Tickets.com and Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts Announce Ticketing Extension

Tickets.com and  Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, have extended their ticketing and marketing services partnership to include an upgrade of the Foundation’s ticketing solution to the ProVenue^® platform.

The independent, nonprofit Wolf Trap Foundation, which operates three performance venues: the Filene Center and Children’s Theatre-in-the-Woods within Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, and The Barns at Wolf Trap, selected ProVenue after an exhaustive RFP process.

“Given the broad range of program offerings across our stages, our ticketing needs are complex,” stated Beth Brummel, Wolf Trap’s Vice President for External Affairs.  “We value the Tickets.com partnership and look forward to utilizing the enhanced integration services and reporting capabilities being offered with ProVenue to provide a first-rate buying experience for our patrons.”

For more information about Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, visit http://www.wolftrap.org/

Tickets.com and Buffalo Sabres Continue Ticketing Partnership

Tickets.com and the National Hockey League’s Buffalo Sabres announced a long-term extension of their partnership centered on the ProVenue® platform. The Sabres will continue to utilize the ProVenue ticketing platform to manage inventory for both the Buffalo Sabres and all live events and concerts at First Niagara Center.

The Sabres adopted the ProVenue platform in 2010. Starting in 2014, the Sabres and Tickets.com will integrate the ProVenue platform into StoneTimberRiver’sMicrosoft DynamicsCRM solution, giving the Sabres a deeper understanding of their fan base.

“Tickets.com remains an important partner of the Sabres,” noted John Sinclair, Vice President of Ticket Sales and Services for the Sabres and First Niagara Center. “We’ve had an opportunity to help shape the features and reports available in ProVenue and the high level of support we receive allows us to focus on better servicing our fans. We need to be nimble when evaluating new services for our fans and ProVenue affords us that flexibility.”

For more information about the Buffalo Sabres and the First Niagara Center visit sabres.com and firstniagaracenter.com.

ProVenue "Knighted" by Medieval Times

Like many organizations in recent years, Medieval Times decided to get out of the software development business when their existing in-house solution required updates for security, compliance and functional needs. During their evaluation of potential vendors, they realized Tickets.com offered a solution with flexibility in both configuration and business terms.

“The staff at Tickets.com was extremely collaborative and forthcoming during our evaluation process, something that has tremendous value to us at Medieval Times. It gave an indication of how a relationship would be through the challenging process of changing software,” said Daniel Kim, Vice President and Secretary of Medieval Times. “We already feel like partners and are very confident in ProVenue’s ability to improve our ticket buying experience for our customers.”

ProVenue is offered as a license model, giving Medieval Times control of consumer fees and costs, while at the same time offering a solution that meets regulatory compliance. It also offers new options to provide additional services to consumers when making reservations for shows, including upgrades and additional purchases.

Further, the system is architected in a way that a single instance of ProVenue will serve the entire organization while still enabling each venue or “Castle” to control and tailor their specific environments to their unique local needs. This “best of both worlds” design means independence for each property, with data stored centrally for consolidated corporate financial reporting and marketing initiatives.

Access the complete release here.

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

By John Walker, President & CEO, Tickets.com

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

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

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

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

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