We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Angela Gallegos a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Angela, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

You can paste the following response.

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For most of my career I worked inside a high-volume retail corporation. I started in a call center making six dollars an hour and eventually moved into Marketing Operations, managing over $150 million in budgets, forecasts, accruals, and internal and external audits. That environment teaches you very quickly that revenue problems are rarely about marketing creativity — they are usually structural. Systems are layered on top of each other over time, incentives drift, and revenue leaks through operational gaps that no one is specifically accountable for.

When I began studying live event commerce, I saw something very familiar. Concerts, races, and other major events generate enormous demand, but the commercial infrastructure around them often behaves like a traditional online store — always on, loosely governed, and disconnected from the actual structure of the event itself. In reality, live events operate under extremely compressed timelines with multiple rights-holders, strict operational authority, and narrow windows where demand is at its highest. The existing tools weren’t built for that environment.

The idea behind Rivalry Commerce came from reframing the problem. Instead of treating event merchandise and interaction as a standard ecommerce function, I began designing it as infrastructure that aligns with the lifecycle of the event itself. That led to the concept of a licensed commerce layer that can deploy alongside existing systems without replacing them. The layer governs when commerce activates, how interaction is permitted, and ensures those interactions are tied to verified transactions within specific event timing windows.

What excited me about the idea was that it doesn’t try to replace venues, ticketing platforms, or existing infrastructure. It runs in parallel with them. The goal is to recover revenue that is already present but structurally unreachable — fans who want to participate but can’t because of long lines, timing issues, or operational constraints during live events.

Rivalry Commerce ultimately grew out of that realization: the problem wasn’t fan demand. The problem was architecture. Once you treat live event commerce as governed infrastructure rather than a storefront, an entirely different set of solutions becomes possible.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

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I am the founder of Rivalry Commerce, a company focused on building infrastructure for live-event commerce environments. My background is not in traditional startups or marketing agencies. I spent more than two decades inside a large retail corporation, starting in a call center and eventually moving into Marketing Operations where I worked with large-scale marketing budgets, forecasting models, and audit-sensitive financial processes. That experience shaped how I look at commercial systems. I learned that revenue outcomes are often determined less by marketing tactics and more by the architecture that governs how transactions are allowed to occur.

Rivalry Commerce was created from that perspective. Live events such as concerts, races, and major performances operate in highly compressed environments. There are multiple rights-holders involved, strict operational authority, and limited windows where demand peaks. Despite that complexity, much of the commerce surrounding these events still relies on traditional e-commerce tools that were designed for always-on retail rather than time-bound experiences.

The work I am doing through Rivalry Commerce focuses on solving that structural gap. Instead of replacing existing venue systems, ticketing platforms, or merchandise operations, the architecture introduces a licensed commerce layer that runs alongside them. This layer governs when commerce can activate, ties interaction eligibility to verified transactions, and aligns commercial opportunities with specific moments in the event lifecycle. The goal is to recover revenue that is often lost because the infrastructure around live events was never designed to operate within those timing constraints.

What makes this approach different is that it treats commerce as governed infrastructure rather than a storefront. The system is designed to operate in parallel with existing event systems, preserve rights-holder authority, and avoid taking custody of funds. It focuses on creating controlled activation windows where transactions can occur without disrupting the operational environment of the event itself.

What I am most proud of is building something that addresses a structural problem rather than simply adding another marketing tool to an already crowded ecosystem. Rivalry Commerce is intended to give artists, racing teams, and other rights-holders a way to activate commerce in alignment with the real-world conditions of their events, while maintaining control over how those transactions are governed.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

My reputation has developed around a structural approach to solving revenue problems. I spent more than two decades inside a large retail corporation working in marketing operations where I was exposed to large-scale budgeting, forecasting, and audit-sensitive financial processes. That environment teaches you to think structurally. When revenue problems appear, the cause is usually not creativity or demand — it is the architecture governing how transactions are allowed to occur.

When I began studying live-event commerce environments, I noticed a similar pattern. Concerts, races, and other large events generate enormous demand, but the commercial infrastructure around them often relies on tools designed for traditional online retail. Those tools assume commerce is always available and unconstrained. Live events are the opposite. They operate within narrow timing windows, complex operational authority structures, and intense periods of demand.

What has helped me build credibility is focusing on solving that structural mismatch rather than adding another marketing layer. Through Rivalry Commerce I am developing an independent, parallel licensed commerce layer designed to operate alongside existing event systems. Instead of replacing ticketing platforms or venue operations, it introduces a governed layer that aligns transactions with the lifecycle of the event itself while operating as independent infrastructure running in parallel with the existing environment.

People tend to respond to that approach because it respects the operational realities of live events. The goal is not disruption for its own sake, but designing independent infrastructure that operates in parallel with the existing environment, allowing rights-holders to activate commerce in a more controlled and effective way.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Much of my thinking about business has been shaped by studying how systems actually function rather than simply how they are marketed. Over time I became interested in the structural design of industries — how incentives, infrastructure, and timing shape the way revenue flows through an environment.

That interest eventually led me to begin writing about the architecture of live event commerce. In my books Beyond the Encore and The Venue Carries the Risk, I explore how concerts, races, and other large events generate extraordinary demand but are often constrained by infrastructure that was never designed for the realities of those environments. Writing forced me to step back and analyze the lifecycle of events from a systems perspective rather than a marketing perspective.

The process of writing and publishing these ideas has been valuable because it allows me to refine the underlying architecture behind Rivalry Commerce. Instead of focusing only on tactics or tools, the work explores how independent, parallel infrastructure can align commerce with the lifecycle of an event while helping rights-holders address revenue leakage caused by timing constraints, congestion, and operational limitations.

For me, writing has become an extension of the same mindset that drives my business work: studying systems carefully, identifying structural gaps, and designing infrastructure that works in parallel with existing environments rather than trying to replace them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rivalrycommerce.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-gallegos-rivalry
• Other: Rivalry Commerce LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rivalry-commerce

Image Credits

Angela Gallegos