Kim Damron, COO, Spectra Ticketing; Kate Green, head of New Verticals, StubHub; Steve Disch, senior team manager, StubHub; and Chris Celona, assistant athletic director, Ticket Operations and Service, University of California Berkeley.
REPORTING FROM NEWPORT BEACH, CALIF. — In its 33rd iteration, PACnet ’16 welcomed the largest number, 750, of attendees to date. The Spectra Ticketing and Fan Engagement team packed a punch with a new analytics track in place and a line up of relevant keynotes from Feb. 21-24. New technologies were highlighted, clients welcomed and partnerships discussed as trends were tracked and best practices were shared.
StubHub Partnership
With Spectra Ticketing’s and StubHub’s new blended ticketing platform, debuting with the Philadelphia 76ers, primary and secondary tickets will be available in the same place.
“Consumers aren’t interested in the seller source,” said Kate Green, head of New Verticals, StubHub. “They’re looking for tickets in the section they want and what show they want to see.”
StubHub receives over 20 million unique visitors per month, and over 50 percent of transactions are conducted on mobile devices. With that kind of exposure, over 30 Spectra clients are now listing on StubHub, racking up over 8,000 transactions in 2015.
“There was a lot of hesitation at first, but as football started they realized when they were getting stuck with tickets they could utilize us as another distribution channel for them,” said Steve Disch, senior team manager, StubHub.
By listing on StubHub, Spectra clients get access to the following:
• Exclusive pricing data: discover how customers are shopping with StubHub's pricing data, when tickets are likely to sell, and comparative market data on sold and active listings
• Paid and organic search: on Google, StubHub will pop up before the box office, leverage the StubHub brand for that
• Account management and customer support: if a buyer has an issue they’re calling StubHub, not the venue or team box office.
Listing primary tickets on StubHub is also about to get easier with the introduction of SHIP, the StubHub Integrated Platform.
“What we’ve realized is though we have this massive channel, that we haven’t made it easy enough for you to get your inventory to our site and easy enough to change your pricing once it’s on our site,” said Green. “We need to move quickly, so we’re investing heavily in being able to offer more.”
Not only will the platform allows tickets to live on two channels simultaneously, but it can also maximize reach with no risk.
Chris Celona, assistant athletic director, Ticket Operations and Service, University of California, Berkeley, started listing with StubHub last year and has tracked a higher sell through rate and average ticket price through the site.
“It’s been an amazing opportunity,” said Celona. “Tickets would have still sold on StubHub, but we wouldn’t have been making anything off it. So it’s a great partnership we have.”
Benefits of direct listings for Cal included the number of users on the site, as it is usually one of the first sites single game buyers check. The analytics tools, buyer info and ability to troubleshoot on game day were also valuable pieces. Low seller fees, opaque listings to buyers and the flexibility when last minute seats open were also beneficial.
“It’s been a great benefit to us to be able to dive down and look at our data to see what our tickets are selling for,” said Celona. “It gives you a better idea what to price your tickets on StubHub and your website.”
Beyond that, all panelists agreed this is just the tip of the iceberg, and this relationship will continue to grow and change in the future.
Mobile Ticketing Trends
With millennials, who rumor has it have shorter attention spans than goldfish, speed is paramount. If you’re not engaging them in the first few seconds, they’re going somewhere else. With that reality in mind, ReplyBuy has turned to an older technology, text messaging, to reach everyone from millennials to baby boomers through a form of communication most people use every day.
“In our opinion, people have app fatigue,” said Brandon O’Halloran, vice president of Sales and retention, ReplyBuy. “ReplyBuy Email is becoming more and more dated. Every second it takes a page or app to load, you’re losing 7 percent of your audience. Even for social they need to be scrolling through an app to find it.”
It’s all about engaging fans the way they want to be engaged, and that’s mobile. This conversational commerce is able to send campaigns on demand, offering recipients available tickets, to which they simply reply “buy” to purchase.
“That whole transaction process happens in a matter of six seconds,” said Halloran.
Using an old platform, ReplyBuy is transaction via text message.
Beyond mobile transaction, Matt Chliek, director of Ticket Operations, Rutgers University, has found great success in introducing mobile tickets to sports fans. They first introduced them in 2013 to a 60-percent redemption rate and 10-second scan times. The initial rollout was limited to students only, delivering mobile tickets through one email.
Thanks to increased signal coverage, they were able to cut the scan times in half and increase mobile.
They also introduced season ticket cards to great reception. About 75 percent of season ticket holders chose the card for men’s basketball, and 90 percent chose the card for women’s basketball.
“This showed us that the older generation is adopting the technology,” said Chliek. “They’ve really liked it.”
Some tips Chliek offers to others thinking of implementing mobile tickets:
• Communicate the change as early as possible
• Don’t offer hard tickets
• Offer free ticket transfer online as an incentive
Interviewed for this story: Matt Chliek, (866) 445-4678; Kate Green and Steve Disch, (415) 222-8400; Brandon O’Halloran, (800) 775-0924; Chris Celona, (800) 462-3277