25 years of Skiddle

25 years. We’ve come a long way since 2001. Who’d have thought that a pipedream between two friends, shared over a couple of pints in a now-defunct Preston nightclub, would actually be realised, becoming one of the UK’s most trusted independent ticketing platforms and What’s On Guides.

It’s been a hell of a ride thus far, but we’re far from done. We’ve got the bit firmly between our teeth, and we’re planning to go full-throttle over the decades to come, broadening our scope to encompass more of the events and cultural experiences that people love across the nation and further afield – especially on the European continent 👀.

Reaching this milestone is no mean feat: it’s a huge deal to everyone at Skiddle, and it’s something we’re incredibly proud to have achieved. Our team, throughout the years, has poured their blood, sweat and tears into making the service, support and the Skiddle platform – the app, the website, the Promotion Centre, and every other event or resource we’ve had a hand in producing – the best it can be.

Through the numerous challenges that’ve been thrown our way, we’ve stood up to the task, always striving for excellence and remaining dedicated to improving both the customer and event organiser experience. Our company values, first introduced back in 2016 – Simplicity, Authenticity, Customer First and Challenging – quite literally leading our decisions and actions every step of the way.

We’re the inflation-defying, pandemic-surviving, people-powered go-to for tickets to events of all shapes and sizes, who’s always got YOU in mind.

As we approach our momentous birthday celebration – the Skiddle Awards and dinner, taking place on Thursday 30th April at the Blackpool Tower Ballroom (tickets available here) – we feel it acceptable for us to brag a little, flaunting some of our biggest achievements as a business whilst looking back on our fondest memories from the quarter century gone by. And what better place to start than with some of the first events ever sold on Skiddle?

Twenty years ago this year, in 2006, our founders sat in a kitchen-come-makeshift office with a single cordless phone between them, apparently in nothing more than Calvin Klein briefs, or so the story goes, utilising their contacts and leaning on their hustling skills to get a very important deal over the line. A deal that saw what is now one of the world’s most influential electronic music festivals using Skiddle to list and dispatch tickets to their customers.

That festival was Creamfields.

A monumental win, anyone would surely agree, getting what was already a renowned and hugely popular event to trust us with its ticketing needs, and to take a punt on a platform that was new to the ticketing game, opened the doors to the many other big event names that followed – from Sankeys to JBM Music, Colours, and CIRCUS… the list could go on and on.

Our place in the market exploded, and within just a few short years, we’d made a name for ourselves as a place to find and buy tickets to the best events happening in the UK.

As more and more event organisers signed up to use the platform, the workload kept on growing. We soon found ourselves in need of an office to house our expanding team, which doubled in size from 50 heads in 2019 to more than 100 in 2025. Skiddle HQ opened in the green wilderness on the outskirts of Preston back in 2018. But that wouldn’t be the only office we’d open. In the four years that followed, we got the keys to offices in London, Liverpool and Manchester, drawing in talent from every corner of the British Isles, and we now have staff working for us in outposts such as Edinburgh, Glasgow, Ireland and even Turkey.

(A blast from the past – Check out the super low-res images below, featuring members of the Skiddle and our co-founders, taken at some of our earliest events.)

In between the opening of office spaces and recruiting new staff, the graft was underway on some of the products that still rank highly among our customers and event partners, and even in the charts of many app stores. An especially important product, the Skiddle app debuted in 2016, making it easier for people to access a wide range of events directly from their phones. Then came the features on the Promotion Centre.

Our team of development wizards worked their magic to create some of the first free tools – still free to use to this day – on our event listing platform. Those first few included ReSell, RapidScan and CoolOff – the event industry’s first refund window, allowing eligible ticket holders to request a face-value refund within a specific timeframe. Fast forward to 2026, and we’ve introduced a whole load of other new features in response to your much-welcomed input.

In the past few years alone, we’ve launched Event Series, designed to make creating and managing recurring events a walk in the park, Session-Based Ticketing, a feature allowing event organisers to sell tickets for specific entry times or “sessions”, Discount Codes and Gift Cards, which always prove to be popular around the festive season (Find more features here).

As we continued to add to the resources available on the Promotion Centre, and we broadened our presence online – launching our Facebook, Instagram and TikTok pages, now with a collective audience of over 400,000 followers – the business kept on coming. Soon, so did the recognition from the industry.

From receiving nods for the exceptional work of our UK-based support teams at the Red Rose Awards, to winning titles such as the Corporate Social Responsibility Award, and even being crowned the Live Awards Ticketing Service of 2024, we got our flowers from the events sector, helping to cement our status as a reliable and major player in the scene – something also reflected by our customers, who rate our services as “excellent” (Reviews.io – 4.4 Rating).

So, how does our history and all the hard work translate into business metrics? Take a look at our numbers to see for yourself.

We’ve sold millions of tickets to millions of customers, supporting hundreds of thousands of event organisers along their journeys, and with the revenue we’ve assisted in generating, we’ve poured money back into our communities.

We’ve partnered with some of the event sector’s most necessary and worthwhile organisations, the likes of the Music Venue Trust, Help Musicians and the Network of Women in Events, to ensure a prosperous and healthy environment for the future of all who seek to make a career in events. We’ve teamed up with industry events, from the Night Time Economy Summit to Un-Convention and Brighton Music Conference, to provide insight and knowledge into the ticketing world and to champion events among policymakers. Our most important contributions, however, come in the form of the work we do with and for our charity partners.

Focused on causes close to our hearts, we’ve raised over £800,000 for the likes of Macmillan Cancer Support, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and Great Ormond Street Hospital, to help them continue the vital work they do to help those most in need. For 2026, we’ve also welcomed a new charity partner, OnSide Youth Zones, for whom we’ve pledged to raise £100,000 every year for the next five years, to assist them in creating safe spaces for children in disadvantaged communities to come together and learn new skills.

Some journey, right? And there’s so much of our story still yet to be written. We’ve got ambitious plans in the works, but if the past 25 years have taught us anything, it’s that as a team we’re unstoppable.

We’re also looking forward to more days out, barbecues and Christmas dos with the Skiddle crew, though we’re not sure how we’ll top our 2025 Christmas get together – from Preston to Blackpool to London and Paris in three days!

Of course, with the highs, there are always lows, and sadly, we’re not exempt from this notion. We’ve lost some amazing people and some huge characters during our time as a business, who, it should be said, were absolutely fundamental to making Skiddle the place it is today. But we keep their memories with us and use them to fuel our drive to make our platform the best it can be.

To everyone who’s played a part in the past 25 years of Skiddle, no matter how big or small, thank you. We can’t wait to see where the next 25 years take us.

#UpTheToffees