Uber Could Generate More Than $100 Million In Revenue On New Year's Eve
On New Years Eve 2013, Uber had its biggest revenue-generating day in the history of the company. It generated $10.7 million from an estimated ~200,000 rides in 60 markets then. That was a 369% increase from the year prior, when Uber generated a few million dollars.
This year, Uber is getting ready for a much larger-scale day. The company tells us it expects to do 2 million rides on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, getting passengers around the world to and from their parties. If Uber can deliver and this year's prices are consistent with last year's, Uber could generate more than $100 million this New Years Eve.
Since Uber rides on New Years Eve are often accompanied by surge pricing, Uber has written its annual blog post on how to best the service.
First, demand is highest between 12:30 and 2:30 AM. If you leave just before midnight or wait it out until 3, odds are better that your fare will be reasonable.
Here's a chart that shows the busiest time of night for Uber:
And here's a video describing how surge pricing works.
Uber is also partnering with MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) and it pledges to donate $1 of every ride associated with the MADD promotion code MADDNYE.
Here's how Uber faired last year during New Years Eve, according to an internal document obtained by Business Insider.
Here are the number of trips completed in some of Uber's largest markets on December 31, 2013:
And here's how many of those trips had surge pricing attached to them on NYE 2013.
Now let's look at city-by-city revenue breakdown on Uber's $10.7 million day.
Three cities generated more than $1 million in gross revenue for Uber that day: Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. DC missed $1 million by a hair ($918,918). Total gross revenue on New Years Eve grew 367% from 2012 ($2.28 million) to 2013 ($10.7 million).
And if you really want to geek out on the data, here's city-by-city New Year's Eve revenue from 2012 and 2013. Note, the million-dollar cities are extreme outliers. The median was only $22,000.
