AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Qcue today announced the 2011 Major League Baseball (MLB) season was the most active season to date for dynamic pricing, resulting in significant gains for all clients, including increases in total revenues, full-price ticket sales and revenue per seat(1).
With the regular season now complete, Qcue conducted in depth analysis across clients, concluding that the frequency of price changes has a direct impact on incremental revenue. In fact, Qcue estimates that a team can generate an additional $900,000 in incremental revenue over the course of a season by making one additional change to each of its prices(2).
Results like this show why dynamic pricing is quickly becoming an industry standard with more than one-third of MLB teams, as well as teams across other leagues, implementing the practice. Qcues roster continues to grow, with the New York Mets and Seattle Mariners set to implement dynamic pricing for the 2012 season. Qcue clients now represent 95% of all dynamically priced baseball tickets.
On average, teams approached 2011 with conservative on-sale prices, often lower than previous years, providing substantial values for many fans.
Additional findings include:
Average price change per seat: $1.55 increase
Average percentage change per seat: 3% increase
Average price decrease: -$13.63
Average price increase: $3.27
The market has definitely hit a tipping point, where teams are no longer wondering if they should embrace dynamic pricing, but rather how often to leverage the intelligence and flexibility a solution like ours can provide to drive incremental revenue, said Barry Kahn, CEO of Qcue. Our analysis demonstrates the relationship between the frequency of price changes and incremental revenue and the value of understanding real-time market dynamics in setting more accurate prices. Teams that adjust prices more frequently make more money that can be invested back into the club.
In addition to regular season pricing, teams are finding ways to extend dynamic pricing to new scenarios such as spring training, which the San Francisco Giants successfully did this year in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Qcues turnkey software solution helps teams analyze sales data and other external pricing variables, providing sales and revenue projections, strong reporting capabilities, as well as market-based price recommendations. Additionally, integration capabilities remove the management burden teams often face by directly communicating price changes to the teams ticketing system and website. With Qcue, thousands of price changes take just a few minutes.
(1) Metrics do not reflect season ticket revenues, which are not used in dynamic pricing.
(2) A price is defined as a single section that is priced together and adjusted at the same time/rate.
Showing posts with label qcue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label qcue. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
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
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
Monday, August 16, 2010
Atlanta Hawks, Atlanta Thrashers, Houston Rockets and Utah Jazz Select Qcue to Power Dynamic Ticket Pricing
Qcue, the dynamic pricing engine for live entertainment events, today announced deals with National Basketball Association (NBA) franchises, the Atlanta Hawks, Houston Rockets and Utah Jazz as well as the Atlanta Thrashers of the National Hockey League (NHL). Already the chosen dynamic pricing solution for teams in MLB and the NHL, the Hawks, Rockets and Jazz mark Qcue's entry into the NBA.
As the only fully integrated software-based dynamic pricing solution on the market, Qcue reduces the time it takes to re-price tickets from several days to just a few minutes. Sophisticated algorithms take into account playoff implications, weather, opponents, day of the week, real-time sales and other market conditions to determine the optimal price for each ticket once a price adjustment is determined.
"We believe that Qcue's dynamic pricing system offers a versatile solution that is easy to use and flexible enough to meet the needs of both our NBA and NHL franchises," said Tracy White, Chief Sales Officer and Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing for the Atlanta Hawks and Atlanta Thrashers. "Sports market conditions are constantly changing and now we are able to quickly adapt to them while also providing greater value to our season ticket holders."
"Qcue's technology will ultimately allow our fans and consumer demand patterns to dictate single-game ticket prices," said Christopher Dacey, Vice President at the Houston Rockets.
With Qcue's dynamic pricing system, thousands of price changes take just a few minutes. The SaaS-based software solution helps teams analyze sales data and other external pricing variables, providing sales and revenue projections, as well as recommendations on setting the right price at the right time. Whether it's a surprise playoff run or an MVP coming to town, teams are looking for ways to stay flexible to match ticket prices with the value of the experience.
"We are excited to move in the direction of dynamic pricing with Qcue," said Jim Olson, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for the Utah Jazz. "Dynamic pricing allows us to better price our tickets according to public demand. The Qcue system is a proven system that takes the guess work out of the process and provides us with the data to both service our fans and maximize our opportunities."
As the only fully integrated software-based dynamic pricing solution on the market, Qcue reduces the time it takes to re-price tickets from several days to just a few minutes. Sophisticated algorithms take into account playoff implications, weather, opponents, day of the week, real-time sales and other market conditions to determine the optimal price for each ticket once a price adjustment is determined.
"We believe that Qcue's dynamic pricing system offers a versatile solution that is easy to use and flexible enough to meet the needs of both our NBA and NHL franchises," said Tracy White, Chief Sales Officer and Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing for the Atlanta Hawks and Atlanta Thrashers. "Sports market conditions are constantly changing and now we are able to quickly adapt to them while also providing greater value to our season ticket holders."
"Qcue's technology will ultimately allow our fans and consumer demand patterns to dictate single-game ticket prices," said Christopher Dacey, Vice President at the Houston Rockets.
With Qcue's dynamic pricing system, thousands of price changes take just a few minutes. The SaaS-based software solution helps teams analyze sales data and other external pricing variables, providing sales and revenue projections, as well as recommendations on setting the right price at the right time. Whether it's a surprise playoff run or an MVP coming to town, teams are looking for ways to stay flexible to match ticket prices with the value of the experience.
"We are excited to move in the direction of dynamic pricing with Qcue," said Jim Olson, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for the Utah Jazz. "Dynamic pricing allows us to better price our tickets according to public demand. The Qcue system is a proven system that takes the guess work out of the process and provides us with the data to both service our fans and maximize our opportunities."
Friday, August 13, 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
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
Monday, May 24, 2010
Tickets.com Partner Spotlight: Qcue
The Austin Technology Incubator Graduates Member Company, Qcue The Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), a not-for-profit arm of The University of Texas at Austin, announced today that its member company, Qcue, Inc., will graduate later this month.
The Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), a not-for-profit arm of The University of Texas at Austin, announced today that its member company, Qcue, Inc., will graduate later this month.
Qcue, the dynamic pricing engine for live entertainment events, joined the ATI in May 2008. Sports teams, concert promoters and venues use Qcue's software to set the right ticket price at the right time based on shifting market conditions. By enabling fans to purchase fair-priced, face-value tickets directly from a team’s box office, Qcue’s dynamic pricing solutions ensure a more consistent, high-value experience coupled with greater price transparency and choice-of-seat flexibility.
During its tenure at ATI, Qcue landed its first professional sports client, raised in excess of $1M in funding and expanded its client roster to include teams across the major sports leagues. Qcue also added senior-level business and technology executives to the company’s leadership team.
“The professional staff at ATI has been invaluable in helping us address the unforeseen challenges that come with scaling a fast-growing business,” said Barry Kahn, CEO of Qcue. “Their deep experience and breadth of resources are things you just can’t put a price tag on, and have played an integral role in the early advantage we’ve established in the market.”
Qcue’s plans include expanding its existing client base in professional sports and exploring new market opportunities in live music and the performing arts.
“Barry and the Qcue team have done a phenomenal job engaging customers, proving out the value proposition of dynamic pricing, and positioning the company for explosive growth,” said Bart Bohn, Director of ATI’s IT Incubator. “I look forward to watching them capitalize on this success as they continue to outpace potential competitors in the space.”
Qcue is the fifth company to graduate from the Incubator this year. A formal ceremony is planned for early 2011.
About the Austin Technology Incubator
The Austin Technology Incubator is a nonprofit unit of The University of Texas at Austin that harnesses business, government and academic resources to provide strategic counsel, operational guidance and infrastructure support to its member companies to help them transition from early stage ventures to successful technology businesses. Since its founding in 1989, ATI has worked with over 200 companies, helping them raise close to $750 million in investor capital. ATI is a key program of the IC2 Institute at The University of Texas at Austin. For more information, visit www.ati.utexas.edu
About Qcue, Inc.
Qcue is reinventing the primary ticket marketplace with the world’s only dynamic pricing engine for live entertainment events. Sports teams, concert promoters and venues use Qcue’s patent-pending technology to set the right price at the right time and provide the best value for fans, from the date of on-sale to the date of the event. Customers and partners include the San Francisco Giants, the Dallas Stars, Major League Baseball Advanced Media and Tickets.com. Founded in 2007, Qcue is based in Austin, Texas. For more information on Qcue, visit www.qcue.com.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Giants, Sharks Experiment with Ticket Pricing
SFGate
Benny Evangelista
Buying a ticket to a game is becoming more like watching the stock market.
For example, San Jose Sharks fans can buy "options" on future Stanley Cup playoff tickets.
Meanwhile, the price of a San Francisco Giants ticket might rise 25 cents on any given day based on market variables like supply and demand - or whether Tim Lincecum is pitching.
Technology is transforming the way tickets are sold, and these two Bay Area sports franchises are on the cutting edge.
"Within five years, I think everyone will be doing something like this," said Russ Stanley, vice president for ticket sales and services for the Giants.
Years ago, tickets to sporting events and other forms of live entertainment were simply priced by location - the closer to the field, ice or ring, the higher the price. But in the past decade, the Giants and other teams helped usher in an era of "variable pricing," which valued tickets using other factors such as the drawing power of the opposing team and whether the game was on a weekend or weekday.
Now, the Giants and Sharks are experimenting with pricing methods that other teams and event promoters are watching closely.
For this season, the Sharks teamed up with OptionIt, a Portland, Ore., startup, that sells options to buy tickets for future games at face value. The buyer can later exercise that option or sell it to another buyer.
The Sharks, which receive a cut of the option price, offered 20 tickets per game during the regular season and playoffs, a sliver of the HP Pavilion's seating capacity of 17,562 for hockey.
Sharks fan Jessica Welker of San Jose paid $114 in November for the option on a pair of tickets to what would be the franchise's first-ever Stanley Cup Finals home game. She figured those tickets would be nearly impossible to find at face value if the Sharks made it to the NHL's championship round.
"All my friends were skeptical," said Welker, who exercised that option on Monday. "They thought it was crazy that I paid $114 because they thought there was no way the Sharks would make it to the Stanley Cup Finals. To me, it was worth it. Obviously, it would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
However, it's also a gamble. If the Sharks lose to the Chicago Blackhawks in the Western Conference Finals, she loses the $114.
The alternative would be to pay more to brokers on secondary markets like eBay or StubHub. This week, tickets to G1 of the conference finals were offered on StubHub for $1,212 each, according to SeatGeek.com, a new site that tracks and forecasts the prices of tickets on secondary markets.
Contingency plan
OptionIt could be valuable, for example, for a fan planning in November to go to a regular season game in February, but not absolutely certain he or she can attend, said Mark Mastalir, chief executive officer.
OptionIt has similar deals with the NHL's Washington Capitals, the NBA's Boston Celtics and the NFL's Baltimore Ravens.
Some of the options come with extras, such as a ride on the Zamboni machine or the chance to meet a player.
Malcolm Bordelon, Sharks executive vice president of operations, said the team will evaluate OptionIt after the season, but is generally pleased with the results.
The team might consider option plans for other arena events, such as the SAP Open tennis tournament or mixed martial arts matches.
"We typically don't do things first, but this was actually easy to do," Bordelon said. "There's no cost to us and it's another avenue for people who want to purchase tickets."
Joris Drayer, a professor of sports management at the University of Memphis, said OptionIt could catch on only if fans "understand what they're getting and what they're not getting."
"The model isn't there to be a great benefit to fans, it's there to be a revenue generator for the team," Drayer said. "But I don't think it's a disservice to fans. It's got a chance, but the education process with that model is a little more difficult."
Drayer, a former marketing and promotions employee for the Oakland A's, said the "dynamic pricing" formula the Giants are using this season could spread quickly.
"Everyone's watching what the Giants are doing," Drayer said. "They're the guinea pigs not only for baseball, but for all sports."
The Giants and most major league teams already employ a variable pricing plan, setting prices months in advance to reflect factors such as the drawing power of the opponent and whether it's a weekend game.
In 2009, the Giants went a step further, becoming the first to use technology from Austin, Texas, startup Qcue Inc. to adjust prices on about 2,000 outfield seats at AT&T Park.
The system adds other factors, including whether the opposing team is on a hot or cold streak, whether a marquee player is closing in on a record or on the disabled list, or whether the forecast is for rain or sun.
Expanded experiment
Stanley said the experiment generated about $500,000 in incremental revenue, so the Giants expanded dynamic pricing this season to all 41,500 seats.
Stanley and his crew spend about an hour a day looking over Qcue's recommendations, which are based on algorithms that automatically crunch the data.
Sometimes the team is aggressive and tries to boost sales for a low-demand game by dropping prices to as low as $5.
Other times, bumping prices up 25 or 50 cents per ticket also spurs sales.
"It's like the stock market," Stanley said.
Drayer said that extra 50 cents can really add up over the course of the long home season, in addition to the added income from parking and concessions that wouldn't come in if the seat remained empty.
But ticket prices vary widely. A lower box seat for a Tuesday night in June against the Colorado Rockies, not usually a big draw, was priced at $30 (down $1 from last week), while that same seat for a Sunday afternoon matchup with the popular Boston Red Sox was priced at $89.50. In the middle was a Saturday match against the cross-bay rival A's costing $65.75.
Still, Stanley said, the Giants aren't trying to match prices on the secondary market. Similar lower box tickets for that Sunday Giants-Red Sox game were going for $355 each on StubHub.
"We're not gouging," Stanley said. "We're not sticking it to people. While we increase prices, we're not getting greedy."
Barry Kahn, Qcue's co-founder and chief executive officer, said the NHL's Dallas Stars also used dynamic pricing and the company could have 10 teams on board by September when the basketball and hockey seasons start again.
Benny Evangelista
Buying a ticket to a game is becoming more like watching the stock market.
For example, San Jose Sharks fans can buy "options" on future Stanley Cup playoff tickets.
Meanwhile, the price of a San Francisco Giants ticket might rise 25 cents on any given day based on market variables like supply and demand - or whether Tim Lincecum is pitching.
Technology is transforming the way tickets are sold, and these two Bay Area sports franchises are on the cutting edge.
"Within five years, I think everyone will be doing something like this," said Russ Stanley, vice president for ticket sales and services for the Giants.
Years ago, tickets to sporting events and other forms of live entertainment were simply priced by location - the closer to the field, ice or ring, the higher the price. But in the past decade, the Giants and other teams helped usher in an era of "variable pricing," which valued tickets using other factors such as the drawing power of the opposing team and whether the game was on a weekend or weekday.
Now, the Giants and Sharks are experimenting with pricing methods that other teams and event promoters are watching closely.
For this season, the Sharks teamed up with OptionIt, a Portland, Ore., startup, that sells options to buy tickets for future games at face value. The buyer can later exercise that option or sell it to another buyer.
The Sharks, which receive a cut of the option price, offered 20 tickets per game during the regular season and playoffs, a sliver of the HP Pavilion's seating capacity of 17,562 for hockey.
Sharks fan Jessica Welker of San Jose paid $114 in November for the option on a pair of tickets to what would be the franchise's first-ever Stanley Cup Finals home game. She figured those tickets would be nearly impossible to find at face value if the Sharks made it to the NHL's championship round.
"All my friends were skeptical," said Welker, who exercised that option on Monday. "They thought it was crazy that I paid $114 because they thought there was no way the Sharks would make it to the Stanley Cup Finals. To me, it was worth it. Obviously, it would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
However, it's also a gamble. If the Sharks lose to the Chicago Blackhawks in the Western Conference Finals, she loses the $114.
The alternative would be to pay more to brokers on secondary markets like eBay or StubHub. This week, tickets to G1 of the conference finals were offered on StubHub for $1,212 each, according to SeatGeek.com, a new site that tracks and forecasts the prices of tickets on secondary markets.
Contingency plan
OptionIt could be valuable, for example, for a fan planning in November to go to a regular season game in February, but not absolutely certain he or she can attend, said Mark Mastalir, chief executive officer.
OptionIt has similar deals with the NHL's Washington Capitals, the NBA's Boston Celtics and the NFL's Baltimore Ravens.
Some of the options come with extras, such as a ride on the Zamboni machine or the chance to meet a player.
Malcolm Bordelon, Sharks executive vice president of operations, said the team will evaluate OptionIt after the season, but is generally pleased with the results.
The team might consider option plans for other arena events, such as the SAP Open tennis tournament or mixed martial arts matches.
"We typically don't do things first, but this was actually easy to do," Bordelon said. "There's no cost to us and it's another avenue for people who want to purchase tickets."
Joris Drayer, a professor of sports management at the University of Memphis, said OptionIt could catch on only if fans "understand what they're getting and what they're not getting."
"The model isn't there to be a great benefit to fans, it's there to be a revenue generator for the team," Drayer said. "But I don't think it's a disservice to fans. It's got a chance, but the education process with that model is a little more difficult."
Drayer, a former marketing and promotions employee for the Oakland A's, said the "dynamic pricing" formula the Giants are using this season could spread quickly.
"Everyone's watching what the Giants are doing," Drayer said. "They're the guinea pigs not only for baseball, but for all sports."
The Giants and most major league teams already employ a variable pricing plan, setting prices months in advance to reflect factors such as the drawing power of the opponent and whether it's a weekend game.
In 2009, the Giants went a step further, becoming the first to use technology from Austin, Texas, startup Qcue Inc. to adjust prices on about 2,000 outfield seats at AT&T Park.
The system adds other factors, including whether the opposing team is on a hot or cold streak, whether a marquee player is closing in on a record or on the disabled list, or whether the forecast is for rain or sun.
Expanded experiment
Stanley said the experiment generated about $500,000 in incremental revenue, so the Giants expanded dynamic pricing this season to all 41,500 seats.
Stanley and his crew spend about an hour a day looking over Qcue's recommendations, which are based on algorithms that automatically crunch the data.
Sometimes the team is aggressive and tries to boost sales for a low-demand game by dropping prices to as low as $5.
Other times, bumping prices up 25 or 50 cents per ticket also spurs sales.
"It's like the stock market," Stanley said.
Drayer said that extra 50 cents can really add up over the course of the long home season, in addition to the added income from parking and concessions that wouldn't come in if the seat remained empty.
But ticket prices vary widely. A lower box seat for a Tuesday night in June against the Colorado Rockies, not usually a big draw, was priced at $30 (down $1 from last week), while that same seat for a Sunday afternoon matchup with the popular Boston Red Sox was priced at $89.50. In the middle was a Saturday match against the cross-bay rival A's costing $65.75.
Still, Stanley said, the Giants aren't trying to match prices on the secondary market. Similar lower box tickets for that Sunday Giants-Red Sox game were going for $355 each on StubHub.
"We're not gouging," Stanley said. "We're not sticking it to people. While we increase prices, we're not getting greedy."
Barry Kahn, Qcue's co-founder and chief executive officer, said the NHL's Dallas Stars also used dynamic pricing and the company could have 10 teams on board by September when the basketball and hockey seasons start again.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Tickets.com Partner Spotlight: Qcue Names Vice President of Business Development
Qcue, the dynamic pricing engine for live entertainment events, today announced the appointment of Eric Freeland as vice president of business development, where he will lead the company’s client acquisition and partnership efforts.
Freeland joins Qcue from StubHub, where he was responsible for all aspects of business development supporting the company’s multi-year sponsorships with professional sports teams and NCAA Division I schools.
Sports teams, concert promoters and venues use Qcue's software to set the right price at the right time based on shifting market conditions. By enabling fans to purchase fair-priced, face-value tickets directly from a team’s box office, Qcue’s dynamic pricing solutions ensure a more consistent, high-value experience coupled with greater price transparency and choice-of-seat flexibility.
An expert in client prospecting and value creation, contract negotiation and project management, Freeland supported StubHub’s sponsorship negotiation with 24 Major League Baseball clubs leading to an exponential year-over-year sales increase in the company’s biggest market. He also launched StubHub’s first non-sports integration with Tickets.com for a major venue, spanning all live entertainment events at HSBC Arena in Buffalo, New York.
“Eric did an amazing job at StubHub as they transformed the ticketing industry and changed the perception of how teams can serve fans and increase revenues,” said Barry Kahn, CEO of Qcue. “Dynamic pricing represents the next step in bringing technology to live event ticketing benefitting teams and fans alike. We are excited to bring Eric on board as someone who has done this before and has strong relationships with many of our partners, clients and prospects."
“Qcue has quickly established itself as a leading innovator in the ticketing industry, helping teams and venues maximize revenue opportunities while being more flexible and transparent in how they do business,” said Freeland. “I’m excited to join the team and continue to capitalize on this incredible market opportunity.”
About Qcue
Qcue is reinventing the primary ticket marketplace with the world’s only dynamic pricing engine for live entertainment events. Sports teams, concert promoters and venues use Qcue’s patent-pending technology to set the right price at the right time and provide the best value for fans, from the date of on-sale to the date of the event. Customers and partners include the San Francisco Giants, the Dallas Stars, Major League Baseball Advanced Media and Tickets.com. Founded in 2007, Qcue is based in Austin, Texas. For more information on Qcue, visit www.qcue.com.
Freeland joins Qcue from StubHub, where he was responsible for all aspects of business development supporting the company’s multi-year sponsorships with professional sports teams and NCAA Division I schools.
Sports teams, concert promoters and venues use Qcue's software to set the right price at the right time based on shifting market conditions. By enabling fans to purchase fair-priced, face-value tickets directly from a team’s box office, Qcue’s dynamic pricing solutions ensure a more consistent, high-value experience coupled with greater price transparency and choice-of-seat flexibility.
An expert in client prospecting and value creation, contract negotiation and project management, Freeland supported StubHub’s sponsorship negotiation with 24 Major League Baseball clubs leading to an exponential year-over-year sales increase in the company’s biggest market. He also launched StubHub’s first non-sports integration with Tickets.com for a major venue, spanning all live entertainment events at HSBC Arena in Buffalo, New York.
“Eric did an amazing job at StubHub as they transformed the ticketing industry and changed the perception of how teams can serve fans and increase revenues,” said Barry Kahn, CEO of Qcue. “Dynamic pricing represents the next step in bringing technology to live event ticketing benefitting teams and fans alike. We are excited to bring Eric on board as someone who has done this before and has strong relationships with many of our partners, clients and prospects."
“Qcue has quickly established itself as a leading innovator in the ticketing industry, helping teams and venues maximize revenue opportunities while being more flexible and transparent in how they do business,” said Freeland. “I’m excited to join the team and continue to capitalize on this incredible market opportunity.”
About Qcue
Qcue is reinventing the primary ticket marketplace with the world’s only dynamic pricing engine for live entertainment events. Sports teams, concert promoters and venues use Qcue’s patent-pending technology to set the right price at the right time and provide the best value for fans, from the date of on-sale to the date of the event. Customers and partners include the San Francisco Giants, the Dallas Stars, Major League Baseball Advanced Media and Tickets.com. Founded in 2007, Qcue is based in Austin, Texas. For more information on Qcue, visit www.qcue.com.
Monday, April 5, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Olympic secondary sales beat budget
SportsBusiness Daily
Don Muret
Larry Witherspoon is entering his sixth year as CEO of the MLB Advanced Media subsidiary Tickets.com. During the Tickets.com Executive Summit in Long Beach, Calif., last week, he sat down with SportsBusiness Journal staff writer Don Muret and discussed the state of the ticketing business in the wake of the merger between Ticketmaster and event promoter Live Nation, as well as the Vancouver Olympics, where Tickets.com operated an officially sanctioned secondary ticketing platform for the first time in the event’s history.
Break down your Vancouver operations.
Witherspoon: We [did] 100 percent of the ticketing up there. We did the primary sales all throughout last year, and in December, we launched the secondary fan-to-fan marketplace. With that, we have the whole spate of tools for the Olympic experience, the ability for people to donate their tickets to charity, the ability for sponsors to do consignment of tickets when they have available inventory, and the cart of integrated primary and secondary tickets, where you can see both marketplaces and make a decision based on what you want to buy. All very cool new stuff. [The secondary market] has exceeded every budgetary expectation we did set. It was $10 million, but the problem we have is that it’s never been done before, so how you budget for the unknown was hard for us. Frankly, the matchups that occur play a big part as well. There’s a lot of national pride involved, and some people are going to be willing to go to that game regardless of what it’s going to cost them.
Tickets.com handled both primary and secondary ticketing at the Vancouver Olympics.
How do see the ticketing landscape changing?
Witherspoon: Three years ago, we reinvented our product [with ProVenue software]; literally started from the ground up. It’s been a painful process, and there’s a reason nobody’s developed anything new in the past 10 to 15 years in the ticketing world: It’s hard. What we really see to our advantage is our ability to provide technology to a venue or a team that allows them full control. So we don’t do the “Here’s a big check. We’re going to take a large part of the service charge.” What we do say is “Here’s our license. We’ll take a small vig on a service charge ticket, you control what you want to do with your service charges, [and] you take control of how you want to sell to the public.” We’ve seen some good results. The Seattle Theatre Group is a client that came on board with us and eliminated their print-at-home fees, first time people have done that in a long time, and dropped some of their service charges a little bit. Great press.
Do you see that applicable in sports?
Witherspoon: It depends. I think sports are a little different in that you have the governing bodies. I understand how MLB works, but I don’t know how much flexibility teams have in their service fee setup. From our system perspective, for sure, it gives anybody the ability to control it and manage it and manage their own ticketing system, which obviously lowers our costs, which allows us to provide a lower point to them, so then they actually get a little bit more control over their fees and prices.
Where do you see the growth in sports? Derek Palmer, your chief commercial officer, mentioned the lack of an NBA team as a client.
Witherspoon: Right now, we do about half of MLB and we have two teams [Twins and Royals] on our new product [ProVenue 2.0] and we plan on adding a lot more teams. I feel that arenas with teams feel they have a little bit more control over their ability to move without the threat of lack of content, of “Am I going to make Ticketmaster/Live Nation mad,” where they get worried about what acts [they] are going to get in and things like that. If you look at it from that perspective, then technology becomes a really big play for them, because everybody wants more data, more touchpoints with the client, how the process is working. We provide all that technology, and to drive it we partner in and integrate with third-party dynamic pricing, like we did with the San Francisco Giants and Qcue.
It’s been reported that MLBAM is in talks with AEG about possibly forming a joint ticketing venture. What can you say at this point about those discussions?
Witherspoon: Nothing really. I think as the industry has changed recently, there are a lot of people talking to a lot of different companies. Where that all will go is still to be seen. Obviously, not even in the context of AEG, but there are large regional ticketing companies, there [are] large Broadway companies that have relationships with existing ticket providers that are now looking around. Our ability to provide a self-operational model puts us in a good discussion point with anyone, frankly, at this point.
Don Muret
Larry Witherspoon is entering his sixth year as CEO of the MLB Advanced Media subsidiary Tickets.com. During the Tickets.com Executive Summit in Long Beach, Calif., last week, he sat down with SportsBusiness Journal staff writer Don Muret and discussed the state of the ticketing business in the wake of the merger between Ticketmaster and event promoter Live Nation, as well as the Vancouver Olympics, where Tickets.com operated an officially sanctioned secondary ticketing platform for the first time in the event’s history.
Break down your Vancouver operations.
Witherspoon: We [did] 100 percent of the ticketing up there. We did the primary sales all throughout last year, and in December, we launched the secondary fan-to-fan marketplace. With that, we have the whole spate of tools for the Olympic experience, the ability for people to donate their tickets to charity, the ability for sponsors to do consignment of tickets when they have available inventory, and the cart of integrated primary and secondary tickets, where you can see both marketplaces and make a decision based on what you want to buy. All very cool new stuff. [The secondary market] has exceeded every budgetary expectation we did set. It was $10 million, but the problem we have is that it’s never been done before, so how you budget for the unknown was hard for us. Frankly, the matchups that occur play a big part as well. There’s a lot of national pride involved, and some people are going to be willing to go to that game regardless of what it’s going to cost them.
Tickets.com handled both primary and secondary ticketing at the Vancouver Olympics.
How do see the ticketing landscape changing?
Witherspoon: Three years ago, we reinvented our product [with ProVenue software]; literally started from the ground up. It’s been a painful process, and there’s a reason nobody’s developed anything new in the past 10 to 15 years in the ticketing world: It’s hard. What we really see to our advantage is our ability to provide technology to a venue or a team that allows them full control. So we don’t do the “Here’s a big check. We’re going to take a large part of the service charge.” What we do say is “Here’s our license. We’ll take a small vig on a service charge ticket, you control what you want to do with your service charges, [and] you take control of how you want to sell to the public.” We’ve seen some good results. The Seattle Theatre Group is a client that came on board with us and eliminated their print-at-home fees, first time people have done that in a long time, and dropped some of their service charges a little bit. Great press.
Do you see that applicable in sports?
Witherspoon: It depends. I think sports are a little different in that you have the governing bodies. I understand how MLB works, but I don’t know how much flexibility teams have in their service fee setup. From our system perspective, for sure, it gives anybody the ability to control it and manage it and manage their own ticketing system, which obviously lowers our costs, which allows us to provide a lower point to them, so then they actually get a little bit more control over their fees and prices.
Where do you see the growth in sports? Derek Palmer, your chief commercial officer, mentioned the lack of an NBA team as a client.
Witherspoon: Right now, we do about half of MLB and we have two teams [Twins and Royals] on our new product [ProVenue 2.0] and we plan on adding a lot more teams. I feel that arenas with teams feel they have a little bit more control over their ability to move without the threat of lack of content, of “Am I going to make Ticketmaster/Live Nation mad,” where they get worried about what acts [they] are going to get in and things like that. If you look at it from that perspective, then technology becomes a really big play for them, because everybody wants more data, more touchpoints with the client, how the process is working. We provide all that technology, and to drive it we partner in and integrate with third-party dynamic pricing, like we did with the San Francisco Giants and Qcue.
It’s been reported that MLBAM is in talks with AEG about possibly forming a joint ticketing venture. What can you say at this point about those discussions?
Witherspoon: Nothing really. I think as the industry has changed recently, there are a lot of people talking to a lot of different companies. Where that all will go is still to be seen. Obviously, not even in the context of AEG, but there are large regional ticketing companies, there [are] large Broadway companies that have relationships with existing ticket providers that are now looking around. Our ability to provide a self-operational model puts us in a good discussion point with anyone, frankly, at this point.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Austin Technology Incubator's Qcue Receives $1 Million Investment From State of Texas
The State of Texas has awarded $1,000,000 to Qcue, a member company of the Austin Technology Incubator, through the Texas Emerging Technology Fund (ETF). The investment was announced today at the Gulf Coast Regional Center of Innovation and Commercialization.
Qcue develops dynamic pricing software that helps sports and entertainment organizations adjust ticket prices to evolving market conditions. In early 2009, Major League Baseball’s San Francisco Giants became the first professional sports franchise to implement Qcue’s dynamic pricing solution. The success of the Giants’ dynamic pricing initiative has led to deals with other major league organizations, including a recent announcement with the National Hockey League’s Dallas Stars.
“This investment from the State of Texas makes a big statement about the positive impact innovative pricing strategies can have on consumers and local economies,” said Barry Kahn, CEO of Qcue. “We look forward to helping more organizations implement creative, cost-effective pricing strategies to get more fans out to ballparks and stadiums across the country.”
Qcue joined the Austin Technology Incubator in May 2008. “Qcue is what the Emerging Technology Fund is all about: taking innovation from the university environment and getting it into companies where it can have a breakthrough impact,” said Isaac Barchas, Director of The Austin Technology Incubator.
The ETF is a $200 million initiative created by the Texas Legislature in 2005. Qcue was awarded the funds after an in-depth analysis of the company’s market and financial opportunity, technology potential, management team and economic impact to Texas.
About Qcue
Qcue is reinventing the primary ticket marketplace with the world’s only dynamic pricing engine for live entertainment events. Sports teams, concert promoters and venues use Qcue ‘s patent-pending technology to set the right price at the right time and provide the best value for fans, from the date of on-sale to the date of the event. Customers and partners include the San Francisco Giants, Dallas Stars, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, and Tickets.com. Founded in 2007, Qcue is based in Austin, Texas. For more information on Qcue, visit www.qcue.net.
About The Austin Technology Incubator
The Austin Technology Incubator is a nonprofit unit of The University of Texas at Austin that harnesses business, government and academic resources to provide strategic counsel, operational guidance and infrastructure support to its member companies to help them transition from early stage ventures to successful technology businesses.
Since its founding in 1989, ATI has worked with over 200 companies, helping them raise close to $750 million in investor capital. ATI is a key program of the IC² Institute at The University of Texas at Austin. For more information, visit www.ati.utexas.edu.
About The Gulf Coast RCIC
HTC serves as the Gulf Coast Regional Center of Innovation and Commercialization (Gulf Coast RCIC) for Texas Governor Rick Perry’s Emerging Technology Fund, assisting small to mid-size technology firms expediting the commercialization of new life-changing inventions and improving research at Texas universities. To date, the Gulf Coast RCIC helped 16 Gulf Coast region companies raise nearly $15 million in grants from the Fund.
Qcue develops dynamic pricing software that helps sports and entertainment organizations adjust ticket prices to evolving market conditions. In early 2009, Major League Baseball’s San Francisco Giants became the first professional sports franchise to implement Qcue’s dynamic pricing solution. The success of the Giants’ dynamic pricing initiative has led to deals with other major league organizations, including a recent announcement with the National Hockey League’s Dallas Stars.
“This investment from the State of Texas makes a big statement about the positive impact innovative pricing strategies can have on consumers and local economies,” said Barry Kahn, CEO of Qcue. “We look forward to helping more organizations implement creative, cost-effective pricing strategies to get more fans out to ballparks and stadiums across the country.”
Qcue joined the Austin Technology Incubator in May 2008. “Qcue is what the Emerging Technology Fund is all about: taking innovation from the university environment and getting it into companies where it can have a breakthrough impact,” said Isaac Barchas, Director of The Austin Technology Incubator.
The ETF is a $200 million initiative created by the Texas Legislature in 2005. Qcue was awarded the funds after an in-depth analysis of the company’s market and financial opportunity, technology potential, management team and economic impact to Texas.
About Qcue
Qcue is reinventing the primary ticket marketplace with the world’s only dynamic pricing engine for live entertainment events. Sports teams, concert promoters and venues use Qcue ‘s patent-pending technology to set the right price at the right time and provide the best value for fans, from the date of on-sale to the date of the event. Customers and partners include the San Francisco Giants, Dallas Stars, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, and Tickets.com. Founded in 2007, Qcue is based in Austin, Texas. For more information on Qcue, visit www.qcue.net.
About The Austin Technology Incubator
The Austin Technology Incubator is a nonprofit unit of The University of Texas at Austin that harnesses business, government and academic resources to provide strategic counsel, operational guidance and infrastructure support to its member companies to help them transition from early stage ventures to successful technology businesses.
Since its founding in 1989, ATI has worked with over 200 companies, helping them raise close to $750 million in investor capital. ATI is a key program of the IC² Institute at The University of Texas at Austin. For more information, visit www.ati.utexas.edu.
About The Gulf Coast RCIC
HTC serves as the Gulf Coast Regional Center of Innovation and Commercialization (Gulf Coast RCIC) for Texas Governor Rick Perry’s Emerging Technology Fund, assisting small to mid-size technology firms expediting the commercialization of new life-changing inventions and improving research at Texas universities. To date, the Gulf Coast RCIC helped 16 Gulf Coast region companies raise nearly $15 million in grants from the Fund.
Monday, October 19, 2009
TicketNews Guest Commentary: The myths about dynamic pricing
By Barry Kahn
TicketNews.com
I was recently asked to be a panelist at the upcoming Ticket Summit 2010 and it made be think back to the last two Ticket Summit events that I’ve attended.
The first was the conference’s second year. Back then, Alfred Branch was the lone reporter for TicketNews, StubHub was the controversial young company, and there were only three representatives from the primary market (although once you consider that Fred Rosen was retired and Qcue was in its infancy, there was actually just one, Derek Palmer of Tickets.com).
Fast forward to this past July. StubHub’s president gave a keynote address, the New Jersey Nets had a booth, and Qcue was the controversial young company. In fact, our pricing panel stirred up such a healthy debate on what dynamic pricing really is and how it affects brokers and season ticket holders, that I thought it would be appropriate to revisit the three the biggest misconceptions raised during the discussion.
“With dynamic pricing, I won’t be able to resell my tickets for bad games since teams will just drop prices.”
What if I told you that prices are more likely to rise than fall over time, even for the worst games? Dynamic pricing is about being smarter with pricing, not just dynamic. That means that at the start of the season, a game played on Tuesday night against the last place team will start at a lower price than a game played on Saturday afternoon against your archrival. And there isn’t much that can happen to that Tuesday night game to make it worse. Sure it can rain, but barring that, prices will only move up as tickets sell and the game becomes, with any luck, better than it looked on paper.
You’ve always known that those games had different values because you could sell them for different prices -- but with dynamic pricing, you can’t pretend you paid the same price for them anymore, because you didn’t. Once you consider your real cost for those low value games, you’ll quickly realize that you can sell them at a fair price and dynamic pricing helps.
“I just found an interesting blog post about dynamic pricing for Giants tickets. For the first two games, it looks like ticket prices increased leading up to the game. Under the dynamic pricing model, don’t prices generally go down as the game approaches?”
If you track prices for tickets on StubHub or the other exchanges, you’ll see ticket prices drop immediately prior to an event. But dynamic pricing is very different from pricing on the secondary market. One element of this is that teams have more tickets to sell, meaning that they’re going to be more conservative with prices earlier in the sales cycle. As more tickets sell, and availability decreases, the prices leading up to a game will actually increase.
If you aren’t convinced that primary and secondary market pricing are different, take a look at group sales. Any team will gladly give you a discount for 25 tickets together because they have 20,000+ seats to sell and bigger sales are advantageous. But that same purchase on the secondary market will cost you a premium because for a broker, 25 seats together is a scarce commodity.
“Dynamic pricing is going to devalue my tickets. The team will just try to undercut me on the secondary market.”
Season ticket holders are the lifeblood of teams, and teams will always protect those loyal customers. Dynamic pricing brings more fans to the game, providing a better fan experience across the stadium, and increasing the resale value of tickets. More tickets sold also means more revenues for teams, which ultimately translates into lower costs for season ticket holders.
Dynamic pricing is really about teams being more intelligent and flexible with pricing – which means protecting your most loyal customers and increasing the value they receive. Increasing attendance and more accurately pricing premium games are two ways in which dynamic pricing achieves those goals.
Barry Kahn is the founder and CEO of Qcue, the world’s only dynamic pricing engine for live entertainment events. Sports teams, concert promoters and venues use Qcue’s patent-pending technology to set the right price at the right time, and provide the best value for fans, from the onsale date right up to the event date. Customers and partners include the San Francisco Giants, Major League Baseball and Tickets.com.
TicketNews.com
I was recently asked to be a panelist at the upcoming Ticket Summit 2010 and it made be think back to the last two Ticket Summit events that I’ve attended.
The first was the conference’s second year. Back then, Alfred Branch was the lone reporter for TicketNews, StubHub was the controversial young company, and there were only three representatives from the primary market (although once you consider that Fred Rosen was retired and Qcue was in its infancy, there was actually just one, Derek Palmer of Tickets.com).
Fast forward to this past July. StubHub’s president gave a keynote address, the New Jersey Nets had a booth, and Qcue was the controversial young company. In fact, our pricing panel stirred up such a healthy debate on what dynamic pricing really is and how it affects brokers and season ticket holders, that I thought it would be appropriate to revisit the three the biggest misconceptions raised during the discussion.
“With dynamic pricing, I won’t be able to resell my tickets for bad games since teams will just drop prices.”
What if I told you that prices are more likely to rise than fall over time, even for the worst games? Dynamic pricing is about being smarter with pricing, not just dynamic. That means that at the start of the season, a game played on Tuesday night against the last place team will start at a lower price than a game played on Saturday afternoon against your archrival. And there isn’t much that can happen to that Tuesday night game to make it worse. Sure it can rain, but barring that, prices will only move up as tickets sell and the game becomes, with any luck, better than it looked on paper.
You’ve always known that those games had different values because you could sell them for different prices -- but with dynamic pricing, you can’t pretend you paid the same price for them anymore, because you didn’t. Once you consider your real cost for those low value games, you’ll quickly realize that you can sell them at a fair price and dynamic pricing helps.
“I just found an interesting blog post about dynamic pricing for Giants tickets. For the first two games, it looks like ticket prices increased leading up to the game. Under the dynamic pricing model, don’t prices generally go down as the game approaches?”
If you track prices for tickets on StubHub or the other exchanges, you’ll see ticket prices drop immediately prior to an event. But dynamic pricing is very different from pricing on the secondary market. One element of this is that teams have more tickets to sell, meaning that they’re going to be more conservative with prices earlier in the sales cycle. As more tickets sell, and availability decreases, the prices leading up to a game will actually increase.
If you aren’t convinced that primary and secondary market pricing are different, take a look at group sales. Any team will gladly give you a discount for 25 tickets together because they have 20,000+ seats to sell and bigger sales are advantageous. But that same purchase on the secondary market will cost you a premium because for a broker, 25 seats together is a scarce commodity.
“Dynamic pricing is going to devalue my tickets. The team will just try to undercut me on the secondary market.”
Season ticket holders are the lifeblood of teams, and teams will always protect those loyal customers. Dynamic pricing brings more fans to the game, providing a better fan experience across the stadium, and increasing the resale value of tickets. More tickets sold also means more revenues for teams, which ultimately translates into lower costs for season ticket holders.
Dynamic pricing is really about teams being more intelligent and flexible with pricing – which means protecting your most loyal customers and increasing the value they receive. Increasing attendance and more accurately pricing premium games are two ways in which dynamic pricing achieves those goals.
Barry Kahn is the founder and CEO of Qcue, the world’s only dynamic pricing engine for live entertainment events. Sports teams, concert promoters and venues use Qcue’s patent-pending technology to set the right price at the right time, and provide the best value for fans, from the onsale date right up to the event date. Customers and partners include the San Francisco Giants, Major League Baseball and Tickets.com.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Barry Kahn of Qcue to present at Ticket Summit 2010 in New York City
By Kelly McWilliams
Barry Kahn, founder and CEO of Qcue, will present once again at the upcoming Ticket Summit to be held on January 13-15, 2010, at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. Qcue offers a dynamic pricing model to sports teams, promoters and venues in order to optimize ticket revenue in response to fluctuations in market and environmental conditions. An economist, Kahn guides company strategy and product direction for Qcue as well as overseeing business and partner development. Kahn recently shared with TicketNews his hopes and expectations for the upcoming Summit.
Q: You will be presenting at Ticket Summit 2010. What topics do you expect to focus on in your presentation?
A: My focus will be on dynamic pricing, but more specifically, I’ll spend a lot of the time discussing how dynamic pricing by teams and promoters impacts season ticket holders. The audience at Ticket Summit is primarily brokers who hold season tickets, so I think the real interest here is going to be how dynamic pricing is going to effect resale value and how brokers have the opportunity to change some of their purchasing patterns to take advantage of dynamic pricing and make their season tickets a much more valuable commodity.
Q: How many times have you appeared at Ticket Summit?
A: This is my second time speaking at Ticket Summit. I also attended the conference once as an attendee, back when the conference and Qcue were both in their infancy. Back then, Alfred Branch was the lone reporter for TicketNews, StubHub was the controversial young company, and there were only three representatives from the primary market. So it really has been interesting to see the conference evolve as it has and to now being in a position where I have some knowledge and experience to share.
Q: Tell me more about your experiences with Ticket Summit over the years.
A: At the first conference I attended, to say I was green would be an understatement. Anyone in the business will tell you that ticketing isn't like any other industry and in those three days (and nights) I picked up a lifetime’s worth of knowledge.
Fast forward to July's conference and I had a much deeper understanding of the industry, and the industry had matured. StubHub is now an industry staple. Their president gave a keynote address [at the Summit], the New Jersey Nets had a booth at a secondary market convention, and I got the opportunity to represent Qcue as the controversial young company. I was very impressed by the enthusiasm and interest in what we are doing. It resulted in a lively discussion that began during our pricing panel and followed me around for the rest of the evening.
Q: What challenges do you see ahead for the ticketing industry?
A: The buzz around the industry for the last year or so has been the merging of the primary and secondary markets, and I think the real challenges here are how both sides respond. While there have been some attempts to prevent the markets from merging, such as technology like paperless tickets, I think everyone is better off with a more unified market. Of course, how to price tickets continues to be the biggest challenge organizations must solve. The San Francisco Giants and the Dallas Stars have already taken steps to be more nimble in this new marketplace and you’re going to see a lot of teams and promoters follow their lead - which involves completely changing the way they've sold tickets for decades. I think in 3-5 years on the outside, secondary market websites like StubHub and TicketsNow will start to look a lot more like Orbitz and Kayak, with primary and secondary market tickets being sold side-by-side (openly). What that means is these websites become a different sales channel, not a different marketplace, and that is going to change the way that primary and secondary market sellers have to price their tickets.
Q: What new and impressive companies or individuals do you see on the horizon?
A: Obviously, I am going to say Qcue here. But the honest answer is that I think for the first time in decades, it is the primary market where the innovation is happening. I know a lot of new companies are coming out of the secondary market, but I still haven't seen anything on that side of the business that is a game changer. But watching established organizations recognize the changing tide and respond by embracing technology and changing business models has been inspiring. We’ve seen that from Russ Stanley at the San Francisco Giants and Colin Faulkner at the Dallas Stars. These are two people who have been able to take their organizations in a new direction and really change the tide of an industry. You are also seeing some game changing innovation from Larry Witherspoon and Derek Palmer at Tickets.com. While it doesn’t garner the headlines, they are trying to change the face of the primary ticket market by redefining the ticketing system as an e-commerce platform, something that should have happened a long time ago.
Barry Kahn, founder and CEO of Qcue, will present once again at the upcoming Ticket Summit to be held on January 13-15, 2010, at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. Qcue offers a dynamic pricing model to sports teams, promoters and venues in order to optimize ticket revenue in response to fluctuations in market and environmental conditions. An economist, Kahn guides company strategy and product direction for Qcue as well as overseeing business and partner development. Kahn recently shared with TicketNews his hopes and expectations for the upcoming Summit.
Q: You will be presenting at Ticket Summit 2010. What topics do you expect to focus on in your presentation?
A: My focus will be on dynamic pricing, but more specifically, I’ll spend a lot of the time discussing how dynamic pricing by teams and promoters impacts season ticket holders. The audience at Ticket Summit is primarily brokers who hold season tickets, so I think the real interest here is going to be how dynamic pricing is going to effect resale value and how brokers have the opportunity to change some of their purchasing patterns to take advantage of dynamic pricing and make their season tickets a much more valuable commodity.
Q: How many times have you appeared at Ticket Summit?
A: This is my second time speaking at Ticket Summit. I also attended the conference once as an attendee, back when the conference and Qcue were both in their infancy. Back then, Alfred Branch was the lone reporter for TicketNews, StubHub was the controversial young company, and there were only three representatives from the primary market. So it really has been interesting to see the conference evolve as it has and to now being in a position where I have some knowledge and experience to share.
Q: Tell me more about your experiences with Ticket Summit over the years.
A: At the first conference I attended, to say I was green would be an understatement. Anyone in the business will tell you that ticketing isn't like any other industry and in those three days (and nights) I picked up a lifetime’s worth of knowledge.
Fast forward to July's conference and I had a much deeper understanding of the industry, and the industry had matured. StubHub is now an industry staple. Their president gave a keynote address [at the Summit], the New Jersey Nets had a booth at a secondary market convention, and I got the opportunity to represent Qcue as the controversial young company. I was very impressed by the enthusiasm and interest in what we are doing. It resulted in a lively discussion that began during our pricing panel and followed me around for the rest of the evening.
Q: What challenges do you see ahead for the ticketing industry?
A: The buzz around the industry for the last year or so has been the merging of the primary and secondary markets, and I think the real challenges here are how both sides respond. While there have been some attempts to prevent the markets from merging, such as technology like paperless tickets, I think everyone is better off with a more unified market. Of course, how to price tickets continues to be the biggest challenge organizations must solve. The San Francisco Giants and the Dallas Stars have already taken steps to be more nimble in this new marketplace and you’re going to see a lot of teams and promoters follow their lead - which involves completely changing the way they've sold tickets for decades. I think in 3-5 years on the outside, secondary market websites like StubHub and TicketsNow will start to look a lot more like Orbitz and Kayak, with primary and secondary market tickets being sold side-by-side (openly). What that means is these websites become a different sales channel, not a different marketplace, and that is going to change the way that primary and secondary market sellers have to price their tickets.
Q: What new and impressive companies or individuals do you see on the horizon?
A: Obviously, I am going to say Qcue here. But the honest answer is that I think for the first time in decades, it is the primary market where the innovation is happening. I know a lot of new companies are coming out of the secondary market, but I still haven't seen anything on that side of the business that is a game changer. But watching established organizations recognize the changing tide and respond by embracing technology and changing business models has been inspiring. We’ve seen that from Russ Stanley at the San Francisco Giants and Colin Faulkner at the Dallas Stars. These are two people who have been able to take their organizations in a new direction and really change the tide of an industry. You are also seeing some game changing innovation from Larry Witherspoon and Derek Palmer at Tickets.com. While it doesn’t garner the headlines, they are trying to change the face of the primary ticket market by redefining the ticketing system as an e-commerce platform, something that should have happened a long time ago.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Qcue Introduces Dynamic Ticketing to Dallas Stars
Venues Today
Dave Brooks
Ticketing upstart Qcue has signed another deal to bring dynamic ticketing to a professional sports franchise. The Dallas Stars of the National Hockey League have signed an agreement to sell most of the American Airlines Center upper bowl using a yield-management model similar to the airline industry. Working with Tickets.com, the system allows the team to make real-time price changes based on demand, opponent and historical sales data.
The system is already in its second season with the San Francisco Giants, another franchise powered by Tickets.com. Qcue CEO Barry Kahn said his Austin, Texas-based company helped the Stars set the prices for their first 14 home games, which go on sale Saturday.
“That’s when the big change in price occurs,” said Stars Exec. VP of Sales and Marketing Geoff Moore, adding that tickets are released in batches of 14 every two months. Last season, nearly all tickets in the premium terrace were priced at $60. Now, less than 25 percent of tickets are priced that high. Tickets drop to $50 for an Oct. 30 game against Florida and go as low as $36 per ticket for games against Los Angeles or Calgary. A second game against Nashville on Oct. 14 was selling for $24 less than the opener against the same team.
“They definitely kept the fans in mind and came out of the gate with low prices that they expect to rise,” Kahn said, later adding that tickets “where underpriced across the board to reward those who purchased early.”
The strategy is to price the tickets low for the initial on sale and then slowly increase in price as more tickets sell. While he said the Qcue web-based application gave him the ability to make daily price changes, the team would more likely adjust their prices on a weekly basis.
“The technology actually told us to raise the price on a couple games, but we didn’t feel comfortable doing that,” Moore said. The goal is to sell more tickets and not necessarily to extract more revenue out of the same ticket. In Texas, the live experience of a packed hockey game is almost as important as the product on the ice, Moore said.
“And that’s a critical piece when you’re competing for entertainment dollars with football and other sports,” Moore said. “In a fragmented media landscape, it’s become very difficult to communicate offers to people through traditional media. We’re trying to make it as easy and simple as possible to understand our pricing. When we advertise, we can just push everyone back to dallasstars.com and they can check the price of the game for that date.”
Prices for the seats won’t drop below the season ticket value and Moore said the team expected to have a multi-year relationship with Qcue. Kahn said that Qcue’s earnings would be based on sales volume revenue benchmarks tied to increased sales.
“We have a strong sports market here in Dallas, and we have a growing hockey market. Our challenge always is to market our team and find the right value proposition for the sports fan,” Moore said. “Dallas fans like hockey, but they love football. Sometimes when you like something, then price and value become a strong part of whether people will buy tickets or not.”
Dave Brooks
Ticketing upstart Qcue has signed another deal to bring dynamic ticketing to a professional sports franchise. The Dallas Stars of the National Hockey League have signed an agreement to sell most of the American Airlines Center upper bowl using a yield-management model similar to the airline industry. Working with Tickets.com, the system allows the team to make real-time price changes based on demand, opponent and historical sales data.The system is already in its second season with the San Francisco Giants, another franchise powered by Tickets.com. Qcue CEO Barry Kahn said his Austin, Texas-based company helped the Stars set the prices for their first 14 home games, which go on sale Saturday.
“That’s when the big change in price occurs,” said Stars Exec. VP of Sales and Marketing Geoff Moore, adding that tickets are released in batches of 14 every two months. Last season, nearly all tickets in the premium terrace were priced at $60. Now, less than 25 percent of tickets are priced that high. Tickets drop to $50 for an Oct. 30 game against Florida and go as low as $36 per ticket for games against Los Angeles or Calgary. A second game against Nashville on Oct. 14 was selling for $24 less than the opener against the same team.
“They definitely kept the fans in mind and came out of the gate with low prices that they expect to rise,” Kahn said, later adding that tickets “where underpriced across the board to reward those who purchased early.”
The strategy is to price the tickets low for the initial on sale and then slowly increase in price as more tickets sell. While he said the Qcue web-based application gave him the ability to make daily price changes, the team would more likely adjust their prices on a weekly basis.
“The technology actually told us to raise the price on a couple games, but we didn’t feel comfortable doing that,” Moore said. The goal is to sell more tickets and not necessarily to extract more revenue out of the same ticket. In Texas, the live experience of a packed hockey game is almost as important as the product on the ice, Moore said.
“And that’s a critical piece when you’re competing for entertainment dollars with football and other sports,” Moore said. “In a fragmented media landscape, it’s become very difficult to communicate offers to people through traditional media. We’re trying to make it as easy and simple as possible to understand our pricing. When we advertise, we can just push everyone back to dallasstars.com and they can check the price of the game for that date.”
Prices for the seats won’t drop below the season ticket value and Moore said the team expected to have a multi-year relationship with Qcue. Kahn said that Qcue’s earnings would be based on sales volume revenue benchmarks tied to increased sales.
“We have a strong sports market here in Dallas, and we have a growing hockey market. Our challenge always is to market our team and find the right value proposition for the sports fan,” Moore said. “Dallas fans like hockey, but they love football. Sometimes when you like something, then price and value become a strong part of whether people will buy tickets or not.”
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, February 24, 2009
Dynamic Thinking
Stanley changes ticket prices on the fly - and doesn't look back
Venues Today 2009 Box Office Stars
February 2009
By Linda Deckard
The San Francisco Giants will be the first team in Major League Baseball to try dynamic pricing on select tickets thanks to the leadership of Russ Stanley, managing vice president, Ticket Services/Client Relations, San Francisco Giants.
He was also the first to allow season ticketholders to navigate the secondary market on their own - 10 years ago. That's why Pat Gallagher, president of the Giants, said Stanley "represents the best of the new breed of people who understand this business."
Those were all top-of-mind concerns when Stanley agreed to have the Giants partner with Qcue to offer a limited number of tickets on the dynamic pricing platform for the 2009 season.
"It keeps us busy and it keeps the staff motivated because they're not bored," Stanley said of his latest innovation. "We have a great group of people here. I come back from meetings and say, 'okay, this is what we're going to do. We're going to change prices on 2,000 tickets on a daily basis.'"
Since then they've been figuring it out with their ticketing provider, Tickets.com. The first concern was to protect their best customers, the season ticketholders and the group buyers, so they know they will get the best price in their areas, Stanley said. So the chose four sections in the view level and three sections in the bleachers for the pilot program. Since the Giants had introduced variable pricing in 2001 in those sections, Stanley said the "normal" price would be anywhere from $8-$32. Variable pricing was based on day of week and opponent and was set in September with no adjustment as the season progressed.
This season, with dynamic pricing, the price will reflect all the true variables, from league standings to who's pitching to San Francisco weather that day.
Stanley recalled when he embraced the secondary market, then variable pricing, it was because "we saw what tickets were going for on the big games and the weekends. If that's what's happening, we ought to be following the market. And people said, 'What' are you guys crazy? You're going to charge more for the Dodgers on Saturday than the Padres on a Monday?' It increased our revenue over the course of the season by $1 million with no negative feedback."
His ah-ha moment with dynamic pricing came "when I look back at the night that Barry Bonds hit 756 [home runs] and it was probably the most demand we've ever had for a game. When he hit 755 and you knew 756 was coming, we were playing the Nationals on a Wednesday night. Not a great team, not a great night of the week. We were charging $10 for our view level ticket. That would have been a great opportunity to say, 'okay, those tickets are now $40,' which is what they should have been priced."
The Giants drew 2.85 million attendance in 2008, averaging 35,000 a game in the 42,000 capacity, 10-year-old AT&T Park. They sold out 20 games. Stanley would like to sell out 40-80 games...like the old days.
In truth, Stanley said it took him about nine months to understand what Barry Kahn of Qcue was asking the Giants to do. "He's a great partner, very smart. This guy's genious," Stanley said. Qcue, based in Texas, takes all of the information from the secondary market and the primary market, factors in sales history, game stats, opponent stats, current streaks and pitchers and star players and builds an algorithm that basically suggests the ticket was $10 yesterday, today it should be $11, or whatever. "We're able to make our pricing decision all the way up until the day of the game rather than the September before," Stanley said.
Stanley points out that the model is no different from what a broker does every morning when they come into work.
Nick Fanelli, Tickets.com, who is working with the Giants on dynamic pricing and another new initiativ, stored value, is constantly impressed by the job said Stanley and his crew are "pushing us and bringing us to new levels to where we can evolve technology."
Stanley and the Giants truly understand their audience, Fanelli said, and it is a marketplace that will support new technology.
"The buzz-word in ticketing has been secondary versus primary market: who controls it, is there opportunity for teams or venues to blend the two? We are going to allow the marketplace to price itself."
The other new venture, stored-value tickets, is being done elsewhere. Stanley said the Giants have introduced it in a limited fashion on 2,500-3,000 season tickets that were a tough renewal. They have kept the price at $18 and added $5 in stored value good at Centerplate concession stands. The Giants had to buy scanners for 350 Centerplate points of sale.
This is just a limited rollout, but Stanley already has his eye on the future. "We want to make sure we deliver this year, that it goes smoothly," he said, but Phase II will be adding stored value to group tickets. And eventually, now that Tickets.com is partnered with Givex, they can start offering promotional giveaways redeemable with a barcoded ticket, the same ticket that holds the stored value.
"We're sitting in meetings with them [Tickets.com] and the only thing stopping what they can deliver is our imaginations. We can say in a particular inning, if someone hits a homerun this inning, everyone in section 302 is going to get a hot dog, or everyone in this row gets $50 stored value for the dugout store. It's all bar code driven."
So far, their stored value offers are team generated, not bought, and have to be used that night. "I'd like the season ticketholder to be able, at the beginning of the year, to say, add $1,000 to this account and start moving money around ticket by ticket, but we still have to figure out what the laws are in California. I don't envision that until next year.
Bottom line, he wants it to be a benefit to the season ticketholder, "our best customers. We're not going to do something that is not right for them," Stanley said.
Some day, when dynamic pricing is more universal, that may not be the case. "I'm trying to figure that out," Stanley said.
"Some season ticketholders and other fans say it's about time you price your product based on supply and demand. You don't know six months out what the right price is. But is the world ready for a ticket to change prices on the primary market on a daily basis? I don't know. I'm hoping they are; I think they are."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tickets.com congratulates Russ Stanley!
"Box Office Super-Star Award Winner"
Wishing you continued success,
your friends at Tickets.com
Venues Today 2009 Box Office Stars
February 2009
By Linda Deckard
The San Francisco Giants will be the first team in Major League Baseball to try dynamic pricing on select tickets thanks to the leadership of Russ Stanley, managing vice president, Ticket Services/Client Relations, San Francisco Giants.
He was also the first to allow season ticketholders to navigate the secondary market on their own - 10 years ago. That's why Pat Gallagher, president of the Giants, said Stanley "represents the best of the new breed of people who understand this business."
Those were all top-of-mind concerns when Stanley agreed to have the Giants partner with Qcue to offer a limited number of tickets on the dynamic pricing platform for the 2009 season.
"It keeps us busy and it keeps the staff motivated because they're not bored," Stanley said of his latest innovation. "We have a great group of people here. I come back from meetings and say, 'okay, this is what we're going to do. We're going to change prices on 2,000 tickets on a daily basis.'"
Since then they've been figuring it out with their ticketing provider, Tickets.com. The first concern was to protect their best customers, the season ticketholders and the group buyers, so they know they will get the best price in their areas, Stanley said. So the chose four sections in the view level and three sections in the bleachers for the pilot program. Since the Giants had introduced variable pricing in 2001 in those sections, Stanley said the "normal" price would be anywhere from $8-$32. Variable pricing was based on day of week and opponent and was set in September with no adjustment as the season progressed.
This season, with dynamic pricing, the price will reflect all the true variables, from league standings to who's pitching to San Francisco weather that day.
Stanley recalled when he embraced the secondary market, then variable pricing, it was because "we saw what tickets were going for on the big games and the weekends. If that's what's happening, we ought to be following the market. And people said, 'What' are you guys crazy? You're going to charge more for the Dodgers on Saturday than the Padres on a Monday?' It increased our revenue over the course of the season by $1 million with no negative feedback."
His ah-ha moment with dynamic pricing came "when I look back at the night that Barry Bonds hit 756 [home runs] and it was probably the most demand we've ever had for a game. When he hit 755 and you knew 756 was coming, we were playing the Nationals on a Wednesday night. Not a great team, not a great night of the week. We were charging $10 for our view level ticket. That would have been a great opportunity to say, 'okay, those tickets are now $40,' which is what they should have been priced."
The Giants drew 2.85 million attendance in 2008, averaging 35,000 a game in the 42,000 capacity, 10-year-old AT&T Park. They sold out 20 games. Stanley would like to sell out 40-80 games...like the old days.
In truth, Stanley said it took him about nine months to understand what Barry Kahn of Qcue was asking the Giants to do. "He's a great partner, very smart. This guy's genious," Stanley said. Qcue, based in Texas, takes all of the information from the secondary market and the primary market, factors in sales history, game stats, opponent stats, current streaks and pitchers and star players and builds an algorithm that basically suggests the ticket was $10 yesterday, today it should be $11, or whatever. "We're able to make our pricing decision all the way up until the day of the game rather than the September before," Stanley said.
Stanley points out that the model is no different from what a broker does every morning when they come into work.
Nick Fanelli, Tickets.com, who is working with the Giants on dynamic pricing and another new initiativ, stored value, is constantly impressed by the job said Stanley and his crew are "pushing us and bringing us to new levels to where we can evolve technology."
Stanley and the Giants truly understand their audience, Fanelli said, and it is a marketplace that will support new technology.
"The buzz-word in ticketing has been secondary versus primary market: who controls it, is there opportunity for teams or venues to blend the two? We are going to allow the marketplace to price itself."
The other new venture, stored-value tickets, is being done elsewhere. Stanley said the Giants have introduced it in a limited fashion on 2,500-3,000 season tickets that were a tough renewal. They have kept the price at $18 and added $5 in stored value good at Centerplate concession stands. The Giants had to buy scanners for 350 Centerplate points of sale.
This is just a limited rollout, but Stanley already has his eye on the future. "We want to make sure we deliver this year, that it goes smoothly," he said, but Phase II will be adding stored value to group tickets. And eventually, now that Tickets.com is partnered with Givex, they can start offering promotional giveaways redeemable with a barcoded ticket, the same ticket that holds the stored value.
"We're sitting in meetings with them [Tickets.com] and the only thing stopping what they can deliver is our imaginations. We can say in a particular inning, if someone hits a homerun this inning, everyone in section 302 is going to get a hot dog, or everyone in this row gets $50 stored value for the dugout store. It's all bar code driven."
So far, their stored value offers are team generated, not bought, and have to be used that night. "I'd like the season ticketholder to be able, at the beginning of the year, to say, add $1,000 to this account and start moving money around ticket by ticket, but we still have to figure out what the laws are in California. I don't envision that until next year.
Bottom line, he wants it to be a benefit to the season ticketholder, "our best customers. We're not going to do something that is not right for them," Stanley said.
Some day, when dynamic pricing is more universal, that may not be the case. "I'm trying to figure that out," Stanley said.
"Some season ticketholders and other fans say it's about time you price your product based on supply and demand. You don't know six months out what the right price is. But is the world ready for a ticket to change prices on the primary market on a daily basis? I don't know. I'm hoping they are; I think they are."
Tickets.com congratulates Russ Stanley!
"Box Office Super-Star Award Winner"
Wishing you continued success,
your friends at Tickets.com
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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