Venues Today Technology Update - January 2009

Witherspoon talks about mobile ticketing today

Venues Today
By Dave Brooks

Tickets.com CEO Larry Witherspoon is quick to point out that his company isn’t just a ticketing company — it’s a technology company operating in the ticketing space. Exclusivity issues can be settled through revenue sharing, but superior technology can’t be negotiated.

2008 saw Tickets.com launch its ProVenue ticketing software suite and the first mobile website to enable customers to purchase and receive tickets entirely through their phones. Venues Today caught up with Witherspoon to discuss how technology was changing the ticketing business.

Venues Today: How does the new mobile website technology work?

Larry Witherspoon: A year-and-a-half ago we launched Tickets@Phone for various teams. Now we’ve decided to mobilize the website and not just mobilize it for one device, but mobilize it for all devices that are web-enabled. You can go online and buy a ticket from your phone, have it delivered to your phone, will call or print at home. We’re attempting to bring the technology full circle.

VT: Do consumers need a login to purchase tickets?

LW: No, anybody can instantly buy tickets. It’s enabled with a virtual waiting room for high demand on sales.

VT: Will you tie in this system to a mobile-marketing strategy?

LW: Long term that’s obviously the plan. Our next big focus is to expand the private labeling of our client sites.

VT: Are you seeing evidence that users are moving toward a mobile purchasing experience?

LW: Not so much here, but I do travel the world and if you go into Japan or look at some of the stuff that’s occurring in Europe, you’ll see that the U.S. is a little behind on the adoption rate. If you look at the U.K., there’s some great stuff the O2 Arena has done with mobile marketing that hasn’t been done before.

VT: How many facilities are currently enabled on a mobile platform?

LW: We currently have four arenas enabled — Royal Oak Music Theatre (Royal Oak, Mich.), K-Rock Centre (Kingston, Ontario), The BOK Center (Tulsa, Okla.) and the Times Union Center (Albany, N.Y.). We’ve also got five or six baseball clubs turned on.

VT: Will mobile compete with paperless tickets?

LW: I would argue that mobile is a paperless ticket. It’s not going to be long before a venue only offers tickets that are bought online and delivered by phone. We’ll offer the full suite where you can get a text message, go to a mobile website, buy a ticket on your phone, have it delivered and show up at the venue. It’s not a new world, but it’s something that no one in this market has really hit hard yet.

Interviewed for this story: Larry Witherspoon, (714) 327-5400

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