The ticketing industry is evolving quickly. How customers find, get and use their tickets has changed more in the past few years than it has in the past few decades. Event discovery and ticket purchasing is taking place in more channels than ever before, and the idea of going to one place to find tickets is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Technology is leading the charge toward a more friendly, consumer-driven ticketing experience. Below, industry insiders share their vision of the future.
1 OPEN PLATFORMS
“We as an industry don’t give users the best way to discover what they want to see,” said Russ D’Souza, founder, SeatGeek. “Openness is about pushing tickets to other places. Retailers need to display tickets that the user wants.”
“Putting tickets in front of everyone by open distribution is our goal,” he said. “Having them on one site is antiquated. Open ticketing is the future. We live in a world where every vertical has moved into an open platform. Ticketing needs to catch up. Why would a team or venue just want one?”
D’Souza said that the best practice is having fair and open competition and letting the best platform win. “Build the best brand possible,” said D’Souza. “Build a great user experience and that will be the one that wins. Some companies claim to be open but will only work with certain companies. This isn’t open. The change is coming and it will happen quickly. How long can you sell against what’s best for the team or venue?”
“Allocation is an easy, lazy way,” said Joe Choti, president and CEO, Tickets.com. “Free market competition is the future. It won’t be long before all platforms employ open architecture so other channels can compete in real time.”
2 TICKETS EVERYWHERE
The concept of “tickets everywhere” is all about selling more tickets and making the discovery and purchase easier for fans.
“This means that fans can find their show on Facebook, local blogs, music event discovery platforms like Bandsintown, giant search engines, and everything in-between,” said Tamara Mendelsohn, VP of product, Eventbrite. “This will include personalized recommendations everywhere, which means relevant and timely recommendations made based on personal interests wherever those potential fans are spending time online, regardless of the site they’re on at that particular moment and one-click purchasing everywhere.”
Ticketmaster has a deal with retailer Costco. Spectra works closely with Google to get their tickets into the fans’ hands.
“We’re focused on getting our tickets where the fans are looking,” said Kim Damron, COO, Spectra Ticketing & Fan Engagement. “We work closely with Google Live Entertainment Group, StubHub, Facebook, and more and more mainstream ecommerce sites every day.”
Damron is a fan of ‘Google Grants,’ which gives nonprofits $10,000 of free advertising per month that Spectra can manage through marketing services. Venues can apply directly to Google for the grant.
3 PRIMARY AND SECONDARY LIVING TOGETHER
“The lines are blurring between primary and secondary,” said Damron. “Both primary and secondary tickets are now living on the same site; you can now buy them in the same shopping cart together. StubHub does this, the (Philadelphia) 76ers do it and the idea of a blended marketplace is catching on. It’s good for the consumer and good for the teams and venues.”
“The partitioning of primary and secondary ticketing is old news,” said Choti. “When a venue controls both primary and secondary tickets in the same platform it’s a win all around. This allows ceilings and floors, allows credit and consigning back tickets.”
4 DIGITAL TRANSFER OF TICKETS
Tickets today are flying at the speed of light from one device to another. Making this routine and easy is the future, according to D’Souza. “Customers want to transfer to friends and get paid right in that platform,” he said. “About half our customers are allowing customers to resell tickets simply by clicking ‘relist’ and we suggest a price. The overwhelming percentage of tickets put up for resale execute.”
“It’s critical for ticketing companies to provide a seamless mobile-optimized purchasing process for attendees to buy tickets and get them delivered with a scannable barcode or QR code that can be transferred quickly and easily,” said Choti.
5 REISSUING BARCODES WITH EACH TRANSFER
“There is no excuse for fraud in this industry anymore,” said D’Souza. “Tickets are still getting bought and users get to events and can’t get in. Tech exists to stop this. New barcodes need to be issued when a ticket gets sold from one person to another. But for some reason other ticketing companies are withholding the barcodes. It’s perplexing. The end result is that people aren’t getting into the event. This is unacceptable. The solution is here and this problem can be eliminated and is being deliberately withheld from consumers. Legacy ticketing companies desire to withhold security. The entire industry can have zero fraud. This is possible.”
6 PERSONALIZED TICKETING
“Personalization is the future, for both fans and event organizers,” said Mark Tacchi, CEO, Vendini. “Behaviors are changing in how people buy tickets. A lot of people are waiting till last minute and what works for that last minute sale is pushing things in front of the individual that caters to that individual.”
“Pushing a long list of events that have nothing to do with the customer is pointless,” he said. “We’re going to get smarter about this. Discovery is morphing into personalization. Things will get pushed to me that are relevant to me and will capture fan attention. In 2017 we’ll see that come to fruition and see more and more of it.”
The trend in business-to-business (B2B) is also moving toward personalization, according to Tacchi. “We built tools that are geared toward each department of a venue,” he said. “We have a point-of-sale app for box office; Patron Connect for the development people, which lets operators know when top donors have arrived or lets casinos know when a whale show up or a club know when VIP show up; ticket scanning apps for game people and our Sales Spotlight is for the owner or GM. It’s all about creating an experience that’s catered to the user at the organization and made just for them.”
Using Personalized URL’s (PURLs) has proven valuable in renewal campaigns launched by Spectra. Season ticket holders can be directed to a customized website displaying their individual seat location, pricing and even a unique jersey showing their name on the back.
Spectra’s FanOne product is also all about personalization. “FanOne provides personalized communication for fans,” said Damron. “It allows us to target fans in a way that is unique to them. We use specific targeting and we know if they scanned in or not and then send them the appropriate messages. It’s a fast-growing product and we’ve doubled our FanOne client base in the past year.”
Spectra’s PAC Analytics product gives a venue personalized attendance, ticket sales, renewals, secondary pricing and donor data in much the same way.
7 CASHLESS
One-third of all attendees used cashless; users of cashless payments spent significantly more than non-cashless users. On average, cashless users spent close to two times what non-cashless users spent per day. “This is driven by higher frequency of purchases; on average, cashless users made 1-2 more purchases per day than non-cashless users,” said Mendelsohn. “Across all events, the 26 to 30 year-old demo was the group most likely to use cashless. Attendees over the age of 30 spent 25 percent more than younger attendees and typically the 50-plus crowd had the highest per person spend. A vast majority, 84 percent, of respondents to a post-event survey we conducted said cashless improved attendee experience overall and they would use it again.”
8 STAYING AHEAD OF THE BOTS
Staying ahead of people using technology to game the system isn’t unique to ticketing, but getting tickets into the hands of real fans will become even more important in 2017.
“The BOTS (Better Online Ticket Sales) Act passed in late 2016 by the House of Representatives was designed to level the playing field by banning the use of bots to buy tickets,” said Mendelsohn. “It’s important to note that this bill only addresses one aspect of ticket scalping which is outlawing computer programs that enable users to scoop up masses of tickets for reselling purposes, but not other techniques of mass manual purchasing by humans for resale purposes.”
Mendelsohn believes the solution is technology-based but warns that most ticket buyers are not buying to resell, and should not be made to jump through more hoops by the use of complex captchas, or having to present different forms of identification. “These techniques are typically ineffective in stopping scalpers, annoying to the consumer, reduces conversion and ultimately results in fewer tickets sold,” she said.
9 MAKING PAYMENT EASIER
The biggest drop-off rate in ticketing occurs in the payment process. “Payment is the biggest hurdle in mobile,” said Keith Goldberg, chief revenue officer, Vendini. “We must make headway in stopping the loss of a sale when the customer gets frustrated banging in their credit card numbers. The next step in ticketing is finding solutions that will make the payment experience easier.”
Payments not only need to be easy for customers to feel good about buying on a mobile, but also secure. Companies like Spectra are focusing on PCI security and point-to-point encryption solutions to ensure the safety of consumer data.
Goldberg stressed the importance of integrating with more payment methods. “The more ways a customer can pay, the better. Once we crack payment we’re going to sell a lot more tickets.”