Australian fintech Cover Genius acquires Booking Protect to expand reach in ticketing and live entertainment market

Cover Genius, the insurtech for embedded insurance, has announced its acquisition of Booking Protect, the leading specialist in embedded ticket protection for ticket sellers, platforms and live event companies such as SeatGeek, Spectrix, AudienceView, and Night Out in the US, Zaiko in Japan, See Tickets, Festicket and TicketSource in the UK and OzTix in Australia.

With the acquisition, Cover Genius expands its presence in the ticketing and Live Entertainment market by enabling ticketing platforms, small-to-mid-sized ticket sellers, events and venues and Booking Protect’s 350+ partners, the ability to offer embedded ticket protection worldwide through XCover, its award-winning end-to-end global distribution platform.

Available at Amazon and other retailers plus ticketing giants like AXS and other global brands such as Booking Holdings, Intuit and Hopper, XCover enables the world’s largest digital companies to embed offers for any line of insurance or warranty in any country directly into their checkout or app, from a single API call.

“We’ve seen significant growth in attach rates and customer satisfaction metrics for ticketing partners like AXS, so we’re excited to apply those learnings and utilize our platform approach in order to supercharge the exceptional foundational work from the talented Booking Protect team,” said Angus McDonald, CEO and Co-Founder of Cover Genius. “It’s a natural fit for us to team up with established leaders in specialty fields like ticketing who have built a great service and end-to-end solution at the expense of traditional insurers whose legacy systems contribute to poor customer outcomes and stunted growth for partners. While Cover Genius remains focused on enterprise partners like AXS, we recognize that there’s a huge addressable market out there, so acquisitions like this set us to be able to go deep within highly attractive verticals like ticketing.”

Booking Protect’s partners will enjoy the benefits of the XCover platform and the team will move to Cover Genius in order to maximize growth within a sector experiencing explosive growth. Sales have grown 74% YoY to more than 2 million policy sales in 2022, a clear reflection that consumer appetite is changing in the post-pandemic world now that platforms are able to meet the demands of consumers who want to be protected in a seamless way by their favorite digital apps.

“We started Booking Protect to provide peace of mind to customers who are buying tickets via sellers and events and their upstream ticketing platforms, especially small-to-midsize players,” said Simon Mabb, CEO at Booking Protect. “With the pandemic exposing the need for comprehensive coverage, we believe that now is the time to join forces with Cover Genius to scale our technologies and expand the reach of our mission. We look forward to continuing to serve our partners and help businesses provide a seamless customer experience in their time of need.”