Market Opportunities: How to Identify and Analyze Them

Have you ever had a friend who claimed they thought of a cab-ordering app before Uber? Or know a business locked in a two-year deliberation cycle over a new product?

Imagine if you could help them spot a market opportunity and validate it. Or, better still, come up with a groundbreaking idea for your own business.

Well, that’s what we are going to do here.

As you can see in the video above – we think we have spotted a market category that could be ripe for disruption.

In addition to weighing it up, we’ll also look at:

• What are market opportunities
• Some compelling success stories
• How you can use Similarweb to validate any marketing opportunity

So step onboard as we’re going to stick our necks out and say whether there is an opportunity to disrupt the e-commerce ticketing space. Plus, we’re going to give you some ideas based on the trends and insights we found.

But first…

What is a market opportunity? A simple guide to defining one

A market opportunity appears when there’s an unmet need or desire for a product, service, or feature. Maybe it could be done better, faster, or made more affordable.

The key? Someone’s demands aren’t being met. This could be due to unavailability, high costs, or margin.

Spotting these gaps often leads to innovative ideas. Think of it as a superpower: the ability to recognize untapped potential.

And remember, your idea doesn’t need to be the next Uber. Sometimes, it’s as simple as taking an existing service, identifying where it’s failing to serve customers, and doing it better.

Examples of market opportunities: Inspiring business success stories

In the last 15 years, many brands have emerged by spotting gaps in the market. Let’s take a look at a few standout examples:

Bumble

💢 Pain point: Online dating was stale and superficial, with many users—especially women—frustrated by large amounts of unsolicited messages.

✅ Solution: Bumble flipped the script by requiring women to make the first move, giving them more control and reducing unwanted advances.

🏆 Success: Bumble is the #1 dating app across its key markets – including the US, UK, Australia, and the Netherlands—surpassing its long-standing rival, Tinder.

Airbnb

💢Pain point: Travelers faced high hotel costs and a lack of unique experiences, while property owners struggled to monetize unused spaces.

✅ Solution: Airbnb created a marketplace connecting travelers with property owners, offering more affordable, unique stays.

🏆 Success: As of August 2024, Airbnb boasts the highest brand loyalty and customer retention rate in the US hospitality market, slightly above Tripadvisor and significantly outpacing key rivals Booking.com and Expedia.com.

Stripe

💢Pain point: New ecommerce businesses struggled with outdated, complicated payment systems.

✅ Solution: Stripe, launched by two brothers in 2010, offered developer-friendly APIs, simplifying payment processing and helping businesses launch faster.

🏆 Success: In March 2023, it completed its Series I fundraising of more than $6.5bn at a $50bn valuation. It is estimated that 2.8m websites currently use Stripe’s API.

These are all compelling market opportunity examples where businesses analyzed unmet needs and acted on them.

Market opportunity analysis: Identify and capture untapped markets

Identifying or validating a market opportunity doesn’t need to be overwhelming. With a structured approach, you can uncover growth areas that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Start by doing a close-up on your target audience. What are their needs, frustrations, or pain points?

Next, analyze your industry and competitors. Ask yourself:

• What gaps exist in what they offer?
• Are there new technologies that could reshape the landscape?
• How are shifts in consumer behavior impacting the market?

Engagement metrics can also be a valuable guide to identifying market opportunity identification. Look at your current campaigns—what content resonates most with your audience? Are there patterns that could signal untapped opportunities?

The key is to stay curious and keep asking the right questions. Opportunities are often hiding in plain sight, waiting to be discovered.

In the next section, we will use Similarweb to look at the industry, players, and customers.

Discovering market insights and opportunities with Similarweb

Now, let’s use Similarweb to bring this process to life.

Here is the pain point:

 

Imagine this scenario: Oasis, one of the biggest bands of the 90s (remember that?) is planning another final comeback tour. But everyone is moaning that ticket prices are sky-high, too hard to buy, or they have to deal with pre-sale/resale at awkward times.

Or it’s simply no sale because it sold out while Chrome was updating.

Could there be a market opportunity here?

Similarweb’s Market Research add-on will help us get the answer.

Similarweb’s Market Research add-on – what tools to use

Open up Market Analysis tool in the sidebar. As the title says, this will give you an instant overview of the market.

• Overview: Get a quick read on traffic volumes, market difficulty, and growth trends
• Segmentation: Break the category into smaller sub-categories to identify niche growth areas
• Competitors: See who your competition is and assess their strengths and weaknesses
• Geography: Even if you’re targeting the US, Similarweb might reveal international traffic worth exploring
• Demand Trends: Pinpoint key terms, discover trending keywords, and track who’s ranking for them
• Demographics: Understand who your audience is—age, gender, and more

Let’s use these tools to paint a picture of the market and uncover potential opportunities for innovation.

Our approach:
We’ll analyze the US ticketing market by applying the above metrics and inserting them in a weighted scorecard. Then, add up the total to see where it fits: High Opportunity, Medium Opportunity, Low Opportunity, and Forget It. 

1. Get a snapshot of the ticketing category

Let’s take a snapshot of the ticketing market over the past year:

While year-over-year (YoY) unique visitors are down – suggesting the ticket-buying category is slowing – the category still holds strong interest. The popularity score of 19.39% and a massive 3.5 billion total visits show that there’s still plenty of traffic.

Engagement metrics, such as pages per visit, visit duration, and bounce rates, indicate that users actively explore their options before making a purchasing decision, showing a high level of intent.

2. Can we break into this market?

Major players like Ticketmaster, Eventbrite, and StubHub dominate the ticketing market, which begs the question: Is there room for innovation?

Market Difficulty: With a medium difficulty score, there’s still growth potential. However, high consolidation and expensive PPC (pay-per-click) costs present significant hurdles.

Some possible opportunities:

• Low loyalty: Customers aren’t particularly loyal to one platform, which gives new entrants a chance to improve retention and stand out
• Low direct and branded traffic: Smaller companies could capitalize on this by building strong, direct relationships with their audience
• Niche markets: Focusing on underserved niches or specific music genres could help new and growing players gain traction in a crowded space

3. Pulling back the hood and looking at top players

Let’s take a closer look at the leading ticketing platforms and their market dynamics. Similarweb’s Players tab provides valuable insights into the top brands.

Audience Growth:

Ticketmaster remains the dominant player in the ticketing space, but stagnating growth signals an opening for smaller, more innovative platforms to carve out their niche.

While major platforms plateau, emerging companies can focus on improving user experiences, curating local events, or adopting more targeted marketing strategies to disrupt the market.

• Leading players need innovation: Giants like Ticketmaster and Eventbrite hold the lion’s share, but their growth is slowing down, leaving space for new ideas
• Emerging players with strong growth potential: Platforms like StubHub, SeatGeek, and AXS are experiencing positive growth, showing that there’s room for challengers

4. Rising and declining players in the market

We know who the dominant players are. But are there any rising stars or brands losing ground?

The ticketing market is dynamic outside of the major players. This highlights both new market opportunities and potential market opportunities and threats for emerging brands. Especially by focusing on:

• Pricing models
• User experience
• Localized services

Fast-growing platforms like ticketmundo.com, brick.me, and tuboleta.com suggest there’s untapped potential in niche markets.

Maybe platforms that cater to specific regions, communities, or event types of events can thrive, even in a consolidated market?

On the flip side, some declining players present ripe opportunities for disruption. Any drop in market share may be due to poor user experiences, high fees, or a lack of innovation. This creates a chance to step in and innovate where they’ve fallen short.

5. Demographics – who are our customers?

Let’s break down the market demographics to see who’s buying and from whom. Understanding this can help us spot underserved audiences and potential opportunities.

Age: The largest age group is 25-34, though other age ranges still show significant buying interest. Notably, tickets-center.com stands out for its focus on older customers, primarily women, which may point to an opportunity to develop offerings for older demographics in the broader market.

By honing in on these segments, there’s potential to capture untapped market share by catering to specific gender and age groups that are currently under-targeted.

6. Conversion analysis – who’s winning?

When it comes to conversion, Ticketmaster is the clear leader.

However, platforms like ticketweb.com and frontgatetickets.com have room for improvement. By boosting their conversion efficiency (through tailored marketing campaigns, discounts, etc.), they could significantly increase their market share.

How we banded our four categories of opportunity

Now that we’ve gathered all this data, it’s time to put it all together and assess the overall opportunity.

To do this, we’ve created a simple weighting system to rate ticketing as an opportunity, using the total US population and the ‘All Industries’ and ‘Ecommerce’ categories in Similarweb as a benchmark.

Keep in mind, this is just a quick example—not something to bet the house on! Your area may require something more specific.

• High Opportunity (65+ points): The market is highly favorable for growth. A score of 65+ indicates a strong mix of audience size, manageable competition, growth potential, and conversion efficiency. Entering or scaling within this market is likely to yield high returns.
• Medium Opportunity (50-64 points): While challenges exist, such as market consolidation or high costs, there are enough favorable conditions—like niche markets or moderate competition—to allow for growth. With the right strategies, success is achievable despite the hurdles.
• Low Opportunity (35-49 points): Significant barriers, such as high consolidation, low growth, or expensive market entry, make this a difficult space to penetrate. Although niche opportunities may exist, the effort required to succeed might outweigh the potential rewards unless you can offer a unique differentiator.
• Very Low Opportunity (Below 35 points): The market is highly saturated with limited growth potential. Obstacles like high costs, dominant players, and low audience growth make entry or scaling very challenging. Success in this space would require major disruption or innovation to gain a foothold.

Adding it all together – are there opportunities?

Check the table below for the full breakdown of our scoring criteria.

Download this sheet and do your own validation

🏁 Is there a market opportunity in Ticketing?

Drum roll… with a score of 48 out of 79, the ticketing space is ranked as a low market opportunity.

Here’s why:

💪 Strengths:

• Audience Size: The market has a large and engaged audience, particularly among the 25-44 age group, which comes with strong spending power
• Niche Opportunities: Untapped market niches exist, especially in specific music genres or localized events, where platforms can differentiate from dominant players
• Loyalty & Retention Potential: Although loyalty is moderate, there’s room for smaller players to improve retention and build stronger customer relationships

👎🏻 Challenges:

• Conversion Efficiency: Smaller and mid-tier platforms like SeatGeek and VividSeats struggle with lower conversion rates, despite high traffic. Improving conversion efficiency is critical for success
• Market Consolidation: Major players like Ticketmaster and StubHub dominate the market, making it tough for newcomers to break through without heavy investment in marketing and PPC
• Cost of Entry: The high PPC and acquisition costs pose significant barriers for new entrants, requiring deep pockets to compete effectively in the initial stages

Sure there are potential strengths in niche targeting and retention strategies.

However, challenges like market consolidation and conversion inefficiencies mean success will depend on finding underserved niches, spending on PPC, and improving customer retention.

But that doesn’t mean we’re going to give up. After all, it’s only a point or two off Medium.

See what you think. And feel free to pass on some phantom shares if you make it happen 😉.

Possible opportunities to create ticketing services

There are clear opportunities for innovation despite the challenges.  So, we’ve come up with some ideas based on the trends, numbers, and insight we’ve identified in our research:

1. Targeting older audiences with tailored offerings

• Problem: The 55+ audience is underrepresented, yet they often have more disposable income and time for premium events
• Opportunity: Create a ticketing platform or service that specifically targets older audiences, offering premium seating, comfort-focused options, and curated experiences
• Outcome: Capturing this segment could open up new revenue streams by catering to their unique needs and preferences

2. Conversion optimization through AI and personalization

• Problem: Platforms like SeatGeek and VividSeats struggle with lower conversion rates, indicating there’s room for improvement
• Opportunity: Leverage AI-driven personalization to optimize the ticket-buying experience. By analyzing user behavior, you can recommend events based on preferences and dynamically adjust ticket pricing in real-time to boost conversions
• Outcome: This would enhance conversion efficiency and help capture more of the existing traffic, increasing revenue

3. Niche platforms for underrepresented demographics

• Problem: Major players like Ticketmaster dominate the market, but certain demographics—such as 18-24-year-olds and specific genres—remain underserved
• Opportunity: Develop niche platforms that cater to specialized audiences, such as K-pop, indie music festivals, or eSports, where fan engagement is high but ticket-buying options are limited
• Outcome: Tapping into these niche markets could generate strong loyalty and attract audiences that the bigger platforms often overlook

Unearth the market opportunities you need to win

So next time you meet that friend who missed out on the next Uber. Or spot a deadlocked project in your own company. Well, you know what to do.

Market opportunities are often hidden in plain sight, waiting to be seized. Whether you’re solving a common pain point or improving an existing service, success lies in recognizing gaps and taking action.

You don’t always need to be disruptive to succeed.

Sometimes, it’s about doing things better. Even in established spaces like ticketing, there are opportunities for innovation, from targeting niche audiences to improving conversion rates.

To spot these chances, Similarweb’s Market Research tools are invaluable. Whether you’re analyzing competitors or tracking consumer trends, Similarweb gives you the insights to make smarter decisions and act on them.

With the right data, the next big opportunity is within reach.

FAQ

What are market opportunities and why are they important?

In the simplest terms, market opportunities refer to the favorable conditions in a market that can be leveraged for business growth. Identifying these opportunities is crucial because they can lead to the development of a new product or service, expansion into a new market, or improvement of existing offerings. Understanding market trends, customer needs, and competitive dynamics can help businesses capitalize on these opportunities effectively.

How can I effectively conduct market research?

Conducting effective market research involves several steps. Start by defining your research objectives—what do you want to learn? Then, gather data through various methods such as surveys, focus groups, or analyzing existing reports. Utilize both qualitative and quantitative data to gain a comprehensive view. Finally, synthesize your findings to identify patterns and insights that can help you identify market opportunities.

What are some ways to identify new market opportunities?

There are many ways to identify new market opportunities. One effective method is through competitor analysis; by studying what your competitors are doing, you can uncover gaps in the market. Additionally, leveraging customer feedback can reveal unmet needs, while analyzing market trends can help you spot emerging opportunities. Other methods include examining industry reports and engaging with your target audience directly.

How do I identify market opportunities effectively?

To identify market opportunities effectively, start by segmenting your market into distinct market segments. Evaluate each segment based on size, growth potential, and alignment with your business capabilities. Use tools like SWOT analysis to assess your strengths and weaknesses against the competition. This structured approach can help pinpoint viable opportunities for business growth.

What is the significance of market size in opportunity analysis?

The size of the market is a critical factor in opportunity analysis. A large market size indicates a greater potential for sales and profitability, but it also may come with intense competition. Conversely, smaller markets might have less competition but also limited growth potential. Understanding market size helps you prioritize which opportunities to pursue based on your resources and strategic goals.