BeyazBorsa Technology
Founder & CEO
What it was
BeyazBorsa (Turkish for "white market," the antonym of "black market") was a sports and live-entertainment technology business. End-to-end digital ticketing, venue access control, fan relationship management, sponsorship brokerage. The name was the mission statement: take a market run by scalpers and bring it into daylight.
The derby
Two months to build it. During the live season. Hardware installations slotted into the weeks Galatasaray were playing away, the only windows we had to touch the year-old 52,000-seat stadium. End-to-end ticketing, the FRM stack, a 131-turnstile access-control rollout. The soft opening was scheduled for after the winter recess: a low-key federation-cup tie against a second- or third-division side. Empty seats. A chance to find every bug before the stadium filled up.
Then Galatasaray got disqualified from the cup.
Our first live test became the first home league fixture after the break: the Istanbul derby against Beşiktaş. Full stadium, full stakes, the loudest ninety minutes of the Turkish football year. Two months of preparation, every contingency we could think of, the system holding its breath alongside the rest of us.
It held.
What we built
End-to-end ticketing for Galatasaray SK and Zorlu Performing Arts Center, plus the country's first ATP 250 tennis tournament. First-time-in-Turkey features: print-at-home tickets, season-ticket buyback schemes, online seat selection, and the first bank-co-branded ticketing and access control via Galatasaray's affinity cards with Garanti Bank and Denizbank. bilet360.com as a consumer portal alongside the white-label work, with clients in sports, live entertainment, and museums.
The national bid
When Turkey moved to a centralised ticketing and access-control system across the top two football leagues, we became the solution partner to six of the ten bidders. IBM, Cisco, Accenture, and others chose us for our Galatasaray credentials. One of our consortia made it to the last two of the reverse bid. The outcome didn't follow purely commercial lines.
Sponsorship as currency
Most of our client deals included a sponsorship structure we built alongside the tech. The Galatasaray case was the cleanest: the club couldn't fund the new system in cash, so we built it as a barter. The turnstiles, the ticketing stack, the FRM stack, in exchange for sponsorship and marketing rights. I sold those rights to Opel / Vauxhall as a three-year deal: naming rights for the north stand, a fleet-replacement contract switching the club from Renault to Opel, two corporate boxes, the full brand package. For the ATP 250 we brokered Coca-Cola (drinks) and Rado / Swatch Group (watches) alongside running the event's ticketing.
What came next
Exited in 2016, transferring IPR and clientele to a leading entertainment and lifestyle business.