Has the war against scalper bots met its match? Ticketmaster likes to think so. With the official roll-out of the company’s Verified Fan initiative, the ticketing giant believes it has scored a huge win for the average fan who is powerless in the battle against lightning-fast programs that result in seats for their favorite artist’s shows ending up on the secondary market for two, five or 10 times their face value.
“Verified Fan is a concept that works in any onsale context,” said David Marcus, head of Music for Ticketmaster. “At its core is the question: ‘are you a fan or are you in the arbitrage business? How big a fan are you?’” Verified Fan uses TM’s technology platform and massive live event database to help fans get the best chance at landing tickets for the shows they want to attend the most.
The process begins when an artist announces a tour, with directions to a responsive registration page where the fan identifies that they are a real person by providing information such as an email address, phone number or Ticketmaster account before selecting the shows they want to attend.
Following the registration period, TM uses its proprietary data technology as well as automated and manual processes to make sure ticket orders are from real fans, who then receive a unique code that provides them access to buy tickets at a predetermined onsale time.
“This is not limited to fan club members or anyone with a pre-existing membership,” Marcus said, pointing to the “hundreds of thousands” of Ed Sheeran fans who registered for the “Shape of You” singer’s upcoming North American tour during an early March onsale. “When we put these tickets on sale we promise we won’t invite bots to the party.”
The official wide rollout — Verified Fan was earlier employed for tours by the Dead & Co., Muse, the 1975 and Ryan Adams — comes a month after Eric Church and his Q Prime South team used their own logarithmic methods to scan ticket sales for suspicious activity and clues that tip them off to scalper buying patterns. Their team claimed an accuracy rate at or near 99 percent on scans conducted explicitly on pre-sales for Church’s fan club.
Sheeran’s tour got the big push because Marcus said it had the most risk of fans being disappointed because of the huge demand and limited supply of tickets. Unlike the Church clamp-down on bots infesting fan club presales, VF was created to work in any context. It is not limited to fan clubs or anyone with an existing membership — though it was initially rolled out in connection with artist-driven presales promoted in artist tweets or posts — as evidenced by what Marcus said was the “hundreds of thousands” of registrations for the Sheeran sale.
The Verified Fan window was open to any fan interested and willing to register and anyone who qualifies through that process will get a windowed opportunity to buy tickets at a later date. TM claims nearly one million registrants for VF to date, though Marcus said he was unable to reveal how many of those tickets for Sheeran and the other tours were allotted to VF sales and what percentage of the total ticket pool they represented.
Asked if the data collected will be used in any other manner, say, for marketing purposes, Marcus said the information will lead to opt-in marketing opportunities. But the goal in collecting it is to match those data points against verifiable information to ensure that the tickets are being purchased by a real fan. “With Verified Fan we do analysis in advance without the pressure of the sales environment where tickets sell out in a minute and a half and we can really sift through and apply what we know about consumers and give consumers invitations to buy tickets they want,” he said.
In part, VF is a way to slow down the ticketing process and fundamentally alter the way the business distributes tickets now, which rewards speed. “If we distribute tickets in a way that rewards speed, especially tickets priced below market, we invite arbitrageurs to invest in speed, i.e. bots,” he said. “It’s an epidemic that’s a creation of our industry’s making. VF is the beginning of our initiative to take the speed out of the equation so we can reward people who are fans.”
Asked how VF is different from other methods of ensuring tickets get in real fans’ hands, like paperless ticketing, Marcus said unlike paperless, the burden is not on the fan in VF. “That [paperless] worked, past tense, but brokers found a way around it by just using prepaid cards to get tickets and selling that prepaid card on StubHub so the ticket becomes a piece of plastic, which puts a restriction on fans,” he said.
VF is not intended to restrict or prohibit resale entirely, but to encourage fans to value the experience of scoring tickets to their favorite artist’s concert more than a couple hundred extra dollars they could make by flipping them, Marcus said. “We believe in resale — a fan should have that right,” he said. “When we do a better job of distributing tickets the first time, at the right price, that resale becomes what should be a marketplace for fans to trade tickets with other fans. It should not be a secondary market of arbitrage that takes advantage of inefficiencies in first distribution. If we can serve fans on first distribution, then the secondary market should have value to the artist as well.”

Primary, secondary, it’s becoming one big blur. Where fans get tickets has become an industry in itself. The large ticket sellers rarely agree, but at PACnet ‘17, they all agreed on one thing: no one knows what the industry will look like five years from now.
According to StubHub’s Geoff Lester, the delineation of primary and secondary ticketing is less defined to consumers. Customers care about value, convenience and the experience, he said.
He also shared that StubHub used to keep its data in-house but has invested in a data consultancy service and it’s working out well. This service shows relevant consumer buying patterns as well as providing valuable pricing data to enable primary ticketing to better understand market pricing dynamics to aid with revenue management.
Rob Sine, IMG/Learfield Ticket Solutions, also takes data seriously but warned, “data must take a scientific approach. With the right data, decisions can be made on the fly.”
Sine said that by using data to tweak prices for the last 1,000 tickets a venue or team can make an extra $10,000-$50,000 on one game. “You need to understand data to change prices,” he said. “The smartest partners are starting to get revenue back by pricing right in the first place.”
Sine’s company sells two million tickets a year and he sees the landscape changing. “It’s now all about what the fan wants, when the fan wants it,” he said. “We spend a lot of our time telling the fans what they should do and the fans say back to us, ‘this isn’t what we want to purchase and when.” Sine believes that paying attention to the fans needs, and making it flexible, will bring more money.
The future for season ticket holders is changing drastically, Sine added. “I don’t want the same experience every time. I may want to go in a group, with my family, with colleagues or by myself. I’d rather see us, as an industry, continue to focus on season ticket revenue and not the same package that’s been sold the last 30 years.”
“We have to realize that fans don’t want the same thing over and over again,” he said. “We need to develop packages that meet their needs.”
DTI Management’s CEO Curtis Cheng said, “DTI takes inventory and distributes it across multiple platforms. Our job is to move more velocity of tickets, bring a higher yield back to the team and pass data back to the team so they can understand their market better. We can tell them things like where the consumers are coming from and where they are making their transactions. Did they come from Facebook? Twitter? Email blast? ESPN college scoreboard? That’s what’s important to know, not someone’s age.”
Cheng also wonders about what the ecosystem of ticketing will look like in the next few years. “There are people who make tremendous livings off arbitraging what the primary charges and what they can acquire on the secondary. We primaries should be selling season tickets, groups and mini-groups and all single use tickets should go ecommerce.”
“Try to get ahead of the curve,” he said. “Everybody thinks it’s going to go one way; it goes another way.  Status quo is not the answer.”
“Phone sales to sell one ticket are ancient,” he said. “Millennials don’t buy things that way. They will transact anywhere. The only way to reach all of them is to go everywhere.”
“The more shelf space you can put your product on the more eyeballs you will get and you sell more tickets at a higher price,” said Cheng. “If we look at the airline industry, the price gets higher as you get closer to the flight. In the sports ticketing world, the prices go down. The reason is because of fragmentation of sellers. There’s no controlled inventory.”
“Sports doesn’t accept different pricing yet,” said Cheng. “And that the person sitting next you doesn’t pay the same.”
“It can all be controlled now through simple software solutions. Control the supply first. Fans now wait until the last minute for the price to drop. From a consumer standpoint that’s great, but from a rightsholder standpoint you didn’t maximize the value of your supply.”
Cheng also said not to treat every game the same. Every game should have its own pricing. He also stressed that today events are competing against all kinds of other things.
“Millennials go on an app and decide what they want to do that night,” said Cheng. “It may be eating. It may be dressing up. You’re competing against all entertainment options and there are 20 other things someone can do other than go to a game. There has to be more than product on the field. There has to be something better than just the privilege of owning a season ticket.”

Two weeks after a highly successful PACnet ‘17 wrapped in Newport Beach, Calif., Kim Damron was promoted to president of Spectra Ticketing & Fan Engagement, a division of Comcast Spectacor, answering directly to Dave Butler, her mentor and the man who hired her there 12 years ago. Venues Today followed up with this one-on-one.

What was your first executive decision as president?
There have been a lot, to be honest. One was to promote Craig Ricks to SVP of Marketing and Steve Demots, who just came off the best year in the company’s history with 22 new accounts (the old record was 10-15, including our distributor partners’ new clients), to chief revenue officer. We’ve just had a fantastic year; there’s a lot of momentum. University of Houston is our most recent return client. We just signed Georgia Southern (Statesboro) as well. Christian Lewis will take over all of sales. That’s the first big move, elevating some of the team to help with some of the changes we’re making here.

Has most of Spectra Ticketing’s growth been in the collegiate business?
It’s mixed. We’ve been very successful with arenas and performing arts centers. Two of our performing arts venues have just announced “Hamilton.”

What does the announcement of “Hamilton” do to your ticketing heart?
It’s a lot of demand for not a lot of tickets. We started with new subscriptions and renewals, and we had two of those on-sales the first week in March that went flawlessly. They will have the single ticket on-sales closer to the launch of the show in 2018. So far so good, but obviously, there is huge demand.

What are your marching orders going forward as president of ticketing?
Overall, coming off such a great year, it is to continue to evolve the product offerings, including analytics, marketing services and some of our third-party partnerships.
For you personally, what was the highlight of PACnet ‘17?
The content was absolutely fantastic. Over 750 people attended, which was a record-breaker. Craig did a fantastic job, and people came away with things they can apply to their day-to-day business. The keynotes honestly were my highlight.

What was the newest and most innovative offering introduced at PACnet ‘17?
The Paciolan Platform and showing the ease of use and patron integration resonated so well in all of those sessions. People could understand the interaction with Salesforce and how we’re all talking through the APIs.

Is the goal to simplify things?
Yes, we are through APIs. The Paciolan Platform will be the entryway. The foundation of what our community will use is the Paciolan Platform.

So a lot of it is integration?
Yes, we will continue to look at Salesforce, Facebook, and, with our API platform services team, we will continue to integrate.

What was your career path to this pinnacle?
I started my career right out of University of Southern California (Los Angeles) with Paramount Studios. I ended my career there as director of national advertising, where I oversaw about $500 million a year we spent on theatrical advertising. The internet was starting to explode in 1998-99, so I joined  Buy.com in Aliso Viejo (Calif.), then consulted for eBay for six months. Then someone said go talk to Tickets.com, so I went there for 4.5 years. Paciolan (now Spectra Ticketing) recruited me. I met Dave Butler and Jane and I joined nine days later.

How do you feel about your new role?
I’m obviously honored and thrilled. I’ve been here almost 12 years. I’m passionate about the community. I’m also proud of the culture we’ve created here. We are probably the only major ticketing company that has had two women as presidents. (Jane Kleinberger, founder and chairman, was the fist). It shows Dave Butler’s and Dave Scott’s (Comcast Spectacor) commitment to female leadership. I’ve had so many in the community send me inspirational notes about how I am helping pave the way for female leaders. I’m getting notes from people I’ve never met saying this gives me hope we can achieve whatever we want.

REPORTING FROM NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — The data has spoken. Ticket discovery on Google, StubHub and Facebook is staggeringly dominant.
That fact helped fuel the direction taken by Spectra Ticketing & Fan Engagement — integration. Dave Butler, who has been CEO of Spectra Ticketing & Fan Engagement for more than 12 years, set that stage during PACnet ‘17 with a detailed discussion of the customer’s journey, from discovery to post-event.
Spectra Ticketing is now integrated with Salesforce (CRM), FanOne Marketing Automation, StubHub (secondary and primary ticket sales) and Ballena Technologies (which Spectra acquired in 2015), among others.
“We can’t satisfy every need from scratch nor should we,” Butler told the record crowd during the Feb. 12-15 conference here. “When Salesforce is spending $1 billion a year in research and development for CRM [customer relation management], why would we try to compete with them? So we built this platform of integration services,  and this is how all the partners we’re talking about can interact live with the data in your system. This is fundamental to our future.”
PACnet ‘17 was the largest PACnet to date, including more than 750 Spectra clients, strategic business partners and attendees, highlighted by eight keynote speakers, 175 presenters and 60 sessions during the four-day community event.
Today, the Paciolan Platform, which they called Pac8 a year ago, brings ticketing, marketing, fundraising, reporting and analytics all together on one customer record page, Butler showed the crowd. “You can see everything going on. Account information, what clubs they’re part of, memberships, touchpoints so you can see the emails they received from you, that’s all integrated in one location.” The operator chooses icon or tabular views.
Butler’s delight with the Paciolan Platform approach was apparent as he further detailed Spectra Ticketing’s partnerships, details of which were fleshed out over four days of meetings.
For instance, StubHub is integrated on Spectra’s primary ticketing platform. Butler shared a case study, Oregon State University, Corvallis, where Zack Lassiter opted to test the waters by putting some of the university’s primary tickets on StubHub just to see if people went there. The result: $127,000 worth of tickets sold immediately. Year to date, $500,000 worth of inventory has been sold on the site, “because people go to StubHub to decide what to do,” Butler said. The best part? Forty percent of those sales were new customers.
Spectra Digital Group also includes Google Search, where 483,000 people search for a live event ticket opportunity every day. “Google allows you to elevate yourself based on relevancy, using key words around your event,” Butler said. “The key is the paid search. You want to be number one when people are searching for your event.”
In email marketing, the trend is more personalized, one-to-one communication,” Butler said. “A personalized or segmented message makes all the difference.”
This is a watershed year for mobile. “Your traffic online for tickets is higher on mobile — 52 percent — than desktops,” Butler said. That is a first.
“Mobile is the central ecosystem of tech,” said Brandon O’Halloran, SVP, partnerships & strategy, ReplyBuy. “It’s heading toward 10 times the scale of the PC industry. In other words, the smartphone is the new sun, everything is orbiting around this. Every company should be thinking mobile first. Consumers want access, speed, and simplicity in today’s society. They expect to be able to press a button and have a car show up outside to pick them up.”
Geoff Lester, StubHub, said his company’s mobile adoption rates are skyrocketing. Three years ago, StubHub had 30 percent mobile traffic and 10 percent transactions from it. Today, they are at 70 percent traffic and 50 percent transactions. “Mobile is life; it’s everything,” he said. “It’s where people engage.”
“You can leave your wallet or purse at home and pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay,” said Junior Gaspard, Experience. “You can forget keys and still get in with Google home. But if you leave your phone you turn and run for it. You can’t get through the day.”
According to a Google Web Index study, 47 percent of media time is spent online and the average consumer has 3.3 devices.
Spectra Ticketing’s mobile flow process is taking advantage of mobile usage surpassing desktop. They pioneered the new product with Stanford University before rolling it out to all clients. The new mobile ticketing experience leverages the latest in mobile web design and features a mobile-optimized seat map search, price sliders and an easy-to-use mobile purchase flow.
Customers are able to easily reserve the best seats within their preferred location by simply using their mobile device, with less clicks to purchase. The results have been impressive. Based on Google Analytics, mobile ticket transactions grew by 145 percent in 2016 vs. 2015.
Mobile is allowing the industry to connect with customers individually, intimately and with messaging tailored specifically for them. The new rule is to treat each customer like they are the only one you are reaching out to. Many of the PACnet sessions explored ways to connect on a singular level with each and every potential ticket buyer.
“It’s now an intimate conversation,” said Rob Sine, IMG/Learfield Ticketing Solutions. “And the key is to get the data. We need to have less ticket sales conversations and more revenue conversations.”
“Hyper-personalization is the way you surprise and delight customers,” added Jason Cole, FanMaker. Cole uses Spectra’s PACnet Rewards Application to meet this challenge.
“The rewards program is a way to offer stuff to fans to modify their behavior,” he said. “Using the rewards you can then find moments that will stand out and be  surprising to the individual. You can offer them a ride on the Zamboni or take them out on the ice.”
Cole said he can get almost two hundred different variables on each fan including items they’ve hashtagged, when they ask to renew tickets and even what they bought at the concessions stand using the rewards program.
“We can do things like birthday greetings from a kid’s favorite coach or player or a message from their favorite driver with personalized video to the fan’s phone,” he said.
Another program Cole said FanMaker had great success with was sending a credit on food, beverage and merchandise with renewals — but 25 percent of the credit goes away each day the customer doesn’t renew. This got one of his clients 5,000 renewals in a week.
“About half our renewals come from personalized communication,” said Cole. “It’s dynamic and what you push is relevant at a lower cost.”
Jessica Coyle, NCR, agreed that hyper-personalization was winning customers.
“As long as you track the ROI and get data, this works,” said Coyle. “We’ve tried things like offering 25 percent off merchandise to fans when we email them back a receipt for a ticket purchase.”
Coyle was also proud of the NCR app that studies what a fan orders and then makes suggestions about what they can order to go with it, like pairing a beer with a food item.
The Tampa (Fla.) Bay Lightning tried a loyalty points program where they gave away a team jersey to season ticket holders. Then they put an RFID chip in the jersey so the fan can pay easily. This resulted in a 46-percent increase in ticket sales and 25-percent increase in food, beverage and merchandise per caps.
Leah Beasley, Mississippi State University, Oktibbeha, said that the Hail State rewards program was working really well. “Repeat customers are what we want,” she said. “Our rewards program keeps track of points.  Then the fan can go to the prize store and get rewarded for coming.”
Beasley said that 80 percent of the students use the rewards app, and 91 percent say they attend more events because of the program.

The mobile revolution has emboldened marketers with new tools to achieve one goal: Get them in the door.
Spectra marketers were thrilled with the PAC Marketing Automation product. It’s a powerful behavior-based multichannel marketing solution. The platform empowers organizations to deliver customized, triggered campaigns and marketing emails that provide a one-to-one marketing experience for each fan. University of California, Berkeley; Georgia Tech, Atlanta; and University of Mississippi, Oxford, have seen great success using the tool.
Group sales were another big topic at PACnet ‘17.
Aaron Maisel, Oregon State University, Corvallis , was excited by the advent of mobile paperless tickets and new website which he credits with a 6-percent increase over 2015 in student attendance.
Mike Osmundson, Indiana University, Bloomington, was very happy with their integration with Spectra that allowed Indiana University to digitalize group ticketing. “It’s a better way. It’s important for the students to group with friends.”
Both Maisel and Osmundson said that overselling the venue created extra revenue, and that statistics show that only 70 percent of the ticket-holders actually attend.
Indiana University used to do everything on paper, by hand. “We had to store a lot of forms and put it all into the system, which was very inefficient,” said Osmundson. “The move online cut down dramatically on the number of hours spent putting info into the system.”
Nick Marckel, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, had a similar experience when they switched to the Spectra system. “This limited long lines at the ticket office and the number of staff needed,” he said. “It eliminated 10,000-plus pieces of paper and countless hours we had to spend entering the data into the system.”
University of Michigan had good luck with including multiple sports there into the same platform. Marckel also touted a new ‘points system’ for seat assignments. “This encourages early arrival,” he said. “Now we reward students who come early by implementing the point system.” Points earned determine seating for the next season.
Marckel was also quite pleased with new turnstiles by Spectra sponsor and partner Alvarado. “The turnstile scans the ticket, it’s fast and easy to use and eliminates human error.” The turnstiles are also portable. Another Spectra sponsor and partner, Janam, manufactures the handheld scanners that the lion’s share of Spectra clients use.
Matt Mastrangelo, Groupmatics, was high on Spectra retention tools. “Through our Spectra product, we can add an outing to a fan’s calendar. The communication tools allow us to send messages about time changes or game delays. As individuals make purchases, we get info on others in the group like their name and email.” 
Taking a play from cable companies, the next big thing looks to be not only selling a fan a ticket, but also selling that fan all the ancillary goods that go with the event.
“We are all looking at ways to leverage the sale once we get a customer buying tickets,” said Rob Sine, IMG/Learfield Ticket Solutions. “We’re not far off from selling hotel rooms across from the stadium. We can sell parking, merchandise, experiences and food and beverage, just to name a few things.”
Experience is a company that would not exist without mobile technology. It uses mobile technology to offer seat-upgrades, it provides unique experiences at a game and has successfully pioneered the subscription model.
“Inventory is perishable once the event is done,” said Junior Gaspard, Experience, “We’re all about finding a new way to get fans into the building.” 
Selling tickets in packages is nothing new. Selling them in a subscription-based model is.
“Think of it like Netflix. The customer signs up for a monthly fee, say $19.99, and for that fee they get to go to as many events as they want,” said Gaspard. Maisel said that University of Oregon introduced the subscription model and it’s worked wonders for attendance.
Castle is a fan of Experience’s INWEGO product, which allows a fan to go to different events at different venues across a city. “There are 15 sports-related entities in the area,” said Castle. “It’s especially great for getting new fans.”
“Subscription is new and if you are in places with other sports teams, partner with them,” suggested Lisa Langham, Spectra.

As president of Spectra Venue Management and Food Services & Hospitality, John Wentzell has found the perfect fit, leveraging his two core competencies. He’s been with Comcast Spectacor for just four months, but he has 30 years of experience. “We have a great opportunity,” said Wentzell, “We’ve got a terrific core book of business, a very passionate team and we’ve grown fast and have opportunity to grow exponentially between what we do and the backing of Comcast.” Venues Today followed up with Wentzell after the community conference.

Spectra is committed to offering clients multiple and integrated services. How does ticketing fit into the process?
It’s one of Spectra’s significant points of difference, the idea we are a company with strong roots in venue management, food services, ticketing and corporate partnerships.

Has technology changed everything?
Being able to be a technology partner to our clients is very important. Technology is the thread that runs through it all.

What technology has had the most impact on the business?
Certainly mobility has been a huge piece. It’s wonderful having Comcast as a parent company and a major business provider from the standpoint of WiFi. The second piece is the capture of data across our businesses.

Thirty years ago, ticketing conversations were about the price. Is price still an issue?
What we’ve learned is not to price all tickets the same, even in the same location. Product differentiation by virtue of packaging, food and beverage, and other components, allowed us to create flexibility. The public tells us what they want to pay by virtue of their actions. It’s ‘prices’ now. You can watch the numbers and make it work.

Is dynamic pricing coming to the music business?
I think there will be an evolution towards that. Ten or twelve years ago, there was apprehension about the concept on the pro sports team side. Now look. There was a significant embracing of that concept in professional sports where the market speaks. I can see that happening to artists as well.

What’s front and center at Spectra Venue Management and Food Services right now?
Orlando City Soccer Club just had their home opener (March 5). That’s a significant new partner for us in food and beverage. It’s our third Major League Soccer stadium (fourth soccer stadium overall) and a growing area. There are more opportunities for food and beverage in major collegiate sports. The programs are more sophisticated with premium seating, and club areas and now alcohol service. There is significant opportunity in the tribal-owned and operated casino space. Fairs are an area that is very unique; I would say there are opportunities there.

What about new content, like e-sports?
E-sports is a very fragmented environment right now. You have to have a great deal of expectation and anticipation given the number of participant users in some of the one-off events taking place. It’s staggering in the amount of broad, worldwide appeal. What kind of fuels my excitement is major league sports ownership and other major players in our domestic sports business now taking a stake in these companies and teams and underwriting certain aspects of leagues.

Mobile has created an opportunity to advance engagement during the event in ways the industry could not without it. Selling a ticket is, of course, just the start of a fan’s journey, and keeping the fan engaged before, during and after the event was heavily discussed at PACnet ‘17.
“Think about your customer’s journey with you, from parking to concessions to ticketing to the event itself,” suggested David Millay, Disney Institute.
“You can’t control wins and losses, but we can control the fan experience,” said Matt Henderson, University of Iowa, Iowa City. “Someone has to take the lead on fan engagement.”
According to many, customer service all starts with the mobile app or website. “It starts at awareness,” said Rachel Bomeli, Fox Theatre, Atlanta. “Your website, how easy it is to peruse and the purchasing process is important. How easy are we to do business with on mobile? On a desktop? On the phone?”
Bomeli’s biggest idea is a simple one: write everything down. “Determine what it is that needs attention and write it down, determine how you will measure it and commit to it.”
According to Frédéric Gauld, VenueParking, his survey of event-goers in Montreal produced this fact: 26 percent of the people would go to more shows if they could take the hassle out of parking. He suggested outsourcing parking.
Engaging fans should be fun according to Mike Veeck, owner, St. Paul (Minn.) Saints and Charleston (S.C.) RiverDogs. “Fun is good,” he said. “Service drives the experience, which drives the memory.”
Veeck pointed out some out-of-the-box ideas he and his team have tried over the years, like a third-inning pillow fight, and put in the caveat: “Don’t be afraid to fail. If you fail look at why.”
Veeck said he often makes his employees drive to work in the traffic and back home in the traffic so they experience the customer’s experience. He’s also gotten a lot of good feed back from having his employees stand at the gates and talk to people on the way in and on the way out.

IN-VENUE EXPERIENCES
James Kim, Spectra, spoke about all the new ways people can experience a live event through technology. “You have to give them a reason to leave all that,” he said.
“Social media is a key component of keeping the fans involved every step of the way,” said Greg Driscoll, University of Virginia, Charlottesville. “You need a comprehensive social media approach.”
Driscoll rolled off a series of ways to employ social media, such as ‘tweet of the night,’ having fans ask questions of the athletes and playing the responses on YouTube, Instagram contests, photo booths, Snapchat submission contests and encouraging fans to use Facebook Live while at the event. Create FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) for people not there, he said.
Driscoll described how University of Virginia uses 10 to 12 students to moderate their online hub, which is powered by Pac Social.
The PAC Social marketing suite allows Spectra Ticketing & Fan Engagement clients to effectively engage their customers and efficiently manage all of their social channels. The platform enables them to provide rich social media experiences in-venue, on their websites and microsites, and throughout their digital media assets to drive significant fan and customer engagement.
Once the fan is in-venue, Driscoll uses student ambassadors to work the crowd, employs an in-house DJ to keep things lively and cuts to Instagram and tweets during the game.

KEEPING THE VENUE FULL
“We all want to prevent seats from going empty,” said Lisa Langham, Spectra. “We all strive for full stands.”
Eric Childers, Ottawa Sports & Entertainment Group, said that it’s important to give season ticket holders benefits. “They are our bread and butter and commit to multiple games. We have a dedicated fan specialist and five reps who provide touchpoints throughout the year.”
Mike Castle, Georgia Tech, Atlanta,  is a fan of Vet Tix, which is a company that gives away unused seats to veterans. “We love Vet Tix. There’s ease of integration through Spectra. Season ticket holders can do this on the app. And we have no packaging of tickets.”
Post-event engagement is the way to keep the venue full till the end of a game. Suggestions for post-event activities included post game concerts; post game autograph sessions, poster signing at end of game; giveaways like bobbleheads of the players; allowing families to go down to the ice and skate with kids; opening up the field; offering 25 percent off food, beverage and merchandise and even raffling off free TVs and Vespa Scooters.

The numbers tell the story. The $85 million, 6,400-seat Smart Financial Centre, Sugar Land, Texas, is off the charts successful, regularly hosting sellout shows and booked every weekend non-stop since its Jan. 14 debut.
“My vision, the people’s vision, is we have to be better and cooler than anyone else,” said Gary Becker, the managing member of the project for the Becker family, who helped fund it. “When you walk in the building, you see an environment that Houston has never had. There are probably venues like this and things other venues have, but Houston has never seen it.”
Smart Financial Centre has a beautiful proscenium stage, 6,400 seats, and walls that move in and curtains that descend to create a more intimate venue setting, down to 1,900 seats. The intimacy for the smaller configurations is the same as at 6,400, Becker said.

Acoustics was a main concern for Smart Financial Centre. LD Systems is the technical partner; L’Acoustics II is the sound system used. Randy Bloom, GM of Smart Financial Centre, has witnessed the phenomenon show after show.
“Dave Matthews stayed on stage longer than he ever does, he liked the sound so much,” Bloom said. “I always knew the sound would be good to great, but when Don Henley looks you in the face and says this is one of the most awesome sounding places he’s ever been, that hits you. Kristen Chenoweth put her mic down her last song or two and performed unamplified. Reba McEntire was raving about how great the sound was.”
Bloom recalled the first time he heard the acoustics during early sound checks. “When you hear something that good and don’t know what you’ve been missing all your life, it hits you in the gut.”
The feel of the room goes well beyond great sound. Becker talked about the proscenium stage, the in-house video, six spotlights, rigging for 300,000 pounds, the full 80-line set system for Broadway, the orchestra pit that hydraulically moves up and down. “We have all the bells and whistles for all different types of venues of this size,” Becker said.
And they did it on budget — $85 million. The Beckers invested $60 million through lease payments and investments to cover revenue bonds. None of it is tax money, Becker said. “The city has gone way overboard. They built the parking lot, the plaza with lighting and water fountains.”
But how do you value your time? “We’ve been doing this for seven years,” Becker said, of the effort it took to get the teahteropen.
Smart Financial Centre’s operating budget is $6 million, which includes the payment to the city.  Soft construction costs came in at $9 million. Admittedly, some things had to be engineered out as they crunched numbers. Originally, the building was designed to be 230,000 sq. ft., but came in at 200,000. “We had a $5 million ceiling we engineered out. We sharpened some pencils,” Becker said.
When the public voted on building the theater, 76-78 percent of the people approved it, but that was nine years ago. Costs escalated. No tax money but some tourist money goes into the pot. “We personally guaranteed it, putting cash in the bank to cover it,” Becker said. “They will always have three years of payment in the bank. We’re committed. The city’s committed. We’re all committed.”
“We don’t say arena,” Becker said of Smart Financial Centre. “We’re a proscenium theater that has the ability to move walls and drop curtains.”
Smart Financial Centre is partnering on the big shows with Live Nation. “They’ve done a great job for us,” Becker said. The Beckers are both working with promoters — all promoters — and managers. From their decades of promoting concerts, they have strong relationships in the industry.
Live Nation has Cynthia Woods Pavilion at The Woodlands, but that’s 80-90 minutes away from Sugar Land and “only 2.5 percent of their audience comes from this county, so people in this part of Houston are not going to the amphitheater,” Becker added.
In fact, no other venue truly serves the niche Smart Financial Centre now occupies. It’s a tough to afford the artist at 3,000 seats, but at 6,000, it’s a slam dunk.
Martin Short and Steve Martin were set for 4,600-capacity, Becker said of the original booking. Sales were strong and they raised the curtain, opened up the balcony and sold out at 6,400. “The market has not seen something like this; we’re selling lots of tickets,” Becker said. “Jerry Seinfeld sold 12,000 tickets in one day.”
Flexibility is a hallmark for Smart Financial Centre, and that’s not just the seating configurations. Maxim booked the theater for its Super Bowl party. They put a deck over the orchestra seats and turned it into a Vegas club. “We can do anything,” Becker declared.
The new fiscal year begins April 1 and Becker is projecting a minimum of 85 shows. In the first calendar year, they will hit 105 performance days. They are selling to the acts from two directions — either Houston is a two-building play or this act doesn’t belong in an amphitheater, it belongs indoors.
“Jerry Seinfeld played two shows at Jones Hall at Hobby Center [Houston] in August 2014, 3,000 and 3,000,” Becker said. “He comes here and he does 6,000 and 6,000. Billy Crystal is a Jones Hall play, but here, if you do well, you can open the walls.”
It all comes down to the experience in Becker’s opinion. “If the experience is the experience people want to have, they will come.”
Bloom came on board as GM in November 2015 and moved to Sugar Land soon after. The Becker family has been working on this project since 2009. Mike McGee, Barmac Consulting, has been working with the Beckers on this project for three years. Greg Poole was brought over from Toyota Center in Houston to be director of operations last year. Bill Young Presents, also a homegrown
company, was brought in to do the signage. The hometown team in place is experienced, and they know each other.
As of the first of March, Smart Financial Centre had hosted 15 shows and 75,000 patrons. All shows were sold out or close to sold out.
Bloom has only seen one free weekend, and that was because Maxim was moving in for its pre-Super Bowl party, a process that took a week. The result was 4,000 people attending a Las Vegas-style nightclub. “They even completely reconfigured the outside, covering up the box office with roses and a Maxim sign,” Bloom said.
The event was Saturday night. By Monday night, they were back in theater mode and ready for Dancing with the Stars.
“We put six months of life on the building in one evening. Sunday, I came in and it didn’t have that fresh venue smell. Even for a tent guy used to tearing down venues, that was a heck of a feat.” Bloom was referring to his years with the circus as a “tent guy” background.
Flexibility is the mantra at Smart Financial Centre. “We’re attracting shows that would also play arenas, so there are several adjustments to be made. Like where to put the satellite B-stage set up in the audience,” Bloom said. They have risen to every challenge.
“We haven’t turned anything down yet. The Harlem Globetrotters are making inquiries. We’ll figure out a way to make it work. If we could make Maxim work, we can do anything,” he said.
Sponsors have been fantastic partners. Smart Financial, the title sponsor, has its own activation in the building. Mercedes Benz of Sugar Land, Solar Eagle Distributions with Budweiser and Bud Light; Hermann Memorial Hospital; Rockin’ & Roastin’ Coffee, Pepsi and ThinkEnergy are among them.
The venue has 14 suites, priced $120,000 per year, which includes 10 tickets to every show and access to the Mercedes Benz lounge, valet passes and concierge service. The 120 club seats go for a $3,000 seat license for the year, which entitles buyers to purchase their reserved seats for any public performance in the house. The venue offers them a two-week window to activate the buy after the public on-sale.
“Sugar Land and Houston are a small neighborhood so we’re constantly communicating with our customers and finding out what they need and want, and taking care of requests,” Bloom added. “It’s almost like a little country club up there [in the suites and club seats] with a lot of our local notables who all know each other making a weekly party of it.”
Ticket prices vary widely, with the highest in the $250 range, lowest at $10.
Industry reaction has been stellar, Bloom said. “Live Nation is here day in and day out, Bob Roux or Jason Rio; Coren Capshaw was thrilled; Larry Magid had Billy Crystal here the other night.” Larry Seidel, president of Smart Financial, held a brand camp at the theater.
Smart Financial Centre operates with 20 fulltime staff. “They make it happen, from getting Maxim in and out, then Dancing with the Stars,” Bloom said. “It’s one thing to be at a venue, another to turn backflips like this staff has, from one day being an arena, then a small theater. Everyone is doing backflips.”

SMART FINANCIAL CENTRE FACTOIDS

Owner: City of Sugar Land
Operator: Ace SL LLC
Suites: 14, 20 seats each, 118 feet from the stage
Club seats: 120, $3,000 license fee
Parking: 2,542 spaces, $15 each
Concessionaire: Spectrum Catering & Concessions
Loading Docks: 11 vehicles plus artist transport
Seating: 6,400 full, 4,500, first stop (walls in and balcony included); 3,000, walls in and curtain down on balcony; 1,900 sold out orchestra (using lighting to black out the rest of the house)
Orchestra Pit Area: 500 standing, 386 seated
Ticketing Partner: Ticketmaster
Housekeeping: Pritchard Sports & Entertainment
Parking: Ace Parking
Security Staffing: Contemporary Services Corp.

This issue of Venues Today introduces our repositioned Ops + Security section. It is sort of scary. Undeniably, sports and entertainment venues are in the crosshairs for terrorists. I’d prefer that weren’t the case, and day-to-day, it is business as usual, but there is that underlying awareness.
Future stories will look at drones as a security threat. In researching the story, I’ve discovered there are companies specializing in identifying, neutralizing and capturing drones. Did you know Dutch police are training eagles to take out illegal drones? Some are “training” good drones to fight bad drones, with the capability of flying over an unwelcome drone and dropping a net to “capture” it.
Most of us think of drones in the hands of hobbyists or military. But there is that in between. Drones are even a cyber security threat. A properly-armed drone flying past your office window can steal your data.
Send us your security tips and triumphs as we continue to track the latest in operations and security protocols. It will make us all stronger.
We also singled out Technology with this issue of Venues Today. It’s a topic that is always top of mind in every industry today. It’s interesting to note we have one story on how technology enhances the experience, like using cellphones as an opportunity for fans to participate in a synchronized light show during the concert or to buy tickets or to order food. The fan with the cellphone is an identifiable friend to operators of venues.
But another story documents  how obsessive use of smartphones is an annoyance to performers on stage and other ticket buyers in the seating bowl. You’re at a LIVE event people. Watch the show.
A San Francisco company called Yondr manufactures a locked case that can be used to stop cellphone use inside the theater. It’s something comedians, in particular, are beginning to insist upon and solves the liability and PR problem of asking patrons to give up their cellphones before entering the show. They keep them; they just can’t use them unless they step outside.
Live entertainment is ever evolving, both the creative and the business aspects. Patrons today have different tastes and triggers that providers are seeking to satiate.
Talking to Randy Bloom, who is the general manager of Smart Financial Centre, Sugar Land, Texas, which is also featured in this issue, the subject of change came up because of the circus. Randy practically grew up on the circus where his dad, Allen, was an executive with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
“I have so much love for that brand, the history and what it means as a community and what it means as a cultural icon in America,” Randy said as we discussed the decision to take RBBB off the road. “I don’t really believe that it’s over. The expression when I was a kid was ‘ever-changing and never-changing.’ Getting that cocktail right of what needs to change when and keeping it the Greatest Show on Earth is the challenge. I have to think there is a future for the Greatest Show on Earth with Feld Entertainment.”
God grant you many years to get the cocktail right.

Food is a much bigger part of the concessions equation than Ronnie Smienk, director of food and beverage at Smart Financial Centre, Sugar Land, Texas, for Spectrum Catering & Concessions, had anticipated.
With a background in clubs and bars, he expected drink sales to drown out food per usual. He’d noted it was very rare, in all of his days with clubs, to hit a $1 per cap on food. At the new theater outside Houston, it hit $2.50 per person on food alone for the opening two shows by Jerry Seinfeld. That was on a $10-per-cap show, Smienk said, meaning 25 percent of sales was food rather than drink.
“Food sales surprised me tremendously,” he said. “We have continuously been between $1 and $1.75. We haven’t hit under a dollar yet.”
Last month, he brought Chef Greg King in to work on more food offerings. King comes from Spectrum’s tour catering division with Cirque du Soleil.
Spectrum is also hard at work finishing its new permanent kitchen (they are currently working outside in a tent) so they can accommodate more food sales at the theater.
Inside the venue, Spectrum is operating with 80 points of sale, of which 78 are at fixed concessions. The two portables include a coffee cart for Rockin’ & Roastin’ Organic Coffee (the creation of Aerosmith Drummer Joey Kramer and a sponsor of Smart Financial Centre) and a food cart for items that are not conducive to sales at every concessions stands. “We want to keep it fresh,” Smienk said.
For a sold out show of 6,400 people, he schedules 60-75 bartenders front of house and an additional 10-20 food runners/barbacks to replenish the stands.
All food and drink is serviced via a 30 X 40 ft. tent out back, not attached to the building. That can make it challenging to deliver hot and cold food, but they’re used to the drill, since Spectrum has 65 other clients, many of them festivals and golf tournaments served out of tents at volumes greater than this.
“It’s an obstacle we’ve overcome and will maintain,” Smienk said. “The permanent kitchen isn’t attached to the building either.”
The new permanent kitchen will be slightly bigger, 60 X 53 ft., Smienk said. It’s set up similar to any major hotel that services 1,800 rooms, with four large Combi Ovens, two convection ovens, skillets, fryers, countertop griddles, and, coming soon, a smoker. Smienk is particularly looking forward to having a large walk-in refrigerator and large walk-in freezer in the permanent kitchen.
“That’s the biggest difference from working in a tent — the walk-in coolers,” he said. “Currently, our biggest struggle is storage — refrigeration and freezer. In the venue, we have three main bars downstairs in the lobby, and every lobby bar has a kitchen area with a walk-in cooler and a can cooler. We were able to share that with front of house. But we don’t have large freezer space. It’s a science to plan ahead and figure out the numbers we’re going to do.”
It’s not just concessions food that is coming out of that very busy tent out back. They are also preparing food for 14 suites, each seating 20 people, and the backstage crew, a group that can number from 20 to 120 depending on the show for up to three meals a day.
“Any night, we might have 14 different menus to execute for those suites, in addition to crew catering and, of course, the regular concessions. Coordinating that has been the biggest challenge,” Smienk said.
Smienk sees the potential to hit an average 15/85 food to drink ratio when everything is in place. To date, food is about eight percent of overall sales. “Our per caps are higher here than at other venues with the same shows,” Smienk added.
But he wouldn’t quantify offerings, other than crew catering, as meal servings. “It’s concessions food with a twist,” he said. “We have our own version of a pretzel stick, with Budweiser beer cheese sauce.”
Spectrum also offers up a lobster roll one wouldn’t find in most theaters. And a slider trio — pulled pork, beer can chicken and beef brisket. In the concessions stands, patrons find all-beef jumbo hot dogs (1/4), fried chicken fingers with duck fat-fried kettle chips.
Spectrum sources everything local, “except it’s Maine lobster,” Smienk said, adding that they chose the lobster roll as a signature dish because it does well at their golf tournaments. “It’s something people don’t expect. We sell out of it mostly every night. The food cost is fairly high though - $3 each. It goes well with a glass of wine.”
The biggest seller in the food category is the 30-ounce box of popcorn for $6. Tito’s vodka, a Texas brew, is the main seller on the bar side.
Smienk has also been experimenting with themed drinks based on the genre of the show. “It started with Billy Crystal; we did the City Slicker — Absolut vodka, triple sec, cranberry and lime.” It was quick to make and sold for $12. For Bill Maher, they offered PC Punch. The featured cocktail is marketed on menu boards at points of sale.
Patrons at Smart Financial Center tend to gravitate toward bigger servings more than single servings. “It’s a seated venue, so people don’t want to get up in the middle of the show and get a refill,” he said. “Double servings outsell singles, and the patron gets a pretty decent discount.”
Future plans as concessions service shakes out at the new theater is to look at more distribution of food and to reconfigure the set up for condiment stations. Another food cart is also likely.
Spectrum Catering & Concessions handles food service in 65 venues, most of them in the U.S., some in Canada. Festivals, crew catering for major tours (including Cirque du Soleil), and theaters and clubs dominate their portfolio.
Those clients included theaters run by Ace Theatricals and since bought by Ambassador Theatre Group, which was the door through which they entered Smart Financial Center.

CONCESSIONS BY THE NUMBERS

Average per cap: $14
Highest per cap: $24.50 (Dave Matthews Band)
Lobster Roll: $16
Jumbo Hot Dog: $5.50
Popcorn: $6
Points of sale: 80

Opening a first-class, flexible, financially viable theater in his own hometown is a dream come true for Gary Becker, Ace SL LLC, which invested heavily in and now operates Smart Financial Centre, Sugar Land, Texas.
His pride in the new venue, which has taken Houston by storm, is palpable. When the Becker family, including Gary’s dad Allen and brother Brian, sold their sports and entertainment company, Pace Entertainment, to Bob Sillerman and SFX, there was a disconnect, he admits. Through Pace people, including Brian, ran SFX for several years, it was flipped to Clear Channel and then spun off as Live Nation and the Beckers continued to run Ace Theatricals, which included operating classic venues like the Majestic Theatre in San Antonio and Saenger Theatre in New Orleans. Then they renovated Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, N.Y. Two years ago, they sold those theater operations to Ambassador Theatre Group out of the U.K.
“So to be involved in a project in your hometown in which you can have ‘the Becker touch,’ is great,” Becker said. “The environment around here is the way it was when we had Pace.”
“The Becker touch is how the people see the business and see their job.”
The Becker name has a big impact with the city of Sugar Land, he admitted. “We’ve been around. I’m not bragging; we have 160 years of experience as a family.”
This project started in October 2009. “In 2011-12, we are starting to actively book our theaters with contemporary music and we’re starting to preach Sugar Land,” Becker recalled. They were letting the agents know there is a new opportunity in the city of Houston.
That same year, the Beckers sold all their other theater properties to Ambassador Theatre Group. “It was an unsolicited offer. We liked them; there’s a great relationship there. Sugar Land could very well be a part of that ownership group as well.” The changeover is likely next year, pending city approval.
“Today, we are focused on one venue in a great market that happens to be our hometown,” Becker said with obvious delight. “We all have the same business, butts in seats. The way the business and artist deals have changed, we’re in the business to park cars and sell beer and sell popcorn. We make more money doing that than on selling tickets. It’s just the way the artist deals are.”
“This is the last hurrah,” Becker joked of his family’s empire. “We’re building the last one in Maui. It’s going to seat eight people. I think it’s going to be a tent, but the view is going to be great.”

As artists work to keep their work exclusive in a highly visible cellphone era, venues are starting to crack down on the use of mobile devices at concerts, comedy shows and even in restaurants.
How does one go about eliminating cell phone use at shows? The answer is to lock them up so that mobile users can’t access them. Concertgoers might find this annoying, but venue operators find it incredibly useful — not only to keep entertainers happy but also to give customers a more “real” experience of the performances they witness.
A San Francisco, Calif.-based company called Yondr found a way to eliminate smartphone use at shows by putting devices in lockable cases. Once audience members enter a venue, they are given a choice of three different-sized cases in which they place their phones. The cases lock the cell phones inside, and they can only be opened if the smartphone user steps outside the “no cell phone” zone inside the seating area.
Comedy Works in Denver, Colo., utilizes Yondr at every show today, said owner Wende Curtis. But it didn’t happen by default. Originally, it was dictated to Comedy Works by comedian Dave Chappelle that the comedy club was required to use the cases. Chappelle became a Yondr client early on.
“It came off the top of the deal,” Curtis said.
To her surprise, it not only worked at eliminating crowds from recording his comedy skit and putting it on YouTube or Vimeo, but it also improved crowd experience.
If someone needs to make a call in the middle of a show, they simply walk out of the no cell phone zone and tap it on an unlocking device, pull the phone out of the case and use it.  The goal is twofold: To cut down on people posting video — whether it be to Facebook Live or YouTube for example — of artists who want to introduce new material at a show and don’t want it readily available online and to get venue customers’ eyes off their cell phones and onto the live performance they attend.
Yondr founder Graham Dugoni invented the lockable cases after finding that smartphone use was taking away from the concert experience.
“I started to feel that a lot of what’s happening in the modern world was this discrepancy between the way life is being lived and the role of technology,” Dugoni said.
Thus, Yondr was born. Dugoni’s invention started with visits to the hardware stores, trying to mold the perfect product to accomplish the goal of cracking down on smartphone use at shows.
Despite how addicted consumers are to their phones, Dugoni found that people liked his idea.
For venues that opt to utilize Yondr, it’s important that tickets and websites that are selling seats make it clear, in print that cellphone use is not allowed.
Success depends on the personnel that work a show. Oftentimes, Yondr will send company representatives to help with the cases, but more often than not, Yondr just trains staff that already monitors the entrances and exits at venues.
“They let us know when, where and how many cases are needed,” Dugoni said. “Most venues are able to supply their own venue staff. The process is so simple that you don’t need specialized staff.”
Comedy Works has two locations in the Denver-metro area — one downtown and the other on the south end of Denver. Yondr is offered at both locations. The south club has a ballroom on the third floor, and the director of the ballroom became so “miffed” at employees using their phones while serving customers that she purchased 30 Yondr cases that her staff has to use while working so they can focus on customer service.
“When they punch in, they lock up their phones,” Curtis said.
Curtis actually had an opportunity to use the Yondr cases as a member of a crowd rather than a venue operator recently when she saw Chris Rock at the Bellco Theater in Denver. Chris Rock only will perform at venues that use Yondr.
“Yondr was there, and I knew Yondr was there,” Curtis said. “And, wow! I was present. I’m so ADD that I’m absolutely that person who would pull it out and use it,” she said. “My life was not devastated the least bit by not having that stinking phone on.”
Curtis believes that such locking devices will continue to gain momentum and popularity among venue operators, especially as it relates to protecting artists’ material.
“They don’t want their stuff out there. They don’t want it recorded and put on YouTube. I think venues are there to accommodate artists, and I think the audience will shuffle along.”
Dugoni said his locking cases have been used by a large chunk of venues in the United States and internationally. He started the business in 2014, and he now employs 10 people and expects that number to grow.
Another amazing aspect of locking up smartphones is that alcohol sales increase four to six percent at venues that use Yondr, he said.
“I think it’s a time thing. If they’re not looking at their phones, they drink,” Dugoni said.
Schools also are starting to use the locking cases to keep kids focused on their work.
As Dugoni continues to grow his business, other industries will catch on, Curtis said.
Many of Yondr’s clients are comedy clubs that are required to use the cases if an artist agrees to perform.
The Gramercy Theater in New York City recently purchased Yondr, and the Durham Performing Arts Center in Durham, N.C., used the cases when Chris Rock performed at the venue.
The business is kind of a chicken and an egg model, meaning word of mouth between artists and venues is what gives Yondr it’s big push.
“Initially it was driven through the artists. We’ll do shows along a tour and the venues will circle back,” Dugoni said.

Ronnie James Dio rocked stages across the globe for more than five decades, thrilling millions with his towering, opera-inspired vocals and heavy metal thunder. Sadly, his operatic wail was muted in 2010 when the hard rock icon succumbed to stomach cancer at age 67.
It was the end of an era for the former singer for the groups Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Dio and Heaven & Hell. But not the end of his performing career. In one of the most ambitious live hologram efforts to date, Jeff Pezzuti and his team at Eyellusion plan to take an incredibly lifelike, interactive Dio on tour around the world.
“We took our time with it,” Pezzuti said of the care taken in building the resurrected Dio. The hologram’s debut last summer at Germany’s Wacken festival, and a command performance at the Pollstar Awards in January 2017, impressed audiences who got to see the singer move across the stage and interact with them in a way no holographic image had before.
“Him waving the Wacken banner was my idea,” Pezzuti said of the iconic moment when Dio — who collected banners throughout his life — waved the German event’s official flag to a roar from the crowd of faithful. “When we were creating the content, Wendy [Dio, the singer’s widow] and I were talking about how to bring it home, and we thought that made sense. That was one way Wendy thought we could make it feel like this is happening now. When he waved it and said ‘Wacken, you rock!’ people were like ‘holy f—k!’”
Longtime agent Andrew Goodfriend said he got involved in the upcoming tour at the urging of Wendy Dio and Pezzuti because he was a longtime Dio fan, but also because of the unique challenge of the technological feat. “They talked about touring the hologram for the world and there have been touring hologram’s before, but never of a person like this,” he said of the dynamic digital Dio.
Reviews for Wacken were so good, because, Goodfriend said, instead of previous events featuring animated characters – like the cameo from rapper Tupac Shakur at Coachella in 2012 and Michael Jackson at the 2014 Billboard Awards — this is a real person that moves and sounds like Dio.
As he was in his debut, the reconfigured touring Dio will be backed by his live band, Dio Disciples, plus some backup singers. “We’re bringing the experience of someone who is no longer with us and putting his real band members up there. People couldn’t believe what they were seeing. There were people crying… excited because they never got to see Ronnie before,” Goodfriend said.
When he was with the Agency Group, Goodfriend had worked with Dio, and when he saw the performance at the Pollstar event, he was sold. “I was amazed,” he said. “It made the hair on my arms stand up. It is very much the live experience.”
Because the metal community is so fiercely loyal, Pezzuti and Wendy Dio were determined to make the experience feel very authentic. The visual trick is, like Tupac and Jackson, what’s called a Pepper’s Ghost, a classic illusion in which an image is reflected off a 45-degree sheet of clear material. “What’s different with this is — what I call Ronnie 2.0 —  unlike those one-offs, this is a dynamic performance like he gave in his heyday, complete with lights and pyro.”
Pezzuti said his team is focused on creating content for the tour that will allow the Dio image to use the whole stage, though he said he could not divulge all the tricks used to make the movement as seamless as possible. “We will set the bar for touring and bringing back a legacy artist to be part of the current discussion,” he promised.
While Pezzuti declined to discuss the cost of creating the image or licensing the music, he said one advantage his team has is that they have access to all the audio ever recorded by Dio thanks to Wendy’s deep archives. “We can use anything he’s said in the past, the actual audio and take isolated vocal tracks and live tracks and interactions with the audience,” he said. Cue “Hello Cleveland!”
That means the Dio hologram can sing or say anything the deceased singer uttered over the course of his whole career, cut together, reconfigured and spliced into a seamless soundtrack that will feel like a real live concert, with no pre-recorded musical tracks. Because Wendy Dio handles the singer’s estate and is a partner in the tour, rights clearances were relatively easy. But Pezzuti thinks the sales pitch to other managers and labels is a pretty simple one: “People know that live music is the only way to make money these days, so the minute an artist stops touring, they stop generating significant revenue. This is why we have full support.”
With tickets and routing not yet announced, Goodfriend said prices will be “like any normal touring veteran metal package,” likely starting around $45 up to $100 or more. The difference, he said, is that the singer can never get sick or miss a show and that the entire production fits into a box truck and requires nothing more than standard stage power and a 40 x 40 stage. “So it has to be theaters, standing room or seated, 1,500-4,000 or so,” he said. The tour doesn’t require any special audio or digital set up and the box truck holds all the necessary gear.
At press time, Goodfriend wasn’t sure how many shows the tour will encompass, but it will definitely hit theaters in the U.S. for about five weeks in 2017 before heading overseas, as well as appearances at a few festivals, with no promotion partners determined as yet. “The [gross potential] is limitless right now on this, and I think Eyellusion is at the forefront of a movement. We’re proud to have Ronnie as part of that,” he said, noting that he’s open to working with any and every promotions partner who is interested.
The 90-100 minute hit-packed show with songs from throughout Dio’s career is being marketed as “Dio Returns” and Goodfriend said the target audience is typical metal fans, as well as music lovers who never got to see the singer live during his years on the road. Goodfriend said his main focus right now is on the Dio show, but he’s open to exploring the concept with other artists as well. “I think this can definitely be a new revenue stream and it could be something that changes our industry,” he said.
While there is no cookie-cutter approach to licensing the rights for this kind of tour, Pezzuti said his team works with management and estate representatives, who, so far, appear to understand the “great financial opportunity” inherent in continuing to tour a legacy artist at a time when traditional radio play is uncertain and album sales are on the decline. “We show them [management] the demo — built by music industry experts on our team from the live and recorded world — and we bring them in the studio and show them how we take it to the next level,” he said.
As for the cost of creating the illusion, Pezzuti said “it’s a lot less than you’d expect,” though he would not give specifics other than to say it’s in the moderate “six-figure range.” The upside is that it is a one-time investment and there is no dollar-for-dollar or per-second cost to run the hologram once it’s on the road. “The most important cost is the asset creation, which is the hardest part to do,” he said. “After the investment to build the asset from a revenue perspective, you can tour it for as many shows as you can and make money hand over fist.”
Another bonus is that the set up of the hologram is relatively quick and only takes two or three people to complete, with Pezzuti saying that Dio essentially “lives on a hard drive.” While a raft of other promised holographic tours from the likes of Billie Holiday, Notorious B.I.G., Whitney Houston and Selena have yet to fully materialize, Pezzuti promised “we’ll be doing a bunch of different ones… there are a lot in the works.”
Longtime close Dio friend and veteran promoter Danny Zelisko said he’d book the show if it’s even half as good as what he’s seen so far. “I haven’t seen this live in action yet… I’ve only seen video of it, but it looks really amazing,” he said. “If people are going to go out and spend money and time to see a tribute act, why not see a real live band — in this case Dio’s band – and they’re using state-of- the-art vocals that he himself sang, and you get to see his image? I think that beats a tribute group by far, not by a little.”
Given how far the technology has come and his enduring affection for his friend, Zelisko said he’d love to see the metal icon on stage again. And, as Pezzuti and Goodfriend noted, it’s also a chance for younger fans who never got a chance to experience Dio in the flesh to get another shot. “It’s not the same as him being there, but it’s the next best thing,” he said, noting that his fellow board members on Dio’s Stand Up and Shout Cancer charity are all excited as well because it’s another chance to raise money for the cause.

Children's Mercy Park, Kansas City, Kan. (Photo Credit:Nate Saathoff)

In partnership with Legends Hospitality, Sporting Kansas City has announced price decreases for a variety of food and beverage items at Children’s Mercy Park ahead of the 2017 Major League Soccer season.

Sporting KC and Legends Hospitality, the food and beverage operator at Children’s Mercy Park, have lowered prices on bottled water, soda and beer by an average of 20 percent from 2016.

“We’ve looked through our feedback, and all areas of the business, including fan experience and atmosphere, and engagement at the park has been the key driver for this initiative,” said Jake Reid, president of Sporting KC. “Much of the feedback we received was about the expensive pricing, particularly around our beverages.”

Margaritas, double cocktails and menu items, such as hot dogs, bratwursts, chips and grilled cheese sandwiches, will also be available at lower costs. New pricing for menu items will be in effect for the entire 2017 season.

At press time, only one game with the reduced concession prices had been held, but the immediate feedback has been positive.

Sporting KC worked with Legends and its data and analytics team, which resulted in a 17 to 24 percent price reduction across the board, or about 20 percent on average, for food and beverages.

“We anticipate losing some revenue, but expect an increase in volume,” said Reid. “We don’t have plans to make up for any shortfall at this time. We’re betting on the future rather than the money we’re giving up now.”

A small number of venues have experimented with food and beverage price reductions over the years, mainly during the recession of 2008. This included Texas’ Petco Park, which had a couple lower-priced concession stands during this period.

“Everyone talks about the high cost of going to an event, but food and beverage is a small piece of the puzzle when compared to ticket and parking prices,” said Chris Bigelow, president of The Bigelow Cos. Inc., Naples, Fla., consultants to the sports, entertainment and convention markets.

Experts question whether lowering one item or a group of items will get more customers into a venue.

“We haven’t seen any data that suggests people buy more when prices are lower,” said Bigelow. “If concessionaires start seeing that, and see overall gross sales rise, then we’ll see [price decreases] more often.”

Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta also recently announced “street pricing” in an attempt to make its food and beverages more affordable.

This includes soft drinks, bottled water, hot dogs, pretzels and popcorn for $2 and pizza slices, nachos, waffle fries and bags of peanuts for $3. A 12-ounce cup of domestic beer is priced at $5.
“It’s easier for NFL [National Football League] teams to reduce prices than others that rely on the revenue,” said Bigelow.

Reid said at some point the prices will be re-evaluated.

“There is a tipping point where it doesn’t make sense, but we felt like leveling out was the right move for us right now,” he said.

Children's Mercy Park Food and Beverage Price Decreases

(Courtesy of Distil Networks.)

Venues are sending out press releases heralding the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act of 2016, which carries heavy federal fines for those who circumvent security precautions on ticketing platforms with robots that snag the best and multiple tickets online in front of the general public. The most active promoters of awareness are the performing arts centers, which have just put Hamilton on sale.

“That’s my biggest recommendation, exactly that,” said Rami Essaid, CEO Distil Networks, whose company was founded six years ago to actively combat robots used by ticket brokers in this way. “Venues and artists need to continue to talk about this and say it’s a big issue.”

Essaid and Niels Sodemann, CEO of Queue-ithosted a webinar on the topic in February, attended by 200 venue and ticketing professionals. The meat of the topic, which was also discussed at INTIX this year, will be covered in the April issue of Venues Today.

Most venues aren’t hosting the application doing these transactions, the ticketing firm is, Essaid noted. But venues are seeing contracts from acts and shows that have bot mitigation written into the deal. On the outgo, venues are including the requirement for such technology in RFPs from ticketing firms.

“If the artists and venues start clamoring about it, we will see those ticketbrokers and technology platforms take it more seriously,” Essaid said of the new federal law, which has yet to be tested.

When it is actually enforced, and Essaid predicts some high profile cases soon, the venues and ticketing companies will have to be able to produce evidence and documentation for the Federal Trade Commission. They have to show there is technology in place to prevent robots from buying tickets and must produce the data that shows a robot did indeed attack that system.

“At the end of the day, this is an arms race,” Essaid said. “You don’t build it once and forget about it, because the technology of the bots keeps advancing and there’s enough money in this that it’s worth investing in.” New York State sued a ticketbroker last year under a state statute, in which evidence produced showed the ticket broker made a $50-million profit.

Because the ticket brokers will continue to evolve the technology, the industry has to do the same, and that’s minute by minute and hour by hour, he said. Static rules that don’t change will not be effective because bots keep trying different things until they get in.

The BOTS Act doesn’t really address how offenders will be caught. It’s more about punishment. The FTC is going to fine people, Essaid continued. The FTC is not a technology company. “They are going to have to audit the logs of sales and figure out some way to correlate that this person used a bot, circumvented anti-bot technology and bought these tickets. The FTC will have to subpoena the venues and ticket platforms; they will go on fishing expeditions for all intents and purposes. But at least the act set a standard for what the data should look like so everyone is talking the same language.”

According to the act, the venue doesn’t turn culprits in; the FTC initiates the case, though Essaid supposed a venue or ticketing platform could file a complaint.

Mostly, though, venues should be demanding from technology platforms that they have anti-bots technology in place so the FTC can prosecute offenders for circumventing it.

“But that will not solve the problem 100 percent,” Essaid cautioned. “It will come down to artists and venues continuing to talk about this.”

The most effective anti-bots action will be getting out ahead of legislation and solving the problem as an industry, in Essaid’s opinion.

Essaid estimated there are about a dozen companies today that specialize in anti-bot technology, adding that “the problem will never go away. It’s wide open green fields.” There are even instructions online for amateurs to learn to develop robots, some for as little as $1,000.

“When somebody uses a BOT, a computer program, to unfairly buy a ticket when you have a queue that opens up, a bot can go in in one millisecond,” he said. “A real person can’t do that.” Identifying that bot is the key.

Several states have passed or are considering legislation that allows for the resale of tickets, taking a free marketplace stance on the secondary market. Those same legislators indicate the BOTS Act protects the consumer who simply wants to resell a ticket or two he can’t use himself while identifying the buyer who uses a robot to buy tickets.

That is what the law comes down to, making it illegal to circumvent ticket websites that have technology in place to block bots.

The problem is global, and both the UK and Canada are working on or have laws in place to circumvent scalpers, Essaid said. And this is not the first time someone has tried to use a law to address the issue.

“You are going to start seeing artists and teams demand you have some sort of mechanism to block bots,” Essaid said.

And then? “Just as you saw in New York, where the bad guys moved out of state, we will see this industry move abroad,” he said. “You have to take a multifaceted approach. The Internet lives in a global age; it’s the same BOT, the same scalping mechanism, wherever you are. Laws can make examples of people, but we have to work together to address this more aggressively.”

Billy Joel performing at Madison Square Garden, New York

Billy Joel’s remarkable run as a “franchise” artist at New York’s Madison Square Garden charges onward through the summer of 2017, with the 44th show in the series to be announced Thursday, March 21.

Tickets for the Aug. 21 performance go on sale March 31, with the Citi Private Pass presale set for three days earlier. Tickets will undoubtedly go quickly, as the unprecedented run has already moved more than 830,000 tickets and rung up approximately $91 million in ticket sales through the July—43rd—show. As Joel barnstorms through stadiums for the fourth consecutive summer, the Garden shows feel almost intimate as demand continues unabated for what amounts to live music history in the making.

Promoted by AEG Live, Joel’s perpetually sold-out booking at the Garden, a first-of-its-kind deal which saw the “franchise” tag bestowed upon the artist when the series launched in 2014, is showing no signs of losing steam. The same can be said for the overall touring career of Joel, who turns 68 May 9.  The Piano Man first became a national touring act in the mid-1970s, enjoyed his biggest hit-making run in the decade that followed, and hasn’t released an album of new pop-rock material since 1993’s Book Of Dreams. Like his Rock & Roll Hall of Fame contemporaries in Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, and a handful of others, the heavy lifting done on the road and in the studio decades ago, now pays big dividends as fans willingly pony up for what’s perceived as a rare risk-free investment of discretionary income. “Billy’s performances and catalog of songs continue to resonate,” says Dennis Arfa, CEO of Artist Group International and Joel’s agent since 1975. “A lot of times the stadiums become like a karaoke session.”

Thus, Joel remains one of the most consistently strong touring acts on the road, with demand to see him outpacing the number of dates the artist wishes to play, typically no more than “two or three a month,” Arfa says. “We have limited availability, so these dates are handpicked. When you’re playing at this level, sometimes opportunities come, and a lot of times you direct your opportunities.” Sometimes that opportunity might be a major festival play, as Joel headlined Bonnaroo in 2015, or a special arena engagement like opening the new Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y., on April 5. But most often, stadiums are getting the nod from Joel these days.  “Right now, in our perception, the jewel of the game is to sell out on the stadium level,” says Arfa.

“We continue to identify and play some of the iconic stadiums in North America. It has become an annual thing, and demand is great in all of these cities.”

In addition to Uniondale and the monthly Garden gigs, Joel will play nine sold-out stadium shows this summer, beginning with opening the new SunTrust Park in Atlanta on April 28. Other stops include Joel’s first date at Dodger Stadium (May 13); joining Kenny Chesney as the only two artists to play concerts at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis. (June 17); Joel’s first-ever headlining stadium plays in Cleveland (Progressive Field, July 14), Minneapolis (Target Field, July 28) and St. Louis (Busch Stadium, Sept. 21); and four consecutive years playing Wrigley Field in Chicago (Aug. 11), Fenway Park in Boston (Aug. 30), and Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia (Sept. 9). All are promoted by Live Nation. Amex handles Joel’s presales outside of the Garden.

Arfa says Joel’s stadium audience skews somewhat younger than his arena crowd, describing the ballpark demo as, “40-plus with a beer.”

Meanwhile, as the $100-million gross and 1 million in attendance milestones become almost an inevitability, Joel's open-ended Madison Square Garden "franchise" run can already stake its claim as the biggest arena engagement of all time.

Rendering of SunTrust Park, Atlanta.

When you choose to remove yourself from the urban environment in an era where every venue craves that location, your only option comes to re-creating that atmosphere. As the Atlanta Braves depart downtown Turner Field—originally built for the 1996 Summer Olympics and then converted into a baseball venue—and flee to the suburbs of Cobb County, the MLB team reverses the trend of urban design, but still called upon venue designers from Populous to re-create the urban experience.

As the Braves ready the official opening of $672-million SunTrust Park, Atlanta, for the start of the season April 14, ballpark designer Joe Spear of Populous said Atlanta has created a 68-acre development that has every ingredient of ballpark housing, retail food and beverage, office and hotel. “I think it is going to be a pretty rich experience for the fans, and that should be a positive thing,” he said.

Sure, SunTrust Park still sets roughly 12 miles outside of downtown, which may prove a hurdle down the line, but Spear worked with the land he was given, a blank sheet of paper, which he said actually made some decisions trickier. “It may be counterintuitive, but a blank sheet of paper gives you any option you want to consider,” he said about needing to figure out the best lay of the venue land. “Here, a lot of (the pedestrian flow and fan behavior) needed time to digest and evolve. It is kind of the blank sheet of paper syndrome.”

The extra-venue action at SunTrust will come with the new The Battery Atlanta development, including a generous plaza the Braves have developed beyond the right field foul pole. Framed on the ballpark side by the park itself, a retail store, team offices, the Xfinity lounge and one of only two brewpubs in a MLB venue. The Omni Hotel—scheduled for a 2018 opening—frames the other end of the plaza. In between, expect open space with access to food and beverage and ample room for  pre- and post-game concerts and events. “That has evolved in the process to be what I think will be pretty dynamic and active year-round,” he said.

To try to create a more urban feel to the venue, ticket holders to SunTrust Park can leave the venue, enter the plaza and return to the park later.

With the ballpark oriented for a distant view of the Atlanta skyline, the Braves partnered with a mix of local developers to build around the stadium with mixed-use developments to fill The Battery. “We worked with the other designers and came up with a variety of plans,” Spear said. “Our input was the ballpark should be positioned here for prime opportunity to create this plaza and give all fans a different experience than they could get anywhere in Major League Baseball. The Braves always wanted this entire development known and recognizable as a baseball development, a Braves development; that is why they chose the name The Battery.”

Rendering of SunTrust Park, Atlanta, Ga.

With a concerted effort to build an urban-style environment in a nonurban environment, inside the venue Spear set a focus on fan comfort, first dealing with heat. SunTrust features the largest canopy in MLB with a structural metal deck—cheaper than spending millions of dollars on a retractable roof—in a light silver to reflect sunlight, shade fans and serve as a sculptural element of the design. The canopy also allows LED lights to shine up on it in multiple colors and sequences for a high-tech celebration component the Braves plan to unveil soon. “The idea is that we have spent a good deal of time coming up with this canopy, and we want to make it a secondary presence in the game,” Spear said.

With the canopy dropping temperatures for those in the concrete-backed seating bowl, the concourses features fans for Big-Ass Fans to circulate air. Mesh-backed seats and air-conditioned restaurants and attractions help increase comfort.

With a variety of areas, Spear expects fans will want to explore—along with the Terrapin Taproom operated by Delaware North that serves beers from the Athens-based brewer now owned by MillerCoors and adjacent ATL Brew Lab, expect a sausage house, zipline for children in a zone designed for them with a climbing wall and batting cages, Atlanta’s three-story Chophouse and a monument garden on the concourse behind home plate—Populous designed wider seats, wider rows and more aisles than traditional parks to make it easy to relax or get up and explore.

“You don’t want to be 12 seats away from the aisle and have to crawl over people,” he said. “It is promoting the idea of going and exploring.”

Fans can hop on the largest WiFi capable system in MLB while venturing around, whether checking out the Hank Aaron sculpture in monument garden or dropping to the bottom level of the Chop House for a view of the field through the outfield fence.

Atlanta designed a nonurban location to mimic urban development, hoping that the exploration available inside SunTrust Park spills to The Battery, created specifically to enhance the baseball experience and entice fans to continually return and explore.

British pop star Olly Murs rehearsing his "Wrapped Up" video.

The UK has lost an increasing number of its live music venues over the past decade, and a proposed massive tax hike tied to a major overhaul of commercial property rates was threatening to be the final nail in the coffin for many venues. The proposed increase — which could have ranged up to 55% — had many venue owners biting their nails, but at press time it seemed as if the worst might not come to pass.

“It appears that the government has stepped back a bit [from the increase],” University of Edinburgh Professor Martin Cloonan told Venues Today. “There have been a lot of small venues closing across the UK. A report said London had lost around [54 percent] of its [grassroots] venues over the past 10 years. Like a lot of small businesses, anything the business of actually running the venue is going to be problematic,” he said.

In light of the hits venues have taken, and in an attempt to assess the health of the live music scene in the UK, the University of Edinburgh began the first-ever live music census on March 9. The project’s lead investigator, Matt Brennan, said in a statement announcing the census that grassroots clubs and theaters could be the most vulnerable if the tax rise passes in any form.

“Venues around the country have been telling us that they already operate on thin margins, so proposed increases in rateable values of up to 55% in some cases, will have a significant impact,” he said. “The UK Live Music Census will be very important in identifying challenges that the industry faces, such as rising rates and other issues. It will give us a detailed picture of what exactly it means to be a venue owner, a musician, and a live music lover in 2017. Our hope is that the Census will be a vital tool in strengthening a much-loved part of the UK’s culture.”

The census is being led by the Universities of Edinburgh, Newcastle and Glasgow and a nationwide survey for musicians, venues, promoters and audiences will be open until May 8 at the website: www.uklivemusiccensus.org. On the first night of the 24-hour tally, census takers were slated to visit performances across the country encompassing everything from street buskers to choirs, dance clubs and stadium gigs in Glasgow, Newcastle, Oxford, Leeds, Southampton and Brighton, including shows by Olly Murs at Leeds Arena, Nicola Benedetti at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, R&B in Oxford, and jazz in Newcastle.

The survey is intended to quantify the national challenges facing the music industry and assemble policy to help it remain viable. The survey effort predates the budget scare — which officially died on Wednesday (March 15) when Chancellor Philip Hammond announced that the government would not proceed with the proposed increases in the National Insurance rates for self-employed people — and it was originally conceived as a bulwark against any future proposed rise in the business rates, according to Cloonan. “We were just trying to get the fullest picture we can get given the resources we have. Venues are under all sorts of pressures, particularly within the inner city areas,” he said.
(Source material for news on tax increases failing — http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-39278968)

Martin Ingham, chief executive of the National Ice Centre & Motorpoint Arena Nottingham and Chairman of the 21-member National Arenas Association said that his group has been engaging consultants in business rating valuations for months trying to assess the new valuations and their impact, as well as lobbying against the increases, which his members believe would disproportionately damage the arenas.

“The idea that the rates revaluations would be a geographic redistribution to reflect changing property values across the UK is not borne out in our members’ experiences and nearly every arena is seeing significant increases, of up to 45% in many cases, despite the transitional relief offered in the first year,” he said. The NAA, a member of the UK Live Music Group, sent a letter to Phillip Hammond, Chancellor of the Exchequer, seeking assurances that large increases were to be mitigated. He added that the Music Venues Trust, representing grassroots music venues, also wrote to Ministers drawing attention to the “real risk that massive percentage increases in property taxes could drive small venues out of business.”

In the end, he said, the Chancellor’s budget “offered pubs and smaller businesses a potential one-off transitional relief which will have no benefit to the Arenas and will only delay the inevitable pain for some of the smaller venues.” While he declined to comment on how the proposals might impact major venues like NAA member, London’s O2, he would only say it was aware that the increases could be “significant,” and that many arenas face potentially six-figure tax rate jumps, significant even with potential transitional relief in year 1, followed by the full impact of a similar amount from year 2 onwards. “It is a very big deal indeed because there is no way that these levels of costs are going to be wholly borne by any other players within the industry, so ultimately, the costs will have to be passed through to the consumer,” he said.

RZO co-founder and music business veteran Bill Zysblat said he could only speak for artists, but for his client, any tax increase is unwelcome, especially a potentially drastic 50-plus percent one. For a U.S. artist, depending on the rate, they will get a dollar-for-dollar credit in the U.S. against taxes paid overseas,” he said of the potential effect of the proposed rate hike. “It’s rare to route a tour around the tax rates in any country, but it may affect the concentration of dates you have in any single country. Venues generally compete with other venues in their territory, so if all of them are subject to the same tax, it might not be a blow to the venues within a particular territory.”

Zysblat said, tax or no tax, if an act is doing a 100-city tour, the need to play every major market might mitigate any potential increase. “Volatility is a fact of life,” he said. “Changing currency rates is a much greater danger. Tax rates are usually only changed annually at most and occasionally actually go down. It should be a factor, but generally not when booking.”

Women's Final Four banner at American Airlines Center, Dallas.

A National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball Final Four is a Final Four, regardless of if hosting men or women. “I don’t even think about it in terms of men versus women,” said Dave Brown, chief operating officer and general manager of American Airlines Center, Dallas, host of the March 31-April 2 Women’s Final Four. “I know it is different, but in a lot of respects, it is a lot the same. I think about it in terms of the Final Four.”

And Brown isn’t far off, as the NCAA expects more than 50,000 visitors to flock to downtown Dallas for the three-game, three-day event where American Airlines Center is expected to host over 19,000 fans.

“We are a big venue in a big market and have a great platform from which to tell the women’s championship story,” Brown said.

But it almost didn’t happen.

Brown said the center first bid on the Final Four six years ago and were “pretty shocked” when it didn’t come through. At that point, Brown and the supporters of the bid regrouped and bolstered its women’s sports resume by bringing in early-round women’s tournament games in 2011 and 2013 and the Big 12 Conference helped enhance the center’s resume by moving the women’s basketball championship to the venue in 2013 and 2015.

Three years ago, American Airlines Center bid again. “We showed them our sincerity in terms of how much we wanted the Women’s Final Four,” he said. And the NCAA responded with the 2017 tournament.

With the tournament in hand, it was time to get to work in preparing to host the event, which included monthly two-day meetings with the NCAA to go over everything from operational aspects, ticket sales, security, setup of the building and all the associated events, such as the Tourney Town festival that sets up outside the center in one of the parking lots. That event includes basketball interactive experiences, live entertainment and merchandise. “There is a lot more to it than the game itself,” Brown said.

From creating a fresh security protocol because the event is classified as a “high-profile” event, to preselling tickets, three years of work will wrap up in one final weekend. Brown said the city—and North Texas as an entity—has embraced the championship, with a virtual sellout of the event without even knowing the teams involved.

As the championship weekend draws near, the physical work ramps up, from setting up Tourney Town to covering in-venue sponsors that don’t match the NCAA. “The NCAA requires a blackout and our sponsors understand that,” Brown said.

But beyond that, don’t expect a dramatic conversion for a building that serves as the home venue for the National Basketball Association’s Dallas Mavericks. Some courtside seats will change into media and NCAA official seating, and the Mavs’ practice court—located inside the center—will morph into the media center, but most changes remain cosmetic. The food and beverage offerings will look slightly different, with the elimination of beer in the concourse and new hospitality suites and school-specific spaces offering differing menus based on the regional cuisine of the schools participating. Brown said he does expect to “trick it up a little” in terms of concessions to give spectators a little home cooking, a plan they’ll figure out as the four teams qualify.

Plenty of additional work comes along with hosting a Final Four, but for American Airlines Center, the work will pay off in the long run. “Do we hope it positions us for future competitions? Absolutely,” Brown said. “I think we would be very disappointed if we didn’t (host more tournament games). It is a ton of work and commitment, and we are not doing it to be one and done.”

Along with the potential to host future NCAA basketball, whether early-round men’s or women’s, regional rounds or another Women’s Final Four (the Men’s Final Four is staged in stadiums), Brown said the area loves basketball and Dallas craves the opportunity to host it whenever possible.

Plus, hosting a Women’s Final Four offers “terrific exposure for us, shows our commitment to the NCAA and is a lot of fun, frankly.”

“It is complex and time-consuming,” he said, “but it is very rewarding. I don’t think we could be any more ready than we are right now. Our staff, from top to bottom, is excited to have this opportunity. This is our first, and it is fun to work on something different. It is something you don’t get to do very often.” After all, Brown is talking about hosting a Final Four. And he doesn’t care if it is men’s or women’s.

Green Day performs at the Ted Constant Convocation Center, Norfolk, Va.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, Green Day, have made our Hot Tickets chart twice this week with two sold-out shows and, with ticket prices ranging from $29-$64, brought in a combined gross total of over $1.1 million. The 10,000 fans at the Infinite Energy Arena, Duluth, Ga., and the 9,000 fans at Budweiser Gardens, London, Ontario, rocked to hits from Green Day’s newly released album “Revolution Radio.” This is just the beginning of their North American and Canadian 24-date trek with Against Me! in support of their new album. The punk trio will then move onto their expanded “Revolution Radio” summer tour, which kicks off on Aug. 1, at the White River Amphitheatre in Auburn, Wash.

Due to stellar reviews and high ticket demands, another Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, Stevie Nicks, extended her “24 Karat Gold” tour adding 20 dates into 2017. The Live Nation-promoted show at the Frank Erwin Center, Austin, Texas, on March 12, landed on our chart this week with a total gross of over $1.1 million. The 10,560 fans in attendance were treated to Nick’s classic hits and fan favorites throughout her career as a member of Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist. Along with special guests the Pretenders, Nicks can be seen next March 23 at the Jacksonville Arena, Fla.

HOT TICKETS is a weekly summary of the top acts and ticket sales as reported to VT PULSE. Following are the top 20 concerts and events, the top 5 in each seating capacity category, which took place between Feb. 21-March 21.