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

Minnesota Twins Choose Digonex to Provide Dynamic Pricing for Tickets

Partnership includes integration with Tickets.com and Major League Baseball Advanced Media

Leading dynamic pricing provider, Digonex Technologies, Inc., announced that the Minnesota Twins will be utilizing their dynamic pricing services via a partnership with Tickets.com and Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM) to price single games tickets in select sections this season. The Twins will utilize the Digonex Sports and Entertainment Analytical Ticketing System (SEATS™), a robust and proven dynamic pricing system for event ticketing that scientifically changes prices based upon econometric and behavioral principles.

The SEATS integration with Tickets.com and MLBAM allows MLB teams, as well as other Tickets.com clients, to quickly analyze pertinent information and adjust ticket prices. With SEATS, the Twins now have a demand-based pricing system in place enabling them to deliver the same great fan experience at just the right price.

“We are confident that SEATS will help us identify the best price for our tickets allowing us to give Twins fans the best value for their dollar at Target Field,” said Steve Smith, VP of Ticket Sales and Service for the Twins. “Fielding a solid team and pricing appropriately are key components to ensuring that our fans get the most out of every ticket.”

“Digonex is excited to team up with Tickets.com and MLBAM to provide the extensive capabilities of SEATS to the Twins and other MLB teams,” said Jan Eglen, Ph.D., CEO of Digonex Technologies. “Our patented dynamic pricing services are proven to increase revenues for our clients in excess of 20%. Along with our expanding analytic offerings, Tickets.com can now offer their clients our patented and proven SEATS service as a method for delivering the best value to their fans.”

The integration of SEATS, along with the advanced features of Tickets.com’s ProVenue platform, will allow the Twins to automate the acceptance of price recommendations from Digonex and eliminate the need for time-consuming manual price updates.

“We are happy to work with Digonex to provide our clients with true fan-driven dynamic pricing capability,” said John Rizzi, SVP of Product Management and Strategy for Tickets.com. “The SEATS platform has provided us with another time-saving, technologically advanced solution for our clients.”

Digonex® Partners with Minnesota Twins For Ticket Revenue Analytics Services

Digonex Technologies, Inc., announced today that the Minnesota Twins will make use of its Sports and Entertainment Analytic Ticketing System (SEATS) for revenue analytic services this season.

Digonex's service is based upon econometric and behavioral principles, employs XML Team and a client customizable approach to give the most robust and flexible solution for analyzing the parameters most relevant to delivering valuable recommendations to the client.

"Sports franchises are facing many challenges including a tough economy, a very accessible secondary market, and competing forces for the entertainment dollar," said Jan Eglen, Ph.D, CEO for Digonex. "The main goal of our services is to provide our clients with greater information on the value of their fans, their tickets, and the opportunities for sustainable growth."

"As the Twins organization continues to adjust to our new home in Target Field, we remain committed to doing all that we can to field a competitive team and to delivering the best ballpark entertainment experience for our fans - now and in the years to come. Certainly, ensuring that we price our tickets appropriately is a key component to delivering on these commitments. The expertise and services Digonex provides have proven to be extremely valuable to their clients throughout the sports and entertainment industry and we hope to benefit from their analytic services as well," said Steve Smith, vice president of ticket sales and service for the Minnesota Twins.

Digonex is collaborating with Tickets.com, and Major League Baseball® to provide its analytics services to the Twins. The Twins utilize Tickets.com's flagship platform, ProVenue®, for ticket sales and inventory management.
Source: Forbes.com, August 26, 2010

Tickets.com, Others Follow Google, Amazon in Opening Up

Opening up an internal resource to outside developers, a la Amazon Web Services and Force.com, isn't just for the big guys anymore.

Smaller organizations with systems that may be aimed at narrow markets are also deciding to open up their platforms to third-party developers. They may do so as a way to create a new revenue stream or to make their own offerings more attractive.

Tickets.com is one such company that has opened its platform to third parties. The company, a subsidiary of MLB.com, provides the back-end ticketing engine for some Major League Baseball teams.

About four years ago, Tickets.com set out to revamp its platform, which at the time was composed of incompatible legacy systems. It decided to build an entirely new platform with a service-oriented architecture and a Web-based front end, said John Rizzi, senior vice president of product management and strategy at Tickets.com.

The decision to open that platform up to third parties came about by chance. "Somewhat by accident, we came to this spot," he said.

As it began building the new platform, Tickets.com hired technology experts to help with the process. "It took us bringing in people from outside the ticketing industry who were much more technology-centric to understand that we had a lot more in this platform than just something more modern and cheaper," Rizzi said.

Tickets.com isn't making its APIs available to just anyone, though. "It's not like we're going to say, 'here's the API, go develop and have fun.' Our clients aren't asking for that," he said. "They are asking for more flexibility and options, and we want to give them that."

Some third-party companies have already started offering services to Tickets.com customers using the new platform, and others are in the works.

Ballena is offering a product, built on Tickets.com's system, that lets online shoppers see in 3D the view from the seat they are considering buying. StubHub, the official secondary ticketing provider of the MLB, is also using the new platform. Its offering is integrated with Tickets.com, which ensures the tickets offered on StubHub are valid.

Tickets.com is also working with Qcue and Digonex, which offer dynamic pricing tools. Qcue, for example, feeds data, including sales inventory provided by Tickets.com and other data about the team's record, the weather and the game's pitching matchup, into its algorithms to recommend that baseball teams adjust ticket prices.

Developers may pay for access to Tickets.com in different ways, depending on how they operate. "My intent is, yes, to profit from this," Rizzi said. Qcue pays a subscription to receive the data feed. Stubhub shares revenue.

Rizzi's advice to other companies thinking of opening up their offerings in a similar way is to carefully think about the revenue model. "That's huge, because in the end, we could wind up opening our system and having a great system and making all the third parties really wealthy, and not participating in that. We don't want to do that," Rizzi said. "We want them to prosper... but I think having a plan in terms of how to monetize it before you implement is pretty important."

He also suggested that it's important to think about how to support the third-party developers. "Supporting an ecosystem of third parties is a lot different from supporting a client who is the end user of the system," he noted. He recommends that other companies make sure to consider those kinds of structural and business components and factor them into their revenue models.

At a recent cloud computing conference, Rizzi said one central theme was making the cloud about more than cost savings.

That's what Tickets.com and some of the pioneers in offering infrastructure or platforms as a service have done. Amazon, Google and Salesforce.com are among companies that have opened up their internal resources so third parties can develop on them.

For complete article: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=3235305

Source: Nancy Gohring, PC Advisor

Venues Today: Dynamic Prices

Understanding the difference between today’s biggest firms

By Dave Brooks
Venues Today - April Issue

REPORTING FROM LONG BEACH, CALIF. — It was the perfect puzzle for the 100 or so ticketing experts who had gathered at Tickets.com’s Executive Summary last February.

After five stellar, mostly sell-out seasons, the perennial Phoenix Suns found themselves in a bit a slump in the National Basketball Association. As John Walker, team VP of Business Development, explained, 2009 was the year the team traded away star Shaquille O’Neal and missed the playoffs. Renewal rates dipped from the high 90s to 60 percent at the beginning of the 2010/2011 season, and Walker realized he had a problem on his hands.

“Suddenly, I’m looking at 3,000 to 5,000 tickets per night that I had to sell, and some of these games were going to be difficult at their current price,” Walker said before the audience gathered for the presentation on Market Ticket Pricing he had been commissioned to moderate.

“I really don’t want to piss off season ticket holders by lowering prices on low demand tickets, but I will still have the high demand games as well. Whenever the Lakers come to town, the price of the tickets double and even triple, and there are plenty of people who will still pay for it.”

Walker said he will dynamically price his tickets for next season under a few simple principals. Low demand games will be priced cheaper — this will give the season ticket holder a little breathing space on resale. For more expensive seats, he will raise the value of the ticket.

For season ticket holders, the cost of season tickets won’t change much, since the lower priced tickets will offset the cost of the higher priced tickets in the package.

Had he just engaged in dynamic pricing? Perhaps, in its simplest form. The practice was a hot topic at this year’s International Ticketing Association (INTIX) conference and set the stage for a healthy discussion at Executive Summit.

But just what exactly does it mean to dynamically price one’s tickets? Is it simply a matter of more correctly pricing tickets for high and low demand games, or does it mean bringing on a software provider like Qcue to crunch the numbers to constantly find the most up-to-date prices?

Or does it mean bringing on a firm with industry staples like Harry Sandler of Digonex, a former Frontline Management executive, who helped bands like The Eagles make huge gains on their ticketing software?

In the next 12 to 24 months, ticketing professionals will continue to have new options for dynamically pricing their tickets: either on their own, or with a technology partner. Venues Today sat down with some of the industry’s top professionals to discuss their options.

WORKING WITH YOUR TICKETING PROVIDER
A dynamic pricing system is only as good as your ticketing company allows it to be.
“Our approach is really about partnering and technology enablement for all of our customers,” said Chief Commercial Officer Derek Palmer of Tickets.com “We’ve been involved with Qcue for several years and have worked with the San Francisco Giants and the Dallas Stars to find a way to add data to the algorithms that Qcue uses, which then provides pricing statistics and pricing recommendations that get placed back into the ticketing system,” Palmer said. “Our company could do the exact same integration with Digonex, although we’re not currently doing it.”
Palmer said the model for Tickets.com is to leave the dynamic pricing question to the client and integrate with the system the client chooses — some systems work better for concerts, while other’s are optimized for sports.

“The main thing as an organization is that you have to make a philosophical decision that this is something you want to implement,” Palmer said. “There will be serious changes, and once you’ve philosophically readied yourself, you bring in the folks who can help you in what you are trying to achieve.”

Palmer said technology should not be a buy-before-you-try proposition, especially when that technology affects serious revenue generators like ticket sales. There are a lot of incentives for early adopters to try out dynamic pricing solutions. Digonex said it offered several free trials of its system during its early phases.

“Organizations gain better intelligence to price their tickets more accurately the first time. This data that Digonex and Qcue bring to bear certainly helps any organization do that. Prior to these two organizations, teams had to mostly rely on historical data, in a more trial and error process,” Palmer said.

Using a dynamic pricing system allows you “to get a lot more elasticity from the ticket price and get closer to what true demand will actually pay,” he said.

QCUE CONTINUES FORWARD
Created by Barry Kahn and a team of economics grad students at the University of Texas, Qcue has gone from being a business contest winner to a major player in the dynamic ticketing space.

At 29, Kahn has helped his company usher in a number of venture capital infusions and state grants. He counts among his clients the San Francisco Giants and the Dallas Stars, along with a number of baseball teams which have yet to publicize their relationship with Qcue.

“There are certain teams out there who don’t want to make a big deal of the fact that they need help better pricing their tickets,” he said.

In his first year with the Giants, Qcue helped the team accurately price about five percent of the seats in the stadium, a move that led to an increase of $500,000 in year-over-year revenue for that same section. In 2010, Qcue will price the entire ballpark, all 41,503 seats, and Kahn said he expects an incremental uptick in team revenue.

“When you realize that season ticket holders occupy half of their stadium, it becomes apparent that we’re working with 10 times the inventory this year. I don’t think it’s unrealistic to expect a proportional increase of incremental revenue,” he said. “This is a multi-million dollar proposition to teams. Whether that is $1 million-$2 million or $5 million-$10 millions depends a lot on the team.”

Kahn charges subscription fees and a revenue sharing model for Qcue software, which is delivered to the customer via a web-application. After logging in, users are given access to a pricing dashboard, which provides real-time pricing recommendations for upcoming games, broken out by seating section. A ticketing professional can simply click to accept Qcue’s recommendations, or adjust one of the systems many pricing variables to bring prices up or down. Maybe the starting pitcher will draw more fans than the system recognizes. Maybe a once lousy opponent has heated up with a new trade or talent signing, and demand for the ticket could spike at any minute. The system gives box office professionals the ability to tweak Qcue’s algorithm and boost revenues.

“We created a map that allows teams to get more out of their ticketing systems,” Kahn said.

DIGONEX MAKES AN ENTRANCE
The Digonex team, led by Sandler and CEO Jim Eglen, made a splash in February when the Cleveland-based firm signed the Cleveland Cavaliers as the first team in the National Basketball Association to bring in an outside variable pricing consultant to help set their prices for the second half of the 2009/2010 season.

“In some reality, what the Cavs have within their Flash Seats component and the Veritix system is ideal for dynamic pricing and it seems like the logical place to start,” said Handler.

Elgen describes Digonex as a market-driven system that doesn’t use forecasting or predictive analytics as the primary driving force of their core technology, but instead looks at market conditions. The company has its own software platform, but works with venue clients in more of a consulting role, helping teams set prices in advance and on the fly.

“We’ve got a smart pricing solution and it learns as it goes,” Eglen said.
Digonex comes to the table stacked with big names. Eglen’s brother Jeff is a former partner at global management giant Accenture. Mike Wanchic, music director and band leader for John Mellencamp, will serve as VP of Digital.

“We’ve got about 25 people and everyone does what they have to to get the job done,” Eglen said.