Ticketing’s changeup
Sports Business Journal
By Eric Fisher
Saturday, May 15, was a rather typical day of what so far has been a somewhat resurgent season for the San Francisco Giants. Star pitcher Tim Lincecum, the reigning two-time National League Cy Young Award winner, pitched eight brilliant innings in a 2-1 win over the Houston Astros at AT&T Park, pushing his record at the time to 5-0.
But the star power of Lincecum also created a noticeable spike in the club’s single-game ticket prices. Lincecum’s dominant presence helped turn a left-field view reserved seat that sold for $15 the night before into a $20 ticket on game day, a $42 lower box seat into a $50 ticket, a $105 field club ticket into a $130 one, and so on through the club’s 20 different seating categories.
Such fluid market dynamics have been the norm on the secondary ticket market for years, particularly over the last decade as that segment of the industry has experienced a historic and meteoric rise in prominence, stature and overall consumer acceptance. On the primary ticket market, many teams over the same time have embraced variable-pricing structures in which more games on popular months or days of the week and against better opponents carry higher ticket prices, though still on a preplanned, static basis.
But the Giants are among a fast-growing collection of teams engaging in dynamic pricing on their primary ticket markets, in which prices more freely move up and down each day based on a wide range of supply and demand factors.
Dynamic pricing, long a benchmark of the hotel, airline and other commodity industries, holds the potential to alter sports ticketing even more dramatically than the advent of officially sanctioned secondary ticketing, many executives and advocates say.
“This is coming on very, very quickly. Within five years, I think everybody’s going to be doing this,” said Russ Stanley, managing vice president of ticketing sales and services for the Giants.
The club, working with Texas-based startup Qcue Inc., made $500,000 in incremental revenue last season testing a small portion of AT&T Park on dynamic pricing. At least a low- to mid-seven-figure sum in additional money is anticipated this season, as the club has expanded the dynamic-pricing program to the entire ballpark for every game for single-game tickets.
“Everybody in the industry is looking at it closely and evaluating it. I’m getting at least a call a week about this [from other teams], probably two,” Stanley said.
Other teams either already active in dynamic pricing or confirmed to start next season include the Astros, Dallas Stars, Florida Panthers and Cleveland Cavaliers.
The rise of dynamic pricing, however, is not so cut and dried, and its accelerating emergence arrives with lots of uncertainty and mixed feelings.
Unlike hotel rooms, airline tickets and other similar products, consumers hold deep, often multigenerational emotional attachments to their sports teams. Those teams, which often play in facilities built at least in part with public funds, have for years also printed their price lists months in advance, creating a general expectation that those prices are set for the coming season. Each ticket price increase, as any team knows, also creates public relations issues and marketplace pushback.
And as sports fans and investors understand all too well, past performance is never a guarantee of future results. Even Lincecum lost his next start after that sparkling win over the Astros.
“I don’t begrudge anybody trying this, but not at the expense of traditional, blood-and-guts ticket selling,” said Chris Hutson, co-chief executive for Turnstyles Ticketing, a New Jersey-based ticketing services company that works with numerous pro teams and universities.
“I’ve seen every gimmick in this business,” Hutson said, “and we as an industry tend to rely on things like this too much instead of good old-fashioned elbow grease. There are so many variables in [dynamic pricing], and I’m not sure we’ve thought through them all. What happens, for example, if Lincecum doesn’t pitch in a particular game after somebody’s paid an accelerated price to see that game?”
Old problem, new solution
Dynamic pricing represents the latest attempt to answer one of the most fundamental set of questions in the sports industry: how best to fill an arena or stadium and generate the highest amount of revenue from those fans in the building.
Much of the dynamic pricing answer is not necessarily new.
Market-based pricing on the primary ticket market borrows heavily from several areas: the acceptance of secondary ticketing and its market-driven forces; a rapid embrace of computer-based analytics and research into ticketing and ticket sales; and consumers’ extensive use of the Internet to track prices in real-time for thousands of other products.
Dozens of teams, such as the Cavaliers and the Atlanta Braves, for the past several years have used various computer models that take inputs such as team opponent, day of the week, month of the year, win-loss record, weather and other factors to perform attendance modeling, representing something of an early step toward dynamic pricing.
But dynamic pricing differs from those other, related approaches on two primary points. Making the move requires a willingness to step over that emotionally charged chasm and agreeing to alter prices that historically have not changed within a given season, and then implementing the infrastructure to do so on a continuous basis.
To that end, much of what Qcue has done is reduce sports ticketing to something of a math problem. The company’s software feeds extensively on a complex algorithm that, similar to an airline or hotel model, takes in all the various pricing factors, including going rates on the secondary market, and spits back out recommended prices.
The team retains the option to agree to those recommendations, or alter them based on additional human factors the program may not have considered.
The Qcue pricing engine is designed to integrate directly into a club’s ticketing system, as the company has done with the Stars and Giants in partnership with Tickets.com. Qcue earns money on a two-pronged approach in which an upfront software fee is supplemented by a revenue-sharing component on ticket sales above a certain level deriving from the dynamic-pricing model.
“What we’ve done is create a software platform that performs very high-end demand and sales forecasting,” said Barry Kahn, Qcue chief executive. “Obviously, we’re huge believers in dynamic pricing, but with or without that, that information is still very valuable. That’s the foundation, and from there, we’re proving value and revenue upside.”
Digonex Technologies Inc., perhaps Qcue’s most direct competitor, has taken a similar approach. Seeking to leverage an existing background in dynamic pricing for e-commerce, including digital music, Digonex last fall launched a sports and entertainment ticketing division. Early this year, it began working with the Cavaliers, with another deal pending with an undisclosed NBA team.
“Consumer acceptance of dynamic pricing has definitely changed,” said Rex Fisher, Digonex vice president of business development. “We all have greater access to information, and we’ve simply been conditioned that many products are priced subject to change.”
The Cavaliers also generated an undisclosed six-figure sum in incremental revenue this past season through dynamic pricing. But for team officials, there is an even bigger prize.
“Even more than the additional revenue, dynamic pricing has helped us engage the fan and be relevant by offering them the right product at the right price at the right time. That helps with building fan engagement and loyalty,” said Mike Tomon, Cavaliers vice president of sales. “It simply makes all the sense in the world to have a true value-based offering that derived from fan behavior. This is coming to a head in sports, and with good reason.”
Protecting season-ticket holders
The top concern surrounding dynamic pricing, not surprisingly, is the potential impact on season-ticket holders, still the lifeblood of all sports ticketing. While prices do move up in high-demand situations — generating predictable complaints of teams being exploitative — it’s the downward price movements for lower-demand games that actually create the bigger business threat.
If prices drift down to points at or near what season-ticket holders paid, what then are the advantages of paying for an entire package of games? Fans have already begun for several years to cherry-pick desired games on the secondary market.
“Price integrity without a doubt has been the No. 1 discussion point or concern on this topic,” said Derek Palmer, Tickets.com chief commercial officer.
The general response from teams on that bigger question is to show additional, unable-to-duplicate value to season-ticket holders through amenities such as access to players and coaches. With regard specifically to dynamic pricing, the early adopters have generally avoided going below their season-ticket pricing.
The insertion of artificial price floors means that teams such as the Giants, Stars and Cavaliers are not practicing dynamic pricing in the truest and fullest sense. But preserving that core base of the most-loyal ticket buyers remains critical, even as dynamic pricing advances and more data and analytics become available.
“I simply wouldn’t be doing this if it meant putting our season-ticket holders at risk,” Stanley said. The Giants’ season-ticket base of 21,000 full-season equivalents, though down in recent years, remains among the largest in baseball. “At least half of what we’ll sell all year will be through season tickets, so we absolutely have to protect that.”
Even with safeguards such as that in place, plenty of skeptics remain for dynamic pricing, in large part because for many teams, low-demand games easily outnumber high-demand ones.
“For a majority of teams, you have to be very careful, and this probably isn’t a space you want to play in. And if you’re still dictating [price] floors, it’s not really dynamic pricing,” said Lou DePaoli, Pittsburgh Pirates executive vice president and chief marketing officer. DePaoli has approached the issue from several angles during prior stops with the NBA, Florida Marlins and Atlanta Spirit ownership group. “But in baseball particularly, there are more weekdays than weekends, and more bad teams than good teams. So without a really super premium on your best series, you probably aren’t going to be able to make up the [lost] revenue.”
The push going forward for dynamic pricing will largely be on two fronts: a consumer education and awareness process to enlighten the public on what dynamic pricing is and how it works, and continued improvement in ticket analytics.
On the first point, many teams have conducted extensive surveys with fans, and each of the teams active in dynamic pricing offers some type of detailed explanation as to how its system works. The general sales credo has been to “lock in and save,” in which fans waiting until the last minute run the risk of paying more for their ticket.
On the latter point, ticketing analytics continue to improve as computing power, algorithms and teams’ understanding of how best to use that research grow and develop. That maturation will manifest itself in part through more precise dynamic pricing.
“Everybody’s experimenting to understand the science and figure out the algorithms, as nobody wants to damage their pricing models with haphazard processes,” said Sam Gerace, chief executive for Veritix, a sister company to the Cavaliers and the team’s ticketing provider.
“The challenge has been getting real information as there’s no official ‘trading desk’ for tickets,” Gerace said. “But I think we’re getting smarter and ultimately getting to a situation where the traditional concept of ‘face value’ begins to fade out.”
Showing posts with label giants tickets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label giants tickets. Show all posts
Monday, June 7, 2010
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Tickets.com Client Spotlight: San Francisco Giants
The San Francisco Giants hired a company called Qcue to implement a system that allows the Giants to change some ticket prices on the day of the game, reports CNBC's Darren Rovell. He discusses this pricing model with Qcue CEO Barry Kahn.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Tickets.com Client Spotlight: San Francisco Giants
Baseball Tickets Too Much? Check Back Tomorrow
The New York Times
By KEN BELSON
Setting ticket prices to sports events requires that one hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Teams want prices high enough to cash in if they play well, but need them to be low enough to draw fans if they falter.
But because teams set their prices months before opening day and resist changing them later, they have trouble reacting to the unexpected, like the weather, winning and losing teams or, this year, the ferocity of an economic downturn.
The San Francisco Giants are experimenting with a possible solution — software that weighs ticket sales data, weather forecasts, upcoming pitching matchups and other variables to help decide whether the team should raise or lower prices right up until game day.
The Giants are the first major league team to test the software, which some industry analysts say could transform the way teams adjust to the ebb and flow of the season, not unlike how airlines, hotels and rental car companies — which also use dynamic pricing — adjust to changes in the travel industry.
Many teams have various ticket prices for the same seats, altering the dollar amount based on the opponent, the day of the week and the time of the year, but those variations are set before the season and not altered. The Giants, by being more fluid, are taking the concept a step further.
The system has the potential to change how fans shop for tickets and to win back the bargain hunters and die-hard fans willing to pay top dollar at resellers like StubHub.
“Consumers are already paying a multitude of prices on the secondary market,” said Dan Migala, the director of the graduate program in sports administration at Northwestern University. “Gone are the days of teams having just three or four ticket prices.”
Teams have looked at tinkering with prices at midseason for some time, but they have been reluctant to do so for fear of alienating season-ticket holders, who pay upfront for their seats and may be offended if fans sitting nearby paid far less for their tickets.
Still, discounts were hardly an issue in San Francisco. In the first eight years after they moved into what is now AT&T Park in 2000, the Giants regularly drew capacity crowds. If anything, they often wished they could raise prices.
“All those years when Barry Bonds was here hitting those home runs, what were we thinking?” Russ Stanley, the Giants’ vice president for ticket services, said as he ruminated on what might have been had the Giants altered prices from week to week as Bonds’s various home run pursuits intensified. “The world is ready for this.”
With Bonds gone and the Giants finishing last season in fourth place in the five-team National League West, attendance fell 11 percent, to below three million for the first time since 1999. Ticket sales so far this year are up 1.7 percent, but at one April game, attendance fell below 30,000 for the first time in the park’s history.
The Giants are not alone in trying to adjust to the recession. The Toronto Blue Jays have hosted “Messin’ with Recession” nights, when fans get tickets for as little as $5, hot dogs for $1 and discounted merchandise. The San Diego Padres are selling two-for-one tickets to some games. The Los Angeles Dodgers gave away “Mannywood” T-shirts to fans who bought seats in left field.
Like many teams, the Giants have tiers of ticket prices. The highest-priced “premium” games include opening day and the games against Oakland and the Los Angeles Dodgers during the summer. The next tier includes “feature” games against the Dodgers in April and weekend games during the summer. The lowest price level includes all other games.
The Giants’ dynamic pricing experiment affects 2,000 of the 41,000 seats at the stadium. The team chose four sections in the upper deck in left field with 1,200 seats and three sections in the left-field bleachers that typically are among the last to sell. No season tickets were sold there.
Because the seats often went empty, the team felt that cutting prices to as low as $5 could entice more fans to sit there. They in turn might buy hot dogs, beers and other concessions. Fans at AT&T Park spend on average $22 a game on food and merchandise.
Conversely, the team charges more for the seats — which are regularly $10 in the upper deck and $17 in the bleachers — when demand is high, like last weekend, when the Mets were in San Francisco.
For the game against the Mets on Thursday, a blustery night, the Giants shaved $1 off their upper-deck seats and $2 off their bleacher seats. But for the Friday night game, when the Giants’ ace, Tim Lincecum, was on the mound, the upper-deck seats went for $19 and the bleacher seats jumped to $27, including a $2 increase on the day of the game.
On Saturday, with Johan Santana paired against Randy Johnson, the Giants raised the price of bleacher seats to $33, including a $2 increase on game day; seats in the upper deck were again $19. On Sunday, bleacher seats went for $23 and sold out in a few days because Lincecum bobblehead dolls were given away.
Through the first 17 home games, sales of dynamically priced tickets rose 20 percent, compared with sales in those sections during the same period last year. That works out to about 500 extra tickets a game.
But it is unclear whether cheaper tickets alone helped boost sales, or whether the team’s improved performance and the mix of competitors, including the rival Dodgers, were responsible. The Giants also hosted a Filipino heritage night that drew a big crowd.
The team is also tinkering with the algorithm that it uses to determine the best time to lower or raise prices. Opposing pitchers and hitters are assigned values on a five-point scale. But if the highly regarded Cole Hamels of the Phillies does not pitch in San Francisco, the Giants may not raise prices when the team is in town.
A single group sale of 100 tickets may misrepresent fan interest. The Cubs draw well even when they are doing poorly. Each day, the calculation changes as starting pitchers are announced, team records change and tickets are sold, prompting the team to recalibrate prices.
Thus far, much of this is lost on the fans. Karla Marroquin, who lives in Petaluma, north of San Francisco, did not know the four upper-deck seats she bought last month had prices that were adjusted.
She originally wanted to attend the game on April 28, but when she saw the same seats the next night were a few dollars cheaper, she chose those.
“The pricing makes it worthwhile when you look at the overall cost of the game, the parking, the tolls, the food,” Marroquin said. “We used to go to the A’s games because of the cheaper prices, but now with the variable pricing, I might go to the Giants more often.”
Megan Romero, who lives in San Francisco, said she was also unaware of the new pricing system.
She bought her bleacher seats because they were the cheapest available. Now that she knows that other seats may be discounted, she said she would start hunting for bargains.
“It’s not the way I shop for things,” Romero said. “But if the ticket is all of a sudden $6 on a Wednesday night, I might decide to go.”
The New York Times
By KEN BELSON
Setting ticket prices to sports events requires that one hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Teams want prices high enough to cash in if they play well, but need them to be low enough to draw fans if they falter.
But because teams set their prices months before opening day and resist changing them later, they have trouble reacting to the unexpected, like the weather, winning and losing teams or, this year, the ferocity of an economic downturn.
The San Francisco Giants are experimenting with a possible solution — software that weighs ticket sales data, weather forecasts, upcoming pitching matchups and other variables to help decide whether the team should raise or lower prices right up until game day.
The Giants are the first major league team to test the software, which some industry analysts say could transform the way teams adjust to the ebb and flow of the season, not unlike how airlines, hotels and rental car companies — which also use dynamic pricing — adjust to changes in the travel industry.
Many teams have various ticket prices for the same seats, altering the dollar amount based on the opponent, the day of the week and the time of the year, but those variations are set before the season and not altered. The Giants, by being more fluid, are taking the concept a step further.
The system has the potential to change how fans shop for tickets and to win back the bargain hunters and die-hard fans willing to pay top dollar at resellers like StubHub.
“Consumers are already paying a multitude of prices on the secondary market,” said Dan Migala, the director of the graduate program in sports administration at Northwestern University. “Gone are the days of teams having just three or four ticket prices.”
Teams have looked at tinkering with prices at midseason for some time, but they have been reluctant to do so for fear of alienating season-ticket holders, who pay upfront for their seats and may be offended if fans sitting nearby paid far less for their tickets.
Still, discounts were hardly an issue in San Francisco. In the first eight years after they moved into what is now AT&T Park in 2000, the Giants regularly drew capacity crowds. If anything, they often wished they could raise prices.
“All those years when Barry Bonds was here hitting those home runs, what were we thinking?” Russ Stanley, the Giants’ vice president for ticket services, said as he ruminated on what might have been had the Giants altered prices from week to week as Bonds’s various home run pursuits intensified. “The world is ready for this.”
With Bonds gone and the Giants finishing last season in fourth place in the five-team National League West, attendance fell 11 percent, to below three million for the first time since 1999. Ticket sales so far this year are up 1.7 percent, but at one April game, attendance fell below 30,000 for the first time in the park’s history.
The Giants are not alone in trying to adjust to the recession. The Toronto Blue Jays have hosted “Messin’ with Recession” nights, when fans get tickets for as little as $5, hot dogs for $1 and discounted merchandise. The San Diego Padres are selling two-for-one tickets to some games. The Los Angeles Dodgers gave away “Mannywood” T-shirts to fans who bought seats in left field.
Like many teams, the Giants have tiers of ticket prices. The highest-priced “premium” games include opening day and the games against Oakland and the Los Angeles Dodgers during the summer. The next tier includes “feature” games against the Dodgers in April and weekend games during the summer. The lowest price level includes all other games.
The Giants’ dynamic pricing experiment affects 2,000 of the 41,000 seats at the stadium. The team chose four sections in the upper deck in left field with 1,200 seats and three sections in the left-field bleachers that typically are among the last to sell. No season tickets were sold there.
Because the seats often went empty, the team felt that cutting prices to as low as $5 could entice more fans to sit there. They in turn might buy hot dogs, beers and other concessions. Fans at AT&T Park spend on average $22 a game on food and merchandise.
Conversely, the team charges more for the seats — which are regularly $10 in the upper deck and $17 in the bleachers — when demand is high, like last weekend, when the Mets were in San Francisco.
For the game against the Mets on Thursday, a blustery night, the Giants shaved $1 off their upper-deck seats and $2 off their bleacher seats. But for the Friday night game, when the Giants’ ace, Tim Lincecum, was on the mound, the upper-deck seats went for $19 and the bleacher seats jumped to $27, including a $2 increase on the day of the game.
On Saturday, with Johan Santana paired against Randy Johnson, the Giants raised the price of bleacher seats to $33, including a $2 increase on game day; seats in the upper deck were again $19. On Sunday, bleacher seats went for $23 and sold out in a few days because Lincecum bobblehead dolls were given away.
Through the first 17 home games, sales of dynamically priced tickets rose 20 percent, compared with sales in those sections during the same period last year. That works out to about 500 extra tickets a game.
But it is unclear whether cheaper tickets alone helped boost sales, or whether the team’s improved performance and the mix of competitors, including the rival Dodgers, were responsible. The Giants also hosted a Filipino heritage night that drew a big crowd.
The team is also tinkering with the algorithm that it uses to determine the best time to lower or raise prices. Opposing pitchers and hitters are assigned values on a five-point scale. But if the highly regarded Cole Hamels of the Phillies does not pitch in San Francisco, the Giants may not raise prices when the team is in town.
A single group sale of 100 tickets may misrepresent fan interest. The Cubs draw well even when they are doing poorly. Each day, the calculation changes as starting pitchers are announced, team records change and tickets are sold, prompting the team to recalibrate prices.
Thus far, much of this is lost on the fans. Karla Marroquin, who lives in Petaluma, north of San Francisco, did not know the four upper-deck seats she bought last month had prices that were adjusted.
She originally wanted to attend the game on April 28, but when she saw the same seats the next night were a few dollars cheaper, she chose those.
“The pricing makes it worthwhile when you look at the overall cost of the game, the parking, the tolls, the food,” Marroquin said. “We used to go to the A’s games because of the cheaper prices, but now with the variable pricing, I might go to the Giants more often.”
Megan Romero, who lives in San Francisco, said she was also unaware of the new pricing system.
She bought her bleacher seats because they were the cheapest available. Now that she knows that other seats may be discounted, she said she would start hunting for bargains.
“It’s not the way I shop for things,” Romero said. “But if the ticket is all of a sudden $6 on a Wednesday night, I might decide to go.”
Monday, February 23, 2009
Innovation, with Mustard and Relish
By Jim McCarthy
Live 2.0
Ok, ok, it’s a press release and not a true news story, but read this anyway. Here’s the key tidbit:
“Tickets.com and closed loop card technologies provider Givex conducted a successful pilot of their stored value technology, Uptix(TM), at the Giants 16th Annual FanFest at AT&T Park in San Francisco.”
Translating that out of Press Release-ian, it means that the San Francisco Giants tested a program whereby you can use the ticket you bought to get into an event to then get stuff once you go in.
For example, you might buy a $25 seat and have a hot dog and a beer as “stored value.” The sticker price for all that could be $35, for example, but you pay just $30.
Another example is that you might get your ticket through a certain promotion at the regular face value, but if you take it to the souvenir stand, you get a pennant or a t-shirt. All of that would be encoded on your ticket.
Actually, Russ Stanley of the Giants mentioned this briefly in his article in the Inaugural Edition, but it’s interesting to see this unfolding in real life.
(Do I even have to do the full disclosure thing that we (Goldstar) work with both the Giants and Tickets.com? Ok, we do. Generally assume we work with everyone, and you’ll have to put up with this disclosures less often.)
Again, in Press Release-ian, Tickets.com says this feature “provides myriad promotional and sponsorship opportunities including rewards tied to on-field events.”
Translating that into English, it means you could do a lot of different things with it.
Baseball has been pioneering this area, but it’s not by any means limited. Why couldn’t an opera “store” intermission drinks on the ticket? Or maybe Cirque Du Soleil could “store” a DVD of the performance on the ticket.
These ideas are good and possibly very useful, but mildly boring (plus the Giants beat us to it), and surely, we can do better than that. How about “storing” access to an after-party or an online downloadable?
Here’s a crazy idea: how about “storing” the possibility of being involved in the show? In other words, if your bar code is the one identified as the winner, at some point during the performance, the performers will actually involve you in the show. They’ll just be told in advance where the person will be who is to be included.
Ok, let’s try this. Any other uses for ’stored’ value? I’ll give a couple tickets on Goldstar to the one I like best. (Goldstar employees, you can give ideas too, but you can’t win the tickets. Sorry about that.) If I don’t get any suggestions, I will award the tickets to myself, which would be sad.
Submit Ideas >
Live 2.0
Ok, ok, it’s a press release and not a true news story, but read this anyway. Here’s the key tidbit:
“Tickets.com and closed loop card technologies provider Givex conducted a successful pilot of their stored value technology, Uptix(TM), at the Giants 16th Annual FanFest at AT&T Park in San Francisco.”
Translating that out of Press Release-ian, it means that the San Francisco Giants tested a program whereby you can use the ticket you bought to get into an event to then get stuff once you go in.
For example, you might buy a $25 seat and have a hot dog and a beer as “stored value.” The sticker price for all that could be $35, for example, but you pay just $30.
Another example is that you might get your ticket through a certain promotion at the regular face value, but if you take it to the souvenir stand, you get a pennant or a t-shirt. All of that would be encoded on your ticket.
Actually, Russ Stanley of the Giants mentioned this briefly in his article in the Inaugural Edition, but it’s interesting to see this unfolding in real life.
(Do I even have to do the full disclosure thing that we (Goldstar) work with both the Giants and Tickets.com? Ok, we do. Generally assume we work with everyone, and you’ll have to put up with this disclosures less often.)
Again, in Press Release-ian, Tickets.com says this feature “provides myriad promotional and sponsorship opportunities including rewards tied to on-field events.”
Translating that into English, it means you could do a lot of different things with it.
Baseball has been pioneering this area, but it’s not by any means limited. Why couldn’t an opera “store” intermission drinks on the ticket? Or maybe Cirque Du Soleil could “store” a DVD of the performance on the ticket.
These ideas are good and possibly very useful, but mildly boring (plus the Giants beat us to it), and surely, we can do better than that. How about “storing” access to an after-party or an online downloadable?
Here’s a crazy idea: how about “storing” the possibility of being involved in the show? In other words, if your bar code is the one identified as the winner, at some point during the performance, the performers will actually involve you in the show. They’ll just be told in advance where the person will be who is to be included.
Ok, let’s try this. Any other uses for ’stored’ value? I’ll give a couple tickets on Goldstar to the one I like best. (Goldstar employees, you can give ideas too, but you can’t win the tickets. Sorry about that.) If I don’t get any suggestions, I will award the tickets to myself, which would be sad.
Submit Ideas >
Monday, February 16, 2009
Tickets.com’s Stored Value Ticket Program Makes a Big Splash at San Francisco Giants FanFest
COSTA MESA, CA – February 12, 2009 – Tickets.com and closed loop card technologies provider Givex conducted a successful pilot of their stored value technology, Uptix™, at the Giants 16th Annual FanFest at AT&T Park in San Francisco. Uptix enables cash value, select merchandise and other data to be stored on individual tickets, which event-goers can then redeem at any point of purchase location. The Giants are calling the program Splash Tix and will roll out the first phase of the implementation to select season ticket holders and groups.
John Rizzi, director of product strategy and marketing, Tickets.com, attended FanFest and was impressed by the positive response to the Splash Tix program. “From day one, the Giants will have the highest volume and most ambitious stored value program in baseball. Tickets.com is proud to partner with the Giants and Givex to make it happen.”
The successful test proved to the Giants that their Splash Tix program is ready for the first phase of the implementation. “We are very happy with the results from Fanfest; this is a great way for groups to add concessions and improve their game-day experience”, said Devin Lutes director of ticket services for the San Francisco Giants. The Giants are also using the program to help retain season ticket holders in their View Level Reserved section by adding $5 of cash value to each game. “We think Splash Tix is a great way to give our season ticket holders additional value for their continued loyalty”, concluded Lutes.
“I’m very pleased! This test confirmed our confidence in this innovative program, and now we’re ready for Opening Day”, said Dan DeMato, president of FutureTix, who also attended FanFest and is consulting on the Uptix product.
Other MLB teams are in discussions with Tickets.com to implement Uptix for the upcoming season. Those teams can take advantage of other Uptix functionality such as adding value to any ticket in the ball park during the game. This feature provides myriad promotional and sponsorship opportunities including rewards tied to on-field events. Uptix can also be configured to allow single-game ticket buyers to add value to their tickets during the purchase process.
Learn more >
John Rizzi, director of product strategy and marketing, Tickets.com, attended FanFest and was impressed by the positive response to the Splash Tix program. “From day one, the Giants will have the highest volume and most ambitious stored value program in baseball. Tickets.com is proud to partner with the Giants and Givex to make it happen.”
The successful test proved to the Giants that their Splash Tix program is ready for the first phase of the implementation. “We are very happy with the results from Fanfest; this is a great way for groups to add concessions and improve their game-day experience”, said Devin Lutes director of ticket services for the San Francisco Giants. The Giants are also using the program to help retain season ticket holders in their View Level Reserved section by adding $5 of cash value to each game. “We think Splash Tix is a great way to give our season ticket holders additional value for their continued loyalty”, concluded Lutes.
“I’m very pleased! This test confirmed our confidence in this innovative program, and now we’re ready for Opening Day”, said Dan DeMato, president of FutureTix, who also attended FanFest and is consulting on the Uptix product.
Other MLB teams are in discussions with Tickets.com to implement Uptix for the upcoming season. Those teams can take advantage of other Uptix functionality such as adding value to any ticket in the ball park during the game. This feature provides myriad promotional and sponsorship opportunities including rewards tied to on-field events. Uptix can also be configured to allow single-game ticket buyers to add value to their tickets during the purchase process.
Learn more >
Monday, February 2, 2009
Tickets.com, StubHub and Ballena Technologies score a Triple Play for the San Francisco Giants
COSTA MESA, CA – February 2, 2009 – Tickets.com, a leading worldwide provider of integrated ticketing solutions, StubHub, the world’s largest ticket marketplace and Ballena Technologies, the premier producer of high-resolution 3-D maps of sports and entertainment venues, announce the formation of a strategic partnership to deliver enhanced seat map functionality. For the first time, venues will be able to combine real-time ticket inventory from both the primary and secondary ticket markets into one seat map view. As part of the online ticket purchase, patrons will easily be able to determine if seats are available in their desired section. Additional functionality will allow fans to buy tickets directly from the panoramic Ballena map view.
The San Francisco Giants will be the first to implement Tickets.com’s Ballena-enabled ProVenue ticketing system. “The Giants organization prides itself on being a leader in the adoption of technology to improve the fan experience. The combination of primary and secondary ticket inventory on a Ballena map continues that tradition,” said Russ Stanley, managing vice president of ticket services and client relations for the Giants. “Fans love to see what the view will be from different sections in the ballpark; when they find seats they like, we want them to be able to buy.”
Tickets.com chose to partner with Ballena because of their market-leading position in the sports and entertainment industries. Brett Michalak, chief information officer, Tickets.com, said, “The Ballena integration is another example of our strategy to leverage best-in-class partners to help us release innovative products into the ticketing marketplace.”
For StubHub, this partnership acts as yet another avenue to give fans as many choices as possible. “Giving Giants fans the ability to view both primary and secondary ticket availability from the same map will enhance the fan experience and provide an additional customer acquisition channel for us”, says Jeff Spaulding, director of business development, StubHub. The Ballena integration is one of several collaborative efforts between StubHub and Tickets.com. The two companies have joined forces through the MLB secondary ticketing platform integration and, in September, extended the integration to the HSBC Arena in Buffalo and the Buffalo Sabres NHL franchise.
Richard Sherratt, Ballena’s chief executive officer, added, “We are excited to be part of such a major announcement in the ticketing industry and to showcase our integration with Tickets.com and StubHub.”
Tickets.com, StubHub and Ballena Technologies will demonstrate a proof of concept of their seat map functionality at INTIX’s upcoming 30th Annual Conference and Exhibition in Salt Lake City, Utah, February 3-6, 2009.
Learn more about Tickets.com's innovative ticketing technologies >
The San Francisco Giants will be the first to implement Tickets.com’s Ballena-enabled ProVenue ticketing system. “The Giants organization prides itself on being a leader in the adoption of technology to improve the fan experience. The combination of primary and secondary ticket inventory on a Ballena map continues that tradition,” said Russ Stanley, managing vice president of ticket services and client relations for the Giants. “Fans love to see what the view will be from different sections in the ballpark; when they find seats they like, we want them to be able to buy.”
Tickets.com chose to partner with Ballena because of their market-leading position in the sports and entertainment industries. Brett Michalak, chief information officer, Tickets.com, said, “The Ballena integration is another example of our strategy to leverage best-in-class partners to help us release innovative products into the ticketing marketplace.”
For StubHub, this partnership acts as yet another avenue to give fans as many choices as possible. “Giving Giants fans the ability to view both primary and secondary ticket availability from the same map will enhance the fan experience and provide an additional customer acquisition channel for us”, says Jeff Spaulding, director of business development, StubHub. The Ballena integration is one of several collaborative efforts between StubHub and Tickets.com. The two companies have joined forces through the MLB secondary ticketing platform integration and, in September, extended the integration to the HSBC Arena in Buffalo and the Buffalo Sabres NHL franchise.
Richard Sherratt, Ballena’s chief executive officer, added, “We are excited to be part of such a major announcement in the ticketing industry and to showcase our integration with Tickets.com and StubHub.”
Tickets.com, StubHub and Ballena Technologies will demonstrate a proof of concept of their seat map functionality at INTIX’s upcoming 30th Annual Conference and Exhibition in Salt Lake City, Utah, February 3-6, 2009.
Learn more about Tickets.com's innovative ticketing technologies >
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Tickets.com Client Spotlight: San Francisco Giants
Giants plan aggressive dynamic-pricing effort
Published December 01, 2008
Sports Business Journal
By DON MURET
Staff writer
The San Francisco Giants have signed a deal with a software company that enables them to change single-game ticket prices at any time.
The club hired QCue to help find the right price for selling 2,000 seats in AT&T Park’s outfield bleachers and upper deck, the last ones to sell for Giants games, said Russ Stanley, managing vice president of ticket services and client relations. Stanley declined to disclose the financial terms, and as of last week the two parties were still negotiating the length of the contract.
QCue, a one-year-old firm based in Austin, Texas, connects its system with Tickets.com, the Giants’ ticket agent. QCue joins Stratbridge, Eloqua and other data managers that teams use to crunch sales numbers to determine the right price to sell those tickets in low demand.
QCue’s formula, similar to Stratbridge’s, plugs in factors such as team performance, opponent, starting pitchers, weather conditions, day of the week and gate giveaways. The Giants will use those results to raise or lower ticket prices as late as the morning of a game for tickets purchased online, at ticket kiosks, by phone and at the box office, Stanley said.
The plan early on is to adjust prices once a day for every home game. “We have the potential to change every price in those [seven] sections every day,” Stanley said. “We could go up or down. There may be a day we do multiple changes and we have that ability.”
The price change will most likely be 25 cents to $1. The Giants believe even a decrease that small will make a difference as they attempt to move slow-selling seats without alienating season-ticket holders who pay full price for their seats, Stanley said.
There are other clubs reducing ticket prices on game days to fill seats, said Matt Marolda, founder of Stratbridge. Marolda, whose company has deals with 40 teams and leaguewide contracts with the NBA and NHL, declined to identify specific clubs.
Stratbridge was among the first to develop computer programs to help pro teams implement dynamic-pricing strategies before and during the regular season. “No teams are as aggressive as the Giants,” Marolda acknowledged.
The Colorado Rockies, whom the Giants talked to before doing their deal with QCue, use a less analytical form of dynamic pricing to fill Coors Field’s 50,449 seats.
The team does not feed boutique software into its Paciolan system (soon to be known as Ticketmaster Irvine) but does rely on historical data and team performance before setting prices for single-game tickets, said Greg Feasel, the Rockies’ senior vice president of business operations.
“We have so many people who live and work downtown that wait longer to make a decision,” Feasel said. “A lot depends on the weather.”
Depending on day-of-game demand, the team lowers its price by about $1 for seats in the upper deck and $4 to $6 for other seats when the Rockpile, the popular family section above the batter’s eye in center field, sells out.
Kids younger than 12 and adults older than 55 can buy tickets for $1 in the 2,300-seat Rockpile and others pay $4 to sit there. “We don’t want to lose those fans waiting in line if they can’t get those tickets,” Feasel said.
In San Francisco, QCue tested its software without selling tickets at the end of the 2008 season, and identified a three-game series in early September against the Diamondbacks for which the team could have decreased prices slightly to move tickets.
“It gave us a good feel for how this would work,” Stanley said.
The Giants were out of the divisional playoff race and “there wasn’t a whole lot of demand” for those games, said QCue CEO Barry Kahn.
Published December 01, 2008
Sports Business Journal
By DON MURET
Staff writer
The San Francisco Giants have signed a deal with a software company that enables them to change single-game ticket prices at any time.
The club hired QCue to help find the right price for selling 2,000 seats in AT&T Park’s outfield bleachers and upper deck, the last ones to sell for Giants games, said Russ Stanley, managing vice president of ticket services and client relations. Stanley declined to disclose the financial terms, and as of last week the two parties were still negotiating the length of the contract.
QCue, a one-year-old firm based in Austin, Texas, connects its system with Tickets.com, the Giants’ ticket agent. QCue joins Stratbridge, Eloqua and other data managers that teams use to crunch sales numbers to determine the right price to sell those tickets in low demand.
QCue’s formula, similar to Stratbridge’s, plugs in factors such as team performance, opponent, starting pitchers, weather conditions, day of the week and gate giveaways. The Giants will use those results to raise or lower ticket prices as late as the morning of a game for tickets purchased online, at ticket kiosks, by phone and at the box office, Stanley said.
The plan early on is to adjust prices once a day for every home game. “We have the potential to change every price in those [seven] sections every day,” Stanley said. “We could go up or down. There may be a day we do multiple changes and we have that ability.”
The price change will most likely be 25 cents to $1. The Giants believe even a decrease that small will make a difference as they attempt to move slow-selling seats without alienating season-ticket holders who pay full price for their seats, Stanley said.
There are other clubs reducing ticket prices on game days to fill seats, said Matt Marolda, founder of Stratbridge. Marolda, whose company has deals with 40 teams and leaguewide contracts with the NBA and NHL, declined to identify specific clubs.
Stratbridge was among the first to develop computer programs to help pro teams implement dynamic-pricing strategies before and during the regular season. “No teams are as aggressive as the Giants,” Marolda acknowledged.
The Colorado Rockies, whom the Giants talked to before doing their deal with QCue, use a less analytical form of dynamic pricing to fill Coors Field’s 50,449 seats.
The team does not feed boutique software into its Paciolan system (soon to be known as Ticketmaster Irvine) but does rely on historical data and team performance before setting prices for single-game tickets, said Greg Feasel, the Rockies’ senior vice president of business operations.
“We have so many people who live and work downtown that wait longer to make a decision,” Feasel said. “A lot depends on the weather.”
Depending on day-of-game demand, the team lowers its price by about $1 for seats in the upper deck and $4 to $6 for other seats when the Rockpile, the popular family section above the batter’s eye in center field, sells out.
Kids younger than 12 and adults older than 55 can buy tickets for $1 in the 2,300-seat Rockpile and others pay $4 to sit there. “We don’t want to lose those fans waiting in line if they can’t get those tickets,” Feasel said.
In San Francisco, QCue tested its software without selling tickets at the end of the 2008 season, and identified a three-game series in early September against the Diamondbacks for which the team could have decreased prices slightly to move tickets.
“It gave us a good feel for how this would work,” Stanley said.
The Giants were out of the divisional playoff race and “there wasn’t a whole lot of demand” for those games, said QCue CEO Barry Kahn.
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