to stand out with paid campaigns. A recommendation from a friend has a very different impact than yet another ad in your feed. That is a strength many festivals already have in their fanbase. We help them make much more active use of that loyalty.”

Fans as marketers

Innercrowd's approach is already being used at scale. The company has more than a hundred clients, including Exe Club, Soenda Festival and REBiRTH, and has generated more than €12.5 million in revenue for organizers. Together, nearly 32,000 active ambassadors have carried out more than 740,000 marketing activities, from creating and sharing content and promoting line-ups to getting friends excited and selling tickets.

“This brings another advantage for organizers,” says Havenaar. “Fans themselves create photos, videos and organic content around the festival. Organizers can then reuse that content in their own marketing, which means they need to produce less themselves.”

International line-up

With the Amsterdam Dance Event just around the corner, Innercrowd is also firmly focused on further growth beyond the Netherlands. The company already has clients in Belgium, Germany, Bulgaria and Poland. Innercrowd aims to use the €750,000 investment to accelerate this international expansion.

“The pressure on ticket sales is not limited to the Netherlands,” says Hans Scheffer, investor and entrepreneur. “Through our companies, we see that festivals have to work harder to build loyalty among their fans. Innercrowd shows that you can achieve this by getting much more out of the fans you already have. That approach works in the Netherlands and has strong potential internationally as well.”

About Innercrowd

Innercrowd is a marketing tech platform based in The Hague that helps festivals make better use of the loyalty of their existing fans. The platform activates fans early in the sales cycle and then helps organizers mobilize them for content, promotion and ticket sales within their own networks. Founded in 2024 by Benjamin Havenaar (CEO) and Job Vink (CTO), the company has more than a hundred clients and operates in five countries, including the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.