David Arnold is now one of the few in the ticketing profession to have built the manifest for a funeral. He always knew Muhammed Ali’s funeral service would be at KFC Yum! Center, Louisville, where he is box office director. Now he knows what that really means.
Arnold loves ticketing. Every concert is a project; each one is different, each one new.
“That’s why I love this job,” said Arnold, 2017 Venues Today Box Office Star for his work on that very unique, nothing-like-it event in June 2016.
Arnold knew, like everyone else in Louisville, that boxing legend and hometown hero Muhammad Ali was in declining health for a number of years.
“There were no plans put in place other than the fact that it was going to be here,” said Arnold. “The moment I got the news I knew I had to work out the logistics and ticketing for this massive event with very little turn around time.”
Arnold prepared by talking with his counterparts at another AEG-managed property, Staples Center, Los Angeles. “They had a similar experience with Michael Jackson’s funeral and I thought it would be wise to chat them up and get as much useful information about how to handle a unique situation like the one I was facing from them,” Arnold shared. “It was the most similar event I could find.”
Unlike most events Arnold deals with, this one came with heavy partners — the FBI, Secret Service and local law enforcement. “We needed to come up with a plan for who was going to get in; how they were going to get in and what the family wanted to do.”
Ali’s family took a portion of the tickets for the family and dignitaries, and they wanted the rest of the tickets to go to the public. “They didn’t want a ticketing company involved or to let the tickets get into scalper’s or ticket reseller’s hands,”
Arnold recalled.
“It was unlike anything we’ve ever done here,” he said. “We had to get a manifest built, which was difficult because we didn’t know where the altar was going to go. The details were changing by the day, sometimes by the minute. The family would want one thing; law enforcement would say it wasn’t possible and we had to start all over again.”
When it came to the public distribution of the tickets, Ali’s family wanted them to be free, which presented a problem for Arnold and his team.
To avoid a run at the door and the tickets going out hundreds at a time, Arnold and his team decided to limit each person to four tickets. “We wanted families, kids, long-time fans and, of course, Louisvillians to get the tickets.”
Security blocked the plaza for two days so fans wouldn’t camp out. The day of the funeral, the plan was to give out the tickets starting at 10 a.m. When Arnold arrived at 7 a.m., the line was already wrapped around the building.
“We didn’t let anyone on the premises until it was light out, but no one expected the line to start forming that early or get so big, so early,” said Arnold. “It seemed like every man, woman and child in Louisville was lined up, joined by thousands of people from the rest of the country. Even international visitors wanted to get in.”
Arnold and team counted the number of fans waiting in line and realized that they were already going to max out with just the people already there. “If you weren’t in line by then you weren’t going to get a ticket,” he said. He called in staff early, borrowed some administrative staff and made the call to open the box office and start handing out the tickets. “I didn’t see any reason to keep the people standing in line, freezing, and waiting for the clock to strike 10 a.m.,” he said.
In 45 minutes, 15,000-plus tickets were passed out.
The funeral was supposed to start at 11 a.m. but didn’t start till 1 p.m. because the procession went through the entire city, Ali’s childhood home and other landmarks around Louisville before landing at KFC Yum! Center.
Law enforcement prepared for issues — people frustrated because they couldn’t get in, fights breaking out and possibly even a terrorist attack. But none of that came to be.
“The fans behaved themselves remarkably well with the decorum and reverence that one would expect at a funeral,” said Arnold. “The funeral was moving, touching and represented the best of Louisville.”
“Muhammad Ali would have been proud of how his life impacted so many people,” he said. “The whole town of Louisville was there. It was a neat event.”
Arnold manages two full-time staffers, a box office manager and an assistant box office manager and 25 part-timers.
“He handed out 15,000-plus tickets and he did a excellent job,” said said Dennis Petrullo, GM, KFC Yum! Center. “But longterm, since 2012, David has done an outstanding job of servicing the promoters and the building.”
“When it comes to events in the building, Dave really gets it,” he said. “He’s a tremendous support to the promoters, and when they are ready to build a show,
Dave’s ready to build the show. He doesn’t work on his schedule; he works on
everyone else’s schedule. That’s the way that box office operates.”
“We didn’t have much notice on the Muhammad Ali funeral,” said Petrullo. “We had only two business days to work on it. Through Dave’s ingenuity, we were able to deal with the situation in a fluid way and 95 percent of the people who showed up got tickets. His leadership skills are superior, and what Dave and his entire staff understand is that we are here for all the promoters and fans that come into the building.”
Arnold’s other nontraditional ticketing event in 2016 was Garth Brooks. The dynamic of putting a Garth Brooks show on-sale is different and unique. While Ticketmaster and Brooks team have it down cold, it was all new to Arnold and his team.
“Garth is quite ingenious in the way he does his ticketing,” said Arnold. “We have never done back-to-back nights or double-headers in one day as Brooks likes to do. Brooks is different in that he only announces one show and then he adds shows as the tickets get sold.”
“Even though his people were old hands at this it didn’t stop me from being nervous,” explained Arnold. “You have no idea how many shows you will wind up doing. Brooks is actually on the conference call as the tickets start being sold he decides on the spot what he wants to do.”
In this case, Brooks decided to do a double-header on Friday and another double-header on Saturday.
“They have a system to decide how many shows to do,” said Arnold. “Brooks’ people know exactly what they are doing and they’re great at it. We know what we’re doing and are great at it. But we didn’t know what they were doing. It was quite a learning experience. Once I experienced it, I was able to tell the venues down the line how it’s done.”
Arnold is clearly a man who faces tricky situations like a pro. “It was a lot of fun but a challenge,” he said. “And definitely not like any other day.”