Chaitenya Razdan from Parking Panda presented technological innovations along with Dorian Pieracci and Daniel Kagan from Ticket Market Solutions. (VT Photo)
REPORTING FROM ORLANDO, FLA. — Technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace and it seems like new technology companies come online each day with hopes of being the next big thing. During the Association of Luxury Suite Directors conference here, June 30-July 3, Chairman Bill Dorsey picked out a few technology companies that he sees as rising stars in a panel called “The Secret Sauce,” and Lua Technologies made an impression during “The Solutions: What Works.”
As the secondary market continues to grow, venues and teams are beginning to try to find ways to work within the market as opposed to just rallying against it.
“The primary and secondary markets are nearly identical sizes now, with only a couple billion dollars in difference,” said Dorsey. “One is $18- to $19-billion with the other being $15 billion, which is the secondary market.”
“If you’re a team and you’re giving away $15 billion to the enemy, it seems like why don’t you become the enemy a little bit,” he added.
Ticket Market Solutions (TMS) allows teams and facilities to become that enemy, in a sense, while maintaining confidentiality.
“It’s an anonymous way for the primary issuer to get involved in the secondary market without having to use a broker as the middleman,” said the company’s Dan Kagan.
TMS puts inventory on more than 500 different secondary market sales channels to help the primary issuer capture secondary-market revenue. They take a percentage of revenue brought in, not per ticket, so the company has an incentive to keep the tickets competitively priced and not liquidate inventory.
“That ensures that we’re not going to cannibalize your tickets, but work as a partner,” said Dorian Pieracci of TMS. “There are sales occurring on the secondary market regardless of whether or not teams choose to be a part of it.”
“There’s a sophistication to how TMS releases tickets onto the market,” he added. “We try to create some sort of parity between the sites.”
TMS currently works with Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, Calif., for the NCAA and Conference Tournaments, some NASCAR tracks, and several professional teams that retain anonymity.
Kagan said that the model works with both premium inventory and events that aren’t selling as well.
“It’s really difficult to price tickets. If people could price them perfectly, there wouldn’t be a secondary market and there wouldn’t be an opportunity for arbitrage,” he said. “By taking your tickets to the secondary market, we allow teams and venues to capture the upside in premium events, and to still capture sales in distressed events.”
One of the pro sports teams saw more than $1.7 million of additional revenue from using TMS during its season. TMS charges a 10-percent fee with a 15-percent channel fee. The channel fee is a cost that’s charged to any person, group or company that tries to sell on any of the secondary markets, which is an intrinsic cost of doing business on the secondary market that TMS will pass on to the venue or team.
Dorsey said that in his surveys of what is important when it comes to premium seating, the most important amenity is parking. He added that parking has become such a hot commodity that venues are even beginning to go outside of their walls because they simply don’t have enough space.
Parking Panda works with local garages and spaces to allow people coming to events to reserve parking spots near, but not at, a venue. One of their main clients is Monumental Sports in Washington, which actually doesn’t own any of parking.
“We help their consumers and attendees make sure they have parking right by the arena, and being able to integrate that at the time of purchase is a great additional revenue source,” said the company’s Head of Partnerships Chaitenya Razdan.
They don’t charge teams for the service, instead making money by partnering with local garages that pay the Parking Panda a transaction fee. Parking Panda will also give the team some of the transaction revenue.
The company has been around for two years and continues to make technologically innovative improvements.
“We have a new technology that we call Koala, because we always try to come up with cute animal names, that allows the customer to open the parking gate through their phone, so we can work with garages without attendants, too,” added Razdan. “Parking is a major pain point for customers, so we’re just making sure we help ensure the fan experience is tremendous from beginning to end.”
Barclays Center has started using Lua Technologies’ secure communications system to keep its staff connected at all times. The mobile product includes real-time messaging, conference calling, file sharing, and accountability features to link all employees together.
“It’s divided into three zones: People, Talk, and Files,” said Lua Technologies’ Eli Bronner. There is an iPhone app, web app, and Android app.
“The interactive directory breaks down everyone by position and department for the most accurate digital reflection of an organization,” said Bronner. “Also, if you click on any message you can see who has and has not read the message, which is great for accountability.”
Lua is used by the Suite Sales, Premium Ticket Sales, and Premium, Suite and VIP Guest Services teams at Barclays Center.
“It has been very helpful for our sales team. Everyone downloaded the app — it was as simple as that,” said Dan Lefton, VP Suite Sales & Premium Seating at Barclays Center. “It’s really cleaned up all of the internal email that clogs inboxes during events.”
“Event check-in is also great. Before, the suites coordinator would have to hit up reps individually, but now it’s efficient to just check Lua and get real-time attendance,” he added.
Interviewed for this story: Eli Bronner, hello@luatechnologies.com; Bill Dorsey, (513) 674-0555; Daniel Kagan and Dorian Pieracci, (415) 459-0180; Chaitenya Razdan, (800) 232-6415