Naver’s resale platform Cream will begin charging ticket booking fees starting from the 30th. The company is applying a strategy it previously used in its resale business—securing users with free commissions before introducing paid services—to its ticketing operations as well.
According to IT industry sources on the 7th, Cream will introduce booking fees of 2,000 won per ticket for concerts and sports events, and 1,000 won for theater performances. Leisure activities and exhibitions will remain free. Booking fees are fully refundable if canceled on the day of booking; however, they cannot be refunded from the following day onward, except in cases where cancellation occurs due to seller-side reasons such as insufficient inventory.
When Cream launched its ticket booking service in 2022, it promoted a "zero commission" policy. This was a strategy aimed at attracting users in a market already dominated by NolTicket (Interpark), Melon Ticket, Ticket Link, and Yes24. Since then, the volume of ticket transactions increased 4.5 times year-on-year in 2024 and approximately tripled last year. As transaction scale grew, it is interpreted that fees were newly introduced to cover operating costs and improve profitability.
The same strategy was applied in its core resale business. Cream introduced buyer fees two years after its launch in April 2022 and expanded them to sellers in August of the same year. According to Mobile Index, Cream’s monthly active users (MAU) reached 890,000 in April 2022, more than double the 390,000 recorded in the same month of the previous year. Following this, Cream’s operating loss decreased from 86.1 billion won in 2022 to 8.1 billion won last year.
Naver is positioning C2C (consumer-to-consumer) commerce, including Cream, as a core growth business and a foothold for overseas expansion. The company has expanded its operations by investing in or acquiring platforms such as Poshmark in the United States, Soda in Japan, and Vinted in Europe. In the second quarter of this year, Naver’s C2C revenue increased 74.9% year-on-year and 13.3% quarter-on-quarter.
A Cream representative explained, "As transaction volume and the number of events handled have increased, operating costs have risen due to the need for advanced booking infrastructure, payment and cancellation processing, identity verification, and measures against fraudulent bookings." They added, "To ensure service stability and secure high-quality performances and content, we have set fees at industry-standard levels. Fee revenue will be reinvested in securing exclusive LINE partnerships and enhancing system convenience."
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