Introducing The ProVenue Registered Developer Program

Launched in April at the ProVenue Exchange conference, the Registered Developer Program marks the first time an established enterprise ticketing platform provider has enabled 3^rd party API access against the core ticketing system and live event inventory to foster real-time application development.

Real-time access to live inventory and other data is made available to authenticated API calls. They also grant access to the full ticket life cycle - requests for event details and seat availability; locking and purchasing seats; delivering barcodes; reassigning tickets to other customers; and collecting and updating customer information.  Adding a formal environment and process for developers to access and innovate using these APIs puts Tickets.com in a true leadership position in the industry.

“With the rapid move in technology towards open development access via APIs – led by Apple, Google and others – our platform was perfectly suited to leverage this trend” remarks Joe Choti, CTO of Tickets.com.  

As part of the launch, a new ProVenue Partner Portal has been created, facilitating a web-based community where technology partners have access to the latest API documentation, videos and training materials about ProVenue functionality, best practices and frequently asked questions. Partners can also access the portal on-the-go via Mobile Web or a native iOS application.

Read the complete release here. 

ProVenue Exchange "Out of this World"!

By John Rizzi, SVP Client Services, Tickets.com

After John Walker’s keynote address on day 1 of our ProVenue Exchange conference on March 14, our VP of Marketing, Doug Lyons dove a little deeper into developments over the past year as well as changes to approach and product features in the coming year. This Included the re-commitment of focus on user experience in product design by showcasing examples of fresh, new approaches to ticketing interfaces and “next generation” Interactive Seat Maps. He reiterated the importance of APIs by showing the currently in development “Linebuster” iPad ticket selling application, which allows a mobile user to easily sell tickets from ProVenue with an easy-to-use tablet interface. Great stuff!



I then moderated for a tremendous set of panelists on the state of Loyalty programs that included participation from the Washington Nationals (MLB), The Seattle Sounders (MLS) and the San Diego Padres (MLB). It was very eye-opening to realize that while almost “expected” in many commercial situations, Loyalty in entertainment has yet to find its exact place and value proposition.



Doug then again appeared to host a session on emerging technologies, subtitled “What would Captain Kirk do?” To everyone’s surprise (and laughter) he entered dressed in a full Mr. Spock Star Trek outfit – wig, ears and all. This showed evidence of a new style from Tickets.com where our culture is starting to echo our approach to software: A Great Experience.

ProVenue Exchange "Doug's Diary" - Day 1

Our CEO, John Walker, led off our annual ProVenue Exchange conference on Wednesday, March 14 with a keynote highlighting exciting developments at Tickets.com. Announcements included a newly launched product for international markets (ProVenueX), a “sneak peek” at the new branding for the upcoming launch of the completely redesigned www.tickets.com consumer site and a preview of the game-changing uses for recently published ProVenue APIs that will allow Tickets.com’s customers to take “controlling their brand” to a completely new level.

John pointed out that these APIs in 2012 will enable customers to develop ticket selling capabilities directly from their own website, completely bypassing the traditional ticketing-vendor-controlled transaction pages - instead putting tickets into the team/venue’s own “universal shopping cart” in real time, which can then also incorporate any other purchases into a single transaction and a Great, seamless user Experience.

And that was just the first hour.....

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

Your Grandfather’s “White-label” is Old News

By John Walker, President & CEO, Tickets.com

Ticketing, sales and marketing professionals have been faced with making an either/or choice in the past – either selling through brand X (which leaves little room for your brand to extend through the sales flow of an online transaction) or employ a “white label” or “private label” solution that enables venues, teams or organizations to wrap their team colors or logos around a transaction engine.

One relatively new player in the space would have you believe that they are “introducing a white-label offering”, but the reality is that several companies have been offering “white-label” ticketing services for years. We’ve done it for a decade. Hell, come to think of it – EVERYBODY’s done it. And while on the surface this either/or decision (brand X vs. “white-label”) might suggest that all “white-label” offerings should be grouped together, frankly, there couldn’t be anything any further from the truth. The devil is in the details of…you guessed it, the technology.

The question you should be answering when choosing a platform for your business’s ticketing function is – what system will allow me to EXTEND MY BRAND versus just simply allowing me to affix my logo to a position on a banner? A subtle, but powerful distinction. Additionally, which of the “white-label” offerings best EXTENDS TECHNOLOGY in a way that meets or exceeds the vision I have for my organization? After all, selling tickets isn’t about how many bad email addresses you can ping – it’s about taking full advantage of CRM, dynamic pricing, wider distribution, stored value, online seat maps, mobility, social media, etc. And taking full advantage of these on your terms, I might add – not the terms dictated to you by your ticketing provider or it’s closed-system architecture.

Slapping your label on something that isn’t best of breed technology doesn’t cut it. You, and your organization, need and deserve more. Smart organizations are looking to power the EXTENSION of their brand, and their technological vision and we’re enabling our clients to do just that by opening the ProVenue platform with a series of APIs (Application Programming Interface)that allow true ticketing integrations. The first of these APIs will be available in early October and applications taking advantage of these early APIs will show up soon after.

A traditional nightly CRM data-feed and a “white-label” website used to be the best you could do. Now it’s old news.