Cristine Hurley Joins Tickets.com as CFO

Tickets.com is pleased to announce the addition of Cristine Hurley in the role of Chief Financial Officer.  She will immediately take on responsibility for all aspects of Tickets.com’s financial strategy and management.

“Cristine has the perfect professional pedigree for our company,” explains John Walker, President and CEO of Tickets.com.  “Her experience in the sports and entertainment industry will help us immediately.  She’s extremely talented and will be a strategic partner within all areas of our business, as well as a rock-solid resource for our clients."

Hurley’s CV includes the role of Vice President, Team Finance for the National Basketball Association, where she was a primary league office liaison with all NBA, WNBA and D-League teams.  Prior to the NBA, she was the Chief Financial Officer for the Los Angeles Dodgers Major League Baseball franchise.  Most recently Hurley was a Partner at Pro Forma Advisors, where she consulted on financial feasibility and economic/fiscal impact studies, primarily relating to sports. 

Hurley is a Certified Public Accountant, holds a bachelor’s degree from Northeastern University and completed the Executive Program at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.  

Read the complete release here. 

Tickets.com® Welcomes Jennifer Zick!

Tickets.com is excited to announce the appointment of Jennifer Zick as Vice President of Business Development. Jennifer’s first official function will be to join members of the Tickets.com team at the International Association of Venue Managers (IAVM) conference in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, July 21-24, 2012.

Zick spent the past 5 years with New Era Tickets helping to launch a digital marketing platform, and was responsible for securing high-profile clients in auto racing, the NBA, NHL, NFL and MLS.

“We’re thrilled to have Jen join us as we are radically changing the ticketing experience for venues, teams and fans with ProVenue,” states John Walker, President and CEO of Tickets.com. “Jen brings not only a wealth of industry knowledge and strategic relationships, but a solid grasp of technology and digital marketing that we can immediately put to work with our clients to help them reach more fans and sell more tickets."

Access the complete release here.

ProVenue Exchange – great speakers & great times…..

By John Walker, President & CEO, Tickets.com

The first day of our annual ProVenue Exchange conference on March 14 closed with a tremendously fascinating and inspiring presentation by Ryan Giannetta from the acclaimed “Disney Institute”, in which he discussed how their organization instills and inspires greatness – and once again hitting on the refrain of a Great Experience being at the heart of success.

Wednesday we held a networking social event at the Cannery restaurant in Newport Beach – featuring a photo booth where staff and clients alike donned hats and posed in costumes to be captured and forever held against them, including me in a Viking helmet….I’m still trying to suppress those pictures from going viral…..



Thursday opened with a rousing session from Bill Guertin – “The 800 pound Gorilla”. Bill is an acclaimed author and sales trainer, specializing in the sports and entertainment industry. His presentation was interactive and highly entertaining, and encouraged everyone to think about how they can take steps towards becoming great and dominating their market or industry – just like the animal he uses as his brand.


The remainder of the conference then was divided into four tracks for various product, user and business & technology panels and presentations. A whirlwind couple of days, but one that left attendees and staff inspired and reinvigorated. It was generally characterized as Tickets.com’s best conference to date.

Thanks to all those who attended and we can’t wait for next year!

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 Connects the Dots

Tickets.com’s annual conference, under the new banner “ProVenue Exchange” to represent the exchanging of ideas, was held March 13-15 in Newport Beach, CA. It was highlighted by outstanding social events, topical and engaging content and extremely memorable speakers including a Gorilla, a Mouse and even Mr. Spock – well, kind of. More on that later – stay tuned as my team and I recap a tremendous couple of days in March.

We introduced clear and valuable themes to our gathering this year – specifically “connecting the dots” on how Tickets.com’s products and services help their customers Reach more Fans, Sell more Tickets and Make more Money. All of our sessions concluded with our speakers and moderators summarizing how the content just covered applied to one or more of these key goals – reaching fans, selling tickets and making money. It was a great way to inspire our clients to head home with a vision for how to use the differentiation they’ve chosen with Tickets.com to Make the Difference Count.

I am extremely proud of the effort all the Tickets.com staff put into this event, and the reviews have been excellent from many of the attendees who have contacted us. We can’t wait until next year when we’ll try to exceed this year’s conference and create a truly Great Experience – just like we are striving to do with our products and services.

The Keynote Speakers: Future of Ticketing Technology: Visions of Tomorrow

The International Ticketing Association (INTIX) has announced the keynote speakers for the 33rd Annual Conference & Exhibition.

The Opening Keynote, entitled “The Future of Ticketing Technology: Visions of Tomorrow” will feature some of the brightest minds in the industry sharing their perspectives on new trends and the future of ticketing technology.

Distinguished panelists include Kevin Kimsa, CEO, AudienceView Ticketing; Neal Gunn, VP Sales and Marketing, Outbox Enterprises; Dave Butler, CEO, Paciolan; Jack Rubin, President, Tessitura Network, Inc.; Jared Smith, COO North America, Ticketmaster; John Walker, President & CEO, Tickets.com; and Jeff Kline, President, Veritix.

The panel will be moderated by Dan DeMato, Principal of FutureTix, Inc.

The Closing Keynote, “Opportunities in Social Ticketing,” will be presented by David Fisch, the Director of Strategic Partnership at Facebook.

For more information on the INTIX Conference visit http://intix.org.

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.

Tickets.com and Florida Marlins Execute Long-Term Ticketing Agreement

The Agreement Includes the Advanced ProVenue® Platform, ProVenueMobile, Tickets@Phone and Uptix Stored Value Technologies.

Tickets.com adds National League Major League Baseball team the Florida Marlins® to its client line-up with a long-term ticketing agreement anchored on ProVenue®, the industry’s most advanced ticketing platform. Among other technologies, the portfolio of features and services to be delivered to the Marlins includes ProVenueMobile, Tickets@Phone and Uptix stored value ticketing.

“When reviewing our options in choosing a ticketing partner, we saw that Tickets.com was by far the best technological fit,” says David Samson, Florida Marlins team president. “I know that our fans, as well as our organization, will benefit from the breakthrough technologies that Tickets.com is offering—and continuing to develop.”

The Florida Marlins’ adoption of the web-based ProVenue platform coincides with the kick-off of the team’s 2012 season in their new stadium. The 2012 season ticket-holder deposits are already being processed through the ProVenue system. The platform’s flexible open architecture allows for additional features, applications, and data management programs offered by Tickets.com or other third parties to be seamlessly integrated at any time.

“We’re confident that the ProVenue ticketing platform will meet all the consumer-facing and internal needs of the Florida Marlins organization,” says John Walker, president and CEO, Tickets.com. “The club shares our enthusiasm for technological innovation, so it is exciting to be their technology partner as they take up residence at the Marlins Ballpark.”

The Marlins will be extending their reach of ProVenue with the simultaneous deployment of ProVenueMobile, giving fans the capability to purchase their tickets with their mobile device. To give fans a 360 degree mobile – and green – ticket-buying experience, the Marlins are also incorporating Tickets.com’s Tickets@Phone feature, which allows purchasers to digitally receive their tickets, through the use of unique bar codes, directly on their mobile device.

The Marlins are also implementing a stored-value ticketing program using the versatile Uptix technology developed by Givex USA Corporation and offered through Tickets.com. The Uptix service—which can be customized and individually branded for each client—allows concessions and merchandise credits to be pre-loaded onto a ticket through the barcode. The value of credits is included into the ticket purchase price. The added value is scannable by vendors throughout the ballpark for the duration of the game.

The Uptix service can also be programmed to electronically award bonus dollars to ticket-holders at interactive, in-game promotions, enhancing the overall fan experience—another example of the industry-leading technology from Tickets.com that reeled in the Marlins.

Tickets.com Names John Walker to Serve as President and CEO

Tickets.com, a wholly owned subsidiary of MLB Advanced Media, LP (MLBAM), the interactive media and Internet company of Major League Baseball, announced today the appointment of John Walker as president and chief executive officer. Walker, who begins May 17, was named to replace Larry Witherspoon.

Tickets.com is a leading provider of fully integrated event ticketing solutions and services for thousands of top arts, entertainment, and sports organizations worldwide. Delivering the latest in ticketing technology, Tickets.com offers the advanced ProVenue® ticketing platform, which serves the core of a comprehensive suite of integrated features, products, and services that help clients enhance ticket sales, marketing efforts, and overall customer experience.

"We appreciate the invaluable service Larry Witherspoon gave to Tickets.com," said Bob Bowman, CEO of MLBAM. "As the organization progresses, we look forward to John Walker's extensive business leadership, strategic planning and ticketing background successfully positioning Tickets.com for its future."

Walker, who will report directly to Bowman, brings more than 20 years of professional sports franchise and collegiate athletic ticketing and business development experience to his new position. Prior to joining Tickets.com, he served as senior vice president of business development for the NBA's Phoenix Suns and US Airways Center. In this capacity, he was responsible for all ticketing operations and sales, customer service, customer relationship management (CRM), digital media, and new business initiatives for the Suns. Previously, Walker served as the Suns vice president of ticket operations and sales for the Suns, the Phoenix Mercury (WNBA), Arizona Rattlers (AFL), America West Arena and the Dodge Theatre.

"I am very excited to be joining such a talented team at Tickets.com," said Walker. "Tickets.com has long been considered a leader in developing ticketing technologies that benefit the end-to-end purchasing experience. The ‘forward thinking’ relationship with its existing client base, coupled with the innovative synergy it shares with MLBAM, creates an extremely bright future for Tickets.com. I feel fortunate to have this opportunity at such an important time in the company’s history."

Before Walker joined the Suns, he was director of revenue operations for the Kansas City Royals and held ticket operations positions with the University of Oklahoma, the University of Pittsburgh and West Virginia University. A native of Morgantown, WV, Walker received his BS from West Virginia University and his master's degree from the University of Oklahoma.