Wolf Trap Awarded Venue of Excellence by International Association of Assembly Managers, Inc.

Filene Center Wins Performing Arts Center Category

Vienna, VA—The Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts announced today that it has been awarded the inaugural Venue of Excellence award by the International Association of Assembly Managers (IAAM). These prestigious awards recognize venues that demonstrate excellence in the management and operation of public assembly venues. Wolf Trap was selected in the performing arts category based on four criteria: service to community, team building/professional development, safety and security, and operational excellence. These criteria complement the IAAM Value Statements of integrity, service, safety, education, advocacy, and people first. IAAM is the world's largest professional association, dedicated to issues relevant to the management of public assembly venues.

“The criteria for this award are all directly aligned to Wolf Trap’s mission to bring excellent and innovative performing arts programs that enrich, educate and provide enjoyment to diverse audiences,” said Terrence Jones, president and CEO of Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts. “We are honored to be recognized by such an important association and to be in the company of these other excellent venues that have won.”

Wolf Trap was one of five Venue of Excellence award winners. Others include Comcast Arena at Everett, Everett, Washington in the Arenas category; Oregon Convention Center, Portland, Oregon in Convention Centers category; PETCO Park, San Diego, California in the Stadiums category; and Stephen C. O’Connell Center – University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida in the Education Venue category.

“An award committee created criteria that would fairly and objectively score the nominated venues,” said Kevin Duvall, Award Review Committee Chair. “A venue that excels not only within its internal development and operations but also in the local community is one worthy of receiving the Venue of Excellence Award. The competition was top of the line.”

“As we created this award category we wanted to recognize outstanding venues. These venues have demonstrated exceptional leadership, innovation, perseverance and unwavering commitment of the highest standards to our industry. They are without a doubt most deserving of this recognition. And I heartily thank them all for participating.” said IAAM Chairman of the Board, Shura Lindgren-Garnett, CFE. She and Past President Robyn Williams, CFE, created the awards.

Tickets.com's BOK Center Ranked #9 In The USA For Ticket Sales

Tulsa, OK – July 12, 2010

Pollstar Magazine, a leading industry publication, has just released their rankings of the top arena venues worldwide based on ticket sales for January 1 – June 30, 2010. The BOK Center ranked #9 in the United States and #24 in the World.

General Manager John Bolton commented on the success, “To be ranked in the Top 10 arenas on the eve of our second anniversary is a great credit to our fans who continue to support the BOK Center by purchasing tickets.”

Top 10 nationwide arenas (with ticket sales):
1. Madison Square Garden Arena – New York, NY – 336,482
2. Philips Arena – Atlanta, GA – 326,053
3. Sprint Center – Kansas City, MO – 312,569
4. St. Pete Times Forum – Tampa, FL – 231,868
5. The Palace of Auburn Hills – Auburn Hills, MI – 225,139
6. Staples Center – Los Angeles, CA – 206,207
7. American Airlines Center – Dallas, TX – 189,901
8. Bank Atlantic Center – Sunrise, FL – 188,908
9. BOK Center – Tulsa, OK – 180,280
10. Mohegan Sun Arena – Uncasville, CT – 168,462

The BOK Center has reached its #9 ranking by booking a wide array of acts that appeal to purchasers. The arena has hosted 9 out of 10 top North American tours.

Top nationwide tours in order:
1. Bon Jovi
2. James Taylor/Carole King
3. Taylor Swift
4. Paul McCartney
5. George Strait/Reba/Lee Ann Womack
6. The Black Eyed Peas
7. John Mayer
8. Tim McGraw
9. Nickelback
10. Michael Buble’

Dave Matthews Band Confirms Wrigley Concert Dates

Tickets Go On Sale July 17 For September Concerts

CBS Chicago

The Dave Matthews Band has confirmed two dates in September for concerts at Wrigley Field.

Concert promoter Live Nation announced Tuesday that the Dave Matthews Band will appear on Friday, Sept. 17, and Saturday, Sept. 18, at the ballpark, with Jason Mraz joining them as a special guest.

Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. on Saturday, July 17. They will be available through Tickets.com or by calling (800) THE-CUBS.

The Dave Matthews Band was supposed to play at the ballpark in 2007, but the date was called off. The band gained a dose of infamy in Chicago in 2004, when one of its tour bus drivers dumped 800 pounds of human waste onto a sightseeing boat in 2004. The band later agreed to pay $200,000 dollars to an environmental fund to settle a lawsuit in the incident.

Officials say they need council approval by next month to secure a place in the band's schedule. The concert precedent began in 2005 with a pair of Labor Day concerts by Jimmy Buffett.

The band agreed to pay $200,000 dollars to an environmental fund to settle a lawsuit filed after one of its tour bus drivers dumped 800 pounds of human waste onto a sightseeing boat in 2004.

The first time Wrigley was used for summer concerts was in 2005, when Jimmy Buffett played. The Police also played the ballpark in 2007, and Elton John and Billy Joel sat down at dueling pianos last year.

John and Joel were supposed to return to Wrigley Field this summer, but their concert was canceled.

MLB teams step up to the mobile ticketing plate

13 major league baseball teams let fans purchase seats using mobile devices.

Internet Retailer
Brian Rogal

With m-commerce picking up steam, concert halls and sports teams want in on the action (and sales). Thirteen major league baseball teams including the Chicago Cubs, the Boston Red Sox and the Oakland A’s, recently began allowing fans to purchase seats using such hand-held devices as the BlackBerry or iPhone.

The teams, which all operate mobile sites on technology provided by Tickets.com Inc., decided to begin offering ticket purchasing on their sites within the past year to take advantage of strong growth in traffic, says Sheri Fink, head of e-commerce and strategic alliances at Tickets.com.

Steve Fanelli, executive director of ticket sales for the Oakland A’s, says his team sends about 1,000 bar-coded tickets for each game to fans’ mobile phones, though so far only a few hundred of those tickets are also purchased on a phone, with most of the rest bought through a PC. When a fan arrives at the ballpark with a mobile phone ticket, a gate keeper scans the bar code on his mobile phone screen.

Fanelli adds that, even though he expects mobile commerce ticket sales to grow slowly, it holds a lot of long-term promise. “It’s not huge right now, and it’s certainly not taking over as the dominant channel to purchase tickets,” he says. “Most people still prefer to go to a regular PC or use cash.”

However, he believes it’s important to offer the option, pointing out that when baseball clubs first began selling tickets over the web it took several years before customers got comfortable with that method.

Before the A’s and the other teams began offering mobile ticket sales, Tickets.com had already been providing each team with its own mobile web site through the company’s branded mobile web site technology, ProVenueMobile, developed in partnership with Usablenet Inc., an m-commerce technology vendor. Usablenet translates the information sent to and from the mobile devices.

Several years ago, the teams began offering game schedules, player statistics and other bits of information on their mobile sites, and many eventually added the more advanced features offered by Tickets.com, such as streaming video. But in the past year, traffic on the teams’ mobile sites doubled. That’s when the teams decided to let fans purchase tickets via the mobile sites, Fink says.

Baseball fans do not need to download an app onto their mobile device to buy tickets, Fink adds. They just get on their team’s mobile site, even if it’s a few minutes before game time, register an account, select the seats they want and pay with a credit card. They then receive a ticket on the mobile device in the form of a bar code.

All major league teams already used bar code scanners for traditional paper tickets, and making them usable for mobile devices required only minor upgrades, Fanelli says. He declined to provide costs related to developing the mobile sites, noting that each team has different contractual terms with Tickets.com to provide a variety of services, with the mobile option being just a small part.

Fanelli says the A’s have pushed mobile technology harder than most teams, and began experimenting with sending bar-coded tickets to mobile devices as early as 2006, although it was not until this April that customers could complete a purchase.

He adds that he believes as mobile devices like Apple Inc.’s iPhones and those that run on Google Inc.’s Android operating system get less cumbersome and more powerful, purchasing tickets via a mobile device will eventually become as standard as web-ticketing is now.

Fenway Park to host soccer game July 21

Boston Globe Soccer Blog – Corner Kicks – Boston.com

The Boston Red Sox have announced that Fenway Park will host an exhibition soccer game between Celtic FC of the Scottish Premier League and Sporting Clube de Portugal, commonly called “Sporting,” on July 21.

The Fenway Football Challenge will be the 19th soccer game at Fenway, but the first since 1968. It will be broadcast live on NESN, with kickoff at 8 p.m.

Tickets ($20-$120) will go on sale at noon on June 22 at tickets.com.

Mobile commerce stats round up

Graham Charlton
eConsultancy

Mobile purchasing habits in the US (Compete)

• 37% of US Smartphone users have made a (non-mobile) purchase on their handsets in the last six months.
  
• 19% have purchased music on their phones, 14% have bought books, DVDs or games, while 12% have purchased movie tickets.
  
• The amount that mobile users are willing to spend varies between handsets, with 32% of Android and 29% of iPhone users willing to spend $100 or more from their handsets, compared with 14% of Blackberry users.

Mobile purchasing habits in the US (ATG)

• 27% of all consumers used their mobiles to browse and research products at least four times over a 12 month period. For the 18-34 age group, this figure is 41%.
  
• 20% of all consumers and 32% 0F 18-34 year olds are researching purchases via mobile at least monthly.
  
• 13% of all consumers and 23% of the 18-34 age group make purchases via their mobile four times a year.

Mobile payments (Juniper)

• The market for mobile payments market is expected to quadruple by 2014, reaching $630bn in value, which equates to 5% of total e-commerce sales.
  
• The mobile payments market is worth $170bn so far this year.

Mobile commerce market size (ABI Research)

• The research firm predicts that in 2015, $119bn worth of goods and services will be purchased via a mobile phone.
  
• By ABI Research's count, mobile commerce tripled in the United States in 2009, but still only constituted a $1.2bn market.
  
• In Japan, which has one of the most vibrant mobile markets, mobile commerce exceeded $10bn in 2009.

Mobile internet usage (Essential Research)

• 47% of daily mobile internet users live in urban areas, while 42% of mobile internet users earn over £40,000 a year (household income) compared to 31% of non users.
  
• These daily mobile internet users are also more likely to spend more on their monthly mobile bills, 55% pay over £30 a month, compared to 10% of non users.

Smartphone usage (comScore)

• In the three month period ending in February 2010, 45.4m people in the U.S. owned smartphones, a 21% jump over November 2009.
  
• The fastest gainer in that segment is Google, whose Android platform rose by an impressive 5.2% in only three months.