Maureen Andersen and Paul Hittman, both with AudeinceView, begin the second day of the conference
REPORTING FROM SAN DIEGO — When Kevin Kimsa sat down with his staff to plan out the 2013 user conference for his Canadian ticketing firm, he knew he wanted to create a new experience for his 170 member clients.
His customers wanted more, that was obvious — “One day just wasn’t enough,” said the CEO and Chairman of AudienceView. Two more days were added in 2013 to grow the event to three days, anchored with a new full-day training session. Through surveys, AV users indicated a desire to break away from the International Ticketing Association’s annual meeting and create an AV-only gathering.
Location? The breakaway meeting washed ashore on the beach of San Diego, SoCal’s classiest beach town, right on the border with Mexico. Fish tacos and brick & mortar pubs fueled brainstorming sessions and settlement war stories — creative types even got to flex their creative skills in a flip-book-making photo booth.
It was a blast. But was it enough? What would send a message that the AV team was ready to bet big on the disruption of GA ticketing while continuing to invest in and develop its core enterprise software platform?
Enter MarketView, AudienceView’s white-label response to the growth of inexpensive ticketing providers. Barriers to entry have been erased by buck-and-a-half convenience fees and iPhone 5s. The market for low-yield ticketing services is growing, and Kimsa believes his company’s client network is poised to capture its own chunk.
MarketView to the forefront
The concept behind AVConnect was to create a conference that reiterated fundamentals and awarded witty speculation. Opening and closing keynotes were delivered by Futurist Garry Golden, a change agent who specializes in helping organizations close their own gap with change against the pace of the real world. Competitors from rival ticketing companies were invited to share their own vision of the industry.
It’s in this environment that Kimsa said he’s increasingly focused on updating the definition of ‘ticketing solutions provider.’
“Our goal has been to expose our clients to a view of where the market is headed and build a relationship based on foresight and trust to ensure they’re not left in a corner a couple years down the road,” Kimsa said.
For AudienceView, that means developing a white label response to Silicon Valley upstart Eventbrite through a network of regional ticketing partners. Companies like Eventbrite use low transaction fees and nonexclusive contracts to sign nightclubs, bars and museums looking to monetize their growing event expenses. As this market matured, the AV team saw an opportunity for a customized, cloud-based ticketing system at the GA level. With the first public demo of the project at this year’s AVConnect, AudienceView President Mark Fowlie said the goal was to create a network of branded GA ticket providers deploying easy-to-use software and scanners.
“Whether you’re a mom putting on a birthday party or a festival organizer, you’ve got to be able to get on the site quickly and put together something smooth and clean,” Fowlie said.
MarketView will be licensed to regional providers who will then offer a branded version of the service to a local client base. Kimsa said he imagines that some of his current clients will use MarketView to provide low cost ticketing services to area events that are too small to justify the cost of enterprise software. MarketView will use the core AV platform, as exploiting SaaS software offers a uniform user experience for all customers.
The company is planning a number of updates after the first software release, including a donations capability for nonprofits.
Fowlie said ticketing licenses for MarketView are more akin to business partnerships — “there is a revenue split so we’re both fully incentivized for the right outcome,” Fowlie said. Partners would help monitor the cloud-based system and provide technical support.
“It’s the Salesforce.com model,” Kimsa said, of the popular web-based CRM system for small businesses. It’s scalable and cloud-based, two best practices recognized by the equity and venture capital communities.
“If you look at the capital markets, they tend to be representative of what is good in regards to how businesses need to be structured,” Kimsa said. “They’re seeing the trends most successful companies are using.”
So when will MarketView start selling tickets? Kimsa said regional ticketing companies are a natural fit and, while not all AudienceView users will deploy MarketView, most will benefit from upgrades to the system.
Fowlie noted that “70 percent of the changes we made for MarketView were enhancements to the core platform. Down the road we do believe that a lot of our customers are going to have the ability to self-serve clients. This is really just preemptory work for them — our goal has been to expose them where the market is headed.”