Friday, October 28, 2011

Saskatchewan Roughriders Are Live with Social Media!



Tickets.com is happy to announce that the Saskatchewan Roughriders are live with Facebook and Twitter integration!

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Dynamic Pricing Drives Significant Returns During 2011 MLB Season

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Qcue today announced the 2011 Major League Baseball (MLB) season was the most active season to date for dynamic pricing, resulting in significant gains for all clients, including increases in total revenues, full-price ticket sales and revenue per seat(1).

With the regular season now complete, Qcue conducted in depth analysis across clients, concluding that the frequency of price changes has a direct impact on incremental revenue. In fact, Qcue estimates that a team can generate an additional $900,000 in incremental revenue over the course of a season by making one additional change to each of its prices(2).

Results like this show why dynamic pricing is quickly becoming an industry standard with more than one-third of MLB teams, as well as teams across other leagues, implementing the practice. Qcues roster continues to grow, with the New York Mets and Seattle Mariners set to implement dynamic pricing for the 2012 season. Qcue clients now represent 95% of all dynamically priced baseball tickets.

On average, teams approached 2011 with conservative on-sale prices, often lower than previous years, providing substantial values for many fans.

Additional findings include:

Average price change per seat: $1.55 increase
Average percentage change per seat: 3% increase
Average price decrease: -$13.63
Average price increase: $3.27


The market has definitely hit a tipping point, where teams are no longer wondering if they should embrace dynamic pricing, but rather how often to leverage the intelligence and flexibility a solution like ours can provide to drive incremental revenue, said Barry Kahn, CEO of Qcue. Our analysis demonstrates the relationship between the frequency of price changes and incremental revenue and the value of understanding real-time market dynamics in setting more accurate prices. Teams that adjust prices more frequently make more money that can be invested back into the club.

In addition to regular season pricing, teams are finding ways to extend dynamic pricing to new scenarios such as spring training, which the San Francisco Giants successfully did this year in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Qcues turnkey software solution helps teams analyze sales data and other external pricing variables, providing sales and revenue projections, strong reporting capabilities, as well as market-based price recommendations. Additionally, integration capabilities remove the management burden teams often face by directly communicating price changes to the teams ticketing system and website. With Qcue, thousands of price changes take just a few minutes.


(1) Metrics do not reflect season ticket revenues, which are not used in dynamic pricing.
(2) A price is defined as a single section that is priced together and adjusted at the same time/rate.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Big Ideas, but not Big Brother

By Joe Choti, CTO, Tickets.com & MLB Advanced Media (with help from Dave Brooks)

At Tickets.com, the focus for us right now is to make sure that ProVenue provides scalability, stabilization, reliability and speed. Those are big ones. We spent 2010 making sure we were stable in a myriad of different ways. Coming into our 2011 on-sale season, we have sufficiently rearchitectured the ticketing applications and the infrastructure so it stood on its own. Now we’re working on improving speed.

With ProVenue we’re able to plug into any partner’s API, whether that be StubHub, Qque, Digonex or Givex. It works for everybody. What we’re talking about is a state-of-the-art system that has the full capability to work with whatever anyone’s needs are.

If you take two ticketing clients who use the same platform in the same industry, they still won’t run their business exactly the same. The ticketing solution has to be a product that has a core offering that can manifest itself in different ways and different factions.

Transactional time is more important than ever. One of the things I emphasize to all my engineers is that they can sit there and tell me it only takes three seconds for the screen to ping, but so what. Moving it from a three-second ping to a one-second ping will make a huge difference.

As technologists our jobs are never done. It’s a book and it’s time to move on to the next chapter after you’re done with the current chapter.

Wireless devices give us new and exciting ways to sell tickets to events. I may have spare inventory to an event and I may know an individual is in proximity to that event and I may want to push them a campaign and remind them that Bon Jovi is in concert. Since their phone shows me they are local, I can send a simple one-click link to buy tickets and then they use their wireless device to gain entry.

It’s all about Push Notifications, GPS and CRM. These capabilities allow people to opt in and provide information about what types of fans they are. It’s important not to push too much and allow it to become wallpaper and noise and get ignored.

Technology is not big brother. People think that, but it’s not true. We’re taking advantage of technology that lets us know who the true fans are and make things easier for them. And it’s not done with the ‘Like’ button.


Source: October 2011 Venues Today

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

PRESS RELEASE: Tickets.com®, Inc. Selected as the Ticketing Technology Provider for the New York Mets®

Tickets.com, Inc. and the New York Mets today announced a long-term ticketing agreement anchored by ProVenue®, the industry’s most advanced ticketing technology.

This infrastructure enables third parties to seamlessly integrate with ProVenue to offer features, applications, and data management programs using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). The platform approach gives the Mets the ability to determine which partners belong in their technological ecosystem to best support their season operations and initiatives including dynamic pricing, stored value, digital ticketing, loyalty and CRM programs.

“We had an opportunity to identify the best technology offering that would support our immediate and future business objectives,” said Dave Howard, Executive Vice President, Business Operations, New York Mets. “After an exhaustive search, we determined that partnering with Tickets.com addresses our core ticketing needs and gives us flexibility to grow our business in innovative ways.”

Tickets.com also supports a host of complementary services that accommodates the varying purchase behaviors of sports fans. The Mets will utilize the ProVenueMobile™ m-commerce service to enable fans on the go to search, select, and purchase tickets in a highly-optimized experience on any Smartphone or tablet. When combined with the Tickets@Phone® delivery method, secure bar-coded tickets are delivered instantly via text message.

Upon launch, the Mets will become the first professional sports team in New York City and the surrounding metropolitan area on the ProVenue platform. The Mets also will be the seventh MLB Club to use the technology.

Access the complete release.