Tulsa Performing Arts Center site has tickets going mobile

Tulsa World
By JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer

For about a year now, patrons to the Tulsa Performing Arts Center have been able to have their tickets sent to their cell phones. They just haven't been able to order those tickets by using those cell phones.

Until now. The Tulsa PAC is one of the first performing arts center in the country to have a mobile-device access site, from which patrons can order tickets to any show available through the center's ticketing Web site.

"It was one of the odd instances where you would think one technology — the ability to buy the ticket — preceded the other — being able to receive the ticket," said John Scott, PAC director. "In fact, we were the first to approach our partner, Tickets.com, about creating the technology so people could order tickets from their cell phones."

The PAC's mobile access site (TulsaPAC.mobi) reformats the PAC's Web site so that it will be readable on a cell phone screen. Patrons can now order and pay for their tickets via the cell phone.

Tickets purchased through the .mobi site may be picked up at the theater, be mailed to the receipt, printed at home or received as a text message containing a bar code.

This bar code is scanned by a PAC usher, who carries a microprinter that produces a paper ticket. This service, called Tickets@Phone, costs $2 per ticket.

"We know there are people who more or less live through their cell phones," Scott said, "and we've been pleasantly surprised at how quickly some of our patrons have taken to the new technology."

He added that the convenience fees for all these various ways of obtaining tickets for PAC events are "are quite reasonable, especially when compared to some other venues."

For example, the convenience fees for two tickets purchased online for the play "August: Osage County," playing Jan. 26-31 at the PAC, are $9.50. Fees for two tickets to events at the BOK Center can range for $16.75 for a Tulsa Oilers hockey game, $19.05 for the Monster Jam, and $32.35 for the March concert by Eric Clapton.

"Our ticketing fees are true convenience fees," Scott said. "So if someone takes the trouble of coming downtown to our ticket office to buy their tickets, then the only fee they have to pay is the $1 facility fee that was recently instituted. All the other fees are waived."