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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tickets.com attacking Ticketmaster dominance with open cloud systems

Companies believes that partnerships will lead to industry innovation

By Jon Brodkin, Network World

There are few monopolies as total as the one enjoyed by Ticketmaster. When's the last time you purchased a ticket online without paying Ticketmaster's $10-plus "convenience fees"?

Ticketmaster has beat back every competitor's attempt to displace it from the top of the online ticketing industry, but John Rizzi, vice president of product management and strategy at Tickets.com, is hopeful that a partner ecosystem based on new cloud computing technologies can eat away at Ticketmaster's dominant market share.

Tech arguments: Public vs. Private cloud

In a speech at the Cloud Leadership Forum, a conference hosted by IDC and IDG Enterprise, Rizzi took a few shots at Ticketmaster while acknowledging his own company's struggles to compete.

Tickets.com began with the idea of connecting to many different ticketing systems, like an aggregator site, but the approach failed because it lacked a critical mass of tickets to sell.

"The dominant player in the industry far and away is Ticketmaster and they had no intention of letting us sell tickets online for them," Rizzi said. "They wanted to do it themselves."

With Ticketmaster, "anybody who's bought tickets online knows how ridiculous the fees are. You pay a convenience fee. You pay an order fee, you pay a fee to print the tickets at home. This is a very hard model to compete with and we've tried to compete with it, other companies have tried to compete with it, and it's not working."

Tickets.com went on an acquisition spree in the early 2000s, buying four or five other ticketing companies. Tickets.com now sells tickets for half of the teams in Major League Baseball, and is a subsidiary of MLB.com.

Rather than focusing mostly on customer-facing technology, Tickets.com is now trying to make headway by selling ticketing systems to sports teams and other organizations. Ticketmaster still controls ticket sales of the other baseball teams Tickets.com doesn't sell for, as well as many other professional sports teams. But Rizzi believes his company's approach of partnering with a variety of cloud vendors, using APIs to connect one service to another, will drive innovation in the industry.

For example, Tickets.com partners with Qcue to provide a dynamic pricing engine to teams such as the San Francisco Giants. With dynamic pricing, an algorithm takes into account pitching matchups, weather, the opponent, day of the week and market conditions to determine the optimal price for an event. While a team like the Boston Red Sox needs little help selling tickets, and can charge whatever it wants, this dynamic pricing model has helped the Giants increase sales, according to Rizzi.

In addition to Qcue, Tickets.com is embracing a variety of partners, including Salesforce.com, StubHub, Givex and FanSnap. Rizzi believes partnerships will help differentiate Tickets.com from Ticketmaster.

"We really believe the ecosystem is what's going to drive innovation and the adoption of our ticketing platform," Rizzi said. "We're not going to be able to out-Ticketmaster Ticketmaster [alone]. Ticketmaster's systems are closed. So are the other competitors in our marketplace."

Rizzi pledged to improve the ticket-buying experience for customers, which he said has evolved slowly. He acknowledged that Ticketmaster is starting to improve in certain areas, such as allowing limited ability to choose specific seats, but in general he claimed the Ticketmaster technology is antiquated.

"Ticketmaster has conditioned this market to ignore technology," Rizzi said. "Buying tickets online, the experience is awful. It's really antiquated, it's very old, it's not very flexible. We are coming at a time where the teams are starting to realize that they want to change, they don't want to be beholden to Ticketmaster anymore."

Extending Your Business Into the Cloud

Tickets.com isn't just considering how the cloud can augment its infrastructure - the company is becoming a cloud provider itself! By extending its rich ticket service capabilities into the cloud and creating an ecosystem for enhancement by a world of developers, Tickets.com is not only enriching its services and deepening customer ties, but attempting to move its business faster than traditional competitors. This eye-opening case study shows that the cloud isn't just about a new style of computing, but a whole new way to do business.

John Rizzi, Vice President of Product Management and Strategy, Tickets.com will be speaking at the upcoming Cloud Leadership Forum conference in Santa Clara, CA on June 15.

Learn more >

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MLB Cardinals to Introduce Stored-Value Ticket Technology

SportsBusiness Journal
Don Muret

The MLB Cardinals are introducing stored-value technology this season at Busch Stadium, a ballpark admission with credit to buy food, drink and merchandise loaded into the bar code and folded into the ticket price. Delaware North Sportservice, the Cardinals' concessionaire, is a partner in the project after installing a new Micros point-of-sale system to accept the technology. The Cardinals signed a separate deal with Givex, a stored value vendor whose clients include the MLB Giants. Cardinals officials declined to reveal the investment cost.

Branding stored value as Cards Cash, the team plans to offer four loaded ticket promotions for '10, including a $5 credit folded into the outfield loge box seats, a season ticket priced at $30 per game, said Cardinals VP/Ticket Sales & Services Joe Strohm. With those tickets priced the same as in '09, it is basically $5 in free value, he said. The new Holliday Pack, a seven-game mini-plan named for Cardinals LF Matt Holliday, includes a $7 credit for each game. The team has not determined the ticket price for that package, Strohm said. Individual and group buyers have the option to load $10 onto their tickets, but will receive an actual value of $12 in credit as the Cardinals push the technology. They are the first big league team locally to launch stored value.

Stored-value has been in place since the Phillies launched their program at Citizens Bank Park in '04, and more than one-third of MLB teams now provide the ticketing option. The Cardinals have always been a proponent of loaded tickets but did not previously have the infrastructure in place to accommodate the technology at Busch Stadium, Strohm said. "We definitely think this will take off here as it has in other markets," he said.

Facebook, Mobile Phones and the Future of Shopping

Forget the mall. Retailers are tapping Facebook and mobile phones to get closer to customers wherever they are.

CIO Magazine

At least 22 retailers have been driven into bankruptcy protection during this recession, including RedEnvelope and Eddie Bauer, or gone out of business altogether, like Circuit City. Blockbuster, Virgin Megastores and many more have closed stores. Survivors, suffering deflated profits and slow sales, warn of bleak holidays: The National Retail Federation predicts a 1 percent sales decline for the season compared to last year. Even Wal-Mart feels the slump, with same-store sales down 1 percent in its second quarter—its first such drop in years.

Baby, it's cold outside.

But smart retailers are going where it's warm: the hot little hands of cellphone—and laptop—toting consumers who want to shop right now, wherever they happen to be sipping their lattes or watching their kids' soccer games. Technology-backed projects to increase revenue include mobile e-commerce, coupons by text message, even storefronts on social networks. As enablers of these projects, CIOs are moving ever closer to the customer.

Social Shopping

E-mail marketing is in full swing now; the number of messages expected to be sent this holiday shopping season will far surpass last year's four billion, according to Experian Marketing Services, a consultancy. Of course, just a fraction of these will be opened. Even fewer messages will coax recipients to visit a website and buy something.

"Websites and e-mail—that's just too many steps now," says Brett Michalak, CIO with Tickets.com, which sells tickets to games, concerts and other events as well as its own ticketing technology.

______________________________________________________________________

Royal Oak Music Theatre, a Michigan music and comedy venue where acts such as Train and Bob Saget have played, started mobile ticketing three years ago and has adjusted its marketing to cover for finicky technology.

Anyone who's done self-check out at the supermarket knows that scanning takes a special, knowing touch. Still, scanning barcodes on the screens of mobile devices often requires extra wiggling of the phone and slanting it at different angles. It's slower than scanning paper tickets. To avoid ticking off patrons lined up to run in and grab general-admission floor spots, Royal Oak created a separate VIP entrance for the mobile customers. There, staff use the newer model scanners required for reading mobile barcodes, and it's not so apparent that the scanning takes longer, says Diana Williams, box office manager.

Mobile customers are also allowed to get into the theater a few minutes before traditional customers, which encourages more people to buy their tickets by cell phone, she says. That's cheaper for the theater than handling paper tickets—saving money and hassle time is Williams' goal. But it also positions the theater well for collecting future revenue.

Mobile ticketing skews young, Williams observes. The theater does shows for all ages, and for a typical adult event, 16 percent of tickets sold are through the mobile channel. But for a recent show by the boy-band Hansen, popular with tween girls, mobile accounted for nearly 40 percent of tickets.

"There's an age—around 22 or younger—where it would never occur to patrons that you couldn't buy a ticket from your phone," Williams says.

Impulse Buys

Mobile and social commerce projects will change the business of any company that invests in it, says Russ Stanley, managing vice president of ticket services and client relations for the San Francisco Giants.

For example, instead of being a long-planned activity, a Major League Baseball game can become an impulse buy, Stanley says, bringing in more sales for the organization.

Every game day, the Giants have 40,000 seats to sell. If they've sold only 30,000, 10,000 spoil every bit as badly as old pears. Last year, the team changed prices daily on about 2,000 seats. Stanley imagines the day when he'll have a database of fans who, say, live within a mile of the ballpark to whom he can text last-minute offers. "Hey, the Giants have $5 tickets left for tonight. For $5, I'll walk down there," he says. "As they're walking up to the entrance, they're buying on the mobile."

The Giants started to offer mobile tickets midway through the 2008 season, when they sold about 100 tickets that way per game. In 2009, it was about 200 and Stanley expects to do about 400 per game in the coming year. "Fans who use it love it. It's getting the people to use it," he says.

Like hot dogs and cold beer, holding a ticket is part of the rite of baseball, he says. Plus, there's the souvenir value. When pitcher Jonathan Sanchez threw a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres in July, about 50 mobile fans, as well as people who had bought tickets online and printed them on plain paper at home, later requested the team print "real" tickets for them to commemorate the event. "We did that for them. It's good relations," says Stanley. And, he adds, it could turn into a money-making service in the future.

Start small and expand gradually, Stanley advises. He could outfit all 42 entryways at AT&T Park with scanners to read mobile tickets, but the Giants just don't sell enough of them yet to make that cost worthwhile. Not until about 1,000 mobile tickets are sold per game—81,000 in a season—does he expect to see real labor savings compared to handling paper tickets. Ramp-up may be slow, but commerce in these new outlets is a commitment these early adopters say they will keep.

"Eventually there will be far more things that are accessible via your phone," Williams says. "I would rather have our box office be on the forefront of that than scrambling to catch up years down the line."

Today the payoff comes in other ways, she says. The novel technology makes retailers who use it more memorable among consumers and no paper—or less, anyway—makes it a greener way to do business.

Read more >

IT managers put data dedupe at the top of their future tech list

Being able to address data management through consolidation is key

ComputerWorld
Lucas Mearian

IT managers interviewed at Storage Networking World here this week said the key technology in their near future is data deduplication, though how they would implement that technology differed from person to person.

Most managers said their data silos have grown to the point where they're becoming difficult to manage, and growth over the next several years is expected to be exponential. Data deduplication would offer them significant relief in that it could drastically reduce capacity requirements and costs by allowing them to use their storage assets more effectively, they said.

J. Travis Martin, CIS infrastructure services manager for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., said his operation manages 750TB of data that will soon be growing to more than a petabyte.

Martin said Lawrence Livermore uses Data Domain appliances to deduplicate its backup data, but he wants to move to a technology that performs deduplication globally, across geographically dispersed nodes.

Martin is considering deduplication vendor Exagrid Systems Inc. in Westborough, Mass., which uses byte-level data de-duplication on a grid architecture.

"That's what tips Exagrid over the top for us, global dedupe across nodes," said Eric Ghere, a systems architect with Lawrence Livermore.

Martin said he would like to get any data deduplication technology as close to the source of data as possible versus deploying it as he does today, as part of the data backup stream.

Brett Michalak, CIO at online ticket retailer Tickets.com, said data deduplication and WAN optimization technology would help him deal with about 100TB of virtualized storage capacity on arrays from 3Par Inc. Through virtualization, Michalak said he is able to provision storage on the fly and keep up with changing customer service level agreements, but that doesn't address growing bandwidth requirements.

"I'm looking at those two primarily because as we start rolling out more assets globally, and the fact that our data will be distributed ... the impact on our networks is going to grow," he said. "I think deduplication will be necessary for us for obvious reasons - for backup and recovery."

Michalak sees in his company's future the complete elimination of tape-based backup and a move toward nearline disk-based storage.

"It's just a waste of time in my opinion. The time it takes to retrieve that data and bring it back takes too long," he said.

Mark Saussure, director of digital library infrastructure for Penn State University, said his 160TB of disk-based data is expected to grow exponentially over the next few years. To address that growth, he has been rolling out the eXtensible Access Method (XAM), a specification developed by the Storage Networking Industry Association that will help him not only to automate backup across tiers of storage, but also allow anyone to search silos and retrieve data through the use of standardized meta data.

"Information silos, if not controlled, will outstrip our ability to manage the objects in them," he said. "The demand is just phenomenal. We can't continue to manage the silos the way we've it done for years."

Saussure hopes to go live with a gateway appliance in front of his backend disk storage that will automatically populate data with standardized meta data that will in turn assist him with data routing, meta data extraction for reporting, data retention and give him low-level search capabilities.

Saussure also hopes to deploy a grid-based storage architecture that will assist him in seamlessly moving data objects around his various storage silos.

Tickets.com's Brett Michalak Speaking at Storage Networking World

Storage Networking World, in conjunction with Computerworld and the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), recently announced an agenda with over 150 educational sessions at SNW Fall 2009, happening October 12-15, 2009 at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort in Phoenix, Arizona.

In addition to 17 educational tracks ranging from Data Center to Infrastructure to Green Storage, SNW will feature a series of half-day summits focused on Virtualization, Solid State Storage, and Cloud Computing.

SNW is the largest event for IT end-users, vendors, channel partners, press and analysts involved in storage, data center, infrastructure, and business continuity. SNW also offers the world's largest Expo devoted to storage and related technologies.

Featured presenters who will present market-leading case studies at SNW Fall 2009 include:
-- Brett Michalak, chief information officer, Tickets.com
-- Raymond Kurzweil, inventor and visionary
-- Arthur Lessard, chief of information security, Mattel, Inc.
-- Lars Linden, senior vice president, director, Data Center Services/Operations, Citizens Bank

Tickets.com "Best Practices in Storage" Award Finalist:

This year Storage Networking World judges, with an abundance of strong entries, had a particularly challenging assignment in narrowing the field to the best of the best. Now that the final ballots have been cast, they proudly announce their Finalists in each of the award categories.


Technology Innovation and Promise

Five Point Capital, San Diego, California

Marketing Architects, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Shopzillla, Los Angeles, California

State Street Corporation, Boston, Massachusetts

Tickets.com, Costa Mesa, California

Tickets.com Case Study: Access Control Venue Admissions and the Tulsa Performing Arts Center

The Tulsa Performing Arts Center (TPAC) has come to value Access Control as an essential element in delivering outstanding service to its patrons by driving its staff to perform to full potential. Additionally, TPAC can now enable other Tickets.com digital products to enhance overall customer experience, and create targeted marketing campaigns based on information reaped through Access Control’s reporting capabilities. Implementation of Access Control provided TPAC with:

• Faster, smoother gate entry


• Exponentially increased data on patrons, their buying habits, and their customer profiles


• Streamlining of attendance count operations


• Security safeguards against ticket fraud


• Features to provide better customer service

Access Control Venue Admissions: From its immediate impact on event logistics and its capability to data mine for future return, Access Control has exceeded Tulsa Performing Arts Center’s expectations.

Learn more >

Tickets.com's Doug Lyons Talks Strategy

Venues Today

LONG BEACH, CALIF. — The employees of Tickets.com don’t need 20 million reasons to spend a few bucks on a party. Last week, they found just one reason to throw a swanky soiree at the Grand Hyatt in Long Beach, Calif. — to celebrate the 20 million smackers they just spent to develop ProVenue.

About 90 people converged on Tickets.com’s Executive Summit Tuesday night. On display was the company’s new ProVenue portfolio, a new ticketing application designed to offer venues and box offices a fully customizable ticketing product.

Major League Baseball has yet to switch over to the new platform, although Tickets.com Business Development VP Steve Demots said he expected a handful of teams to be live by Opening Day 2010. Current users include the Hartman Arena in Wichita, Kan.; the Palladium in Hollywood, Calif., and the Seattle Theater Group. The 2010 Vancouver Olympics is also using ProVenue.

As for the future, the next possible market could be regional ticketing companies, said Doug Lyons, director of Sales and Engineering for Tickets.com. The former Paciolan executive (Demots is also from Paciolan) believes many ticketing companies are looking at new systems now that their Paciolan-powered programs are essentially operated by Ticketmaster. Venues Today sat down with Lyons to discuss ProVenues and how Tickets.com hopes to change the business.

Venues Today: What is the story of ProVenue?
Doug Lyons: In the past, there have been companies to compete with the Ticketmaster style. You buy the software, you put it on a server in your building and you sell tickets. The difference for ProVenue is that you get your own version of the software with your own database, but you also get full customization. You get to control all of the fees and can add-on services. Are you interested in stored value? We can recommend our partner Givex, or you can use your own. It’s all about creating a product that’s a good foundation with lots of functionality for the ticketing piece, and then be available to add our recommended services, or do it your own way.


VT: It sounds similar to the Paciolan-model. One of the problems they faced with their legacy software was that there were so many versions in existence that IT became very difficult. How do you avoid that?
DL: ProVenue is what other industries have been doing for the last five-to-10 years. They’ve been building these data centers that host technology and are designed to have shared resources, but still have control and are secure.

VT: You’ve also made some changes to the secondary model, creating a platform that allows the venues to determine how much control or participation they want to have over ticket resales. How are venues utilizing this technology?
DL: The Olympics is a good example. The 2010 Winter Olympics (in Vancouver, B.C.) wanted to offer people the ability to resell tickets through the Olympics website. They can control that and put rules around it, just like Flash Seats does with their product. We can also work with other secondary providers, like StubHub, that can share data. You can also share in the revenue, but that’s between you and StubHub.

VT: What’s your sales strategy?
DL: Right now, we’re not selling as much as we are getting input and feedback. We’re putting the finishes on the product. Major League Baseball was a big priority for us because they are our owners. We’ll put a bunch of teams on at the end of the season.

Learn more about ProVenue >

Tickets.com Awarded CIO 100 Technology Award by CIO Magazine

Recognized as a leader in operational and strategic excellence in information technology, Tickets.com has been honored by CIO Magazine as a recipient of the 2009 CIO 100 Award. Tickets.com is a leading provider of fully integrated online event ticketing services for thousands of top arts, entertainment, and sports organizations worldwide.

Read more >

Ticket Summit TV

Learn more about Tickets.com ticketing technologies >

Venues Today Technology Update - January 2009

Witherspoon talks about mobile ticketing today

Venues Today
By Dave Brooks

Tickets.com CEO Larry Witherspoon is quick to point out that his company isn’t just a ticketing company — it’s a technology company operating in the ticketing space. Exclusivity issues can be settled through revenue sharing, but superior technology can’t be negotiated.

2008 saw Tickets.com launch its ProVenue ticketing software suite and the first mobile website to enable customers to purchase and receive tickets entirely through their phones. Venues Today caught up with Witherspoon to discuss how technology was changing the ticketing business.

Venues Today: How does the new mobile website technology work?

Larry Witherspoon: A year-and-a-half ago we launched Tickets@Phone for various teams. Now we’ve decided to mobilize the website and not just mobilize it for one device, but mobilize it for all devices that are web-enabled. You can go online and buy a ticket from your phone, have it delivered to your phone, will call or print at home. We’re attempting to bring the technology full circle.

VT: Do consumers need a login to purchase tickets?

LW: No, anybody can instantly buy tickets. It’s enabled with a virtual waiting room for high demand on sales.

VT: Will you tie in this system to a mobile-marketing strategy?

LW: Long term that’s obviously the plan. Our next big focus is to expand the private labeling of our client sites.

VT: Are you seeing evidence that users are moving toward a mobile purchasing experience?

LW: Not so much here, but I do travel the world and if you go into Japan or look at some of the stuff that’s occurring in Europe, you’ll see that the U.S. is a little behind on the adoption rate. If you look at the U.K., there’s some great stuff the O2 Arena has done with mobile marketing that hasn’t been done before.

VT: How many facilities are currently enabled on a mobile platform?

LW: We currently have four arenas enabled — Royal Oak Music Theatre (Royal Oak, Mich.), K-Rock Centre (Kingston, Ontario), The BOK Center (Tulsa, Okla.) and the Times Union Center (Albany, N.Y.). We’ve also got five or six baseball clubs turned on.

VT: Will mobile compete with paperless tickets?

LW: I would argue that mobile is a paperless ticket. It’s not going to be long before a venue only offers tickets that are bought online and delivered by phone. We’ll offer the full suite where you can get a text message, go to a mobile website, buy a ticket on your phone, have it delivered and show up at the venue. It’s not a new world, but it’s something that no one in this market has really hit hard yet.

Interviewed for this story: Larry Witherspoon, (714) 327-5400

Learn more about Tickets.com >

Now Showing...the Latest in Ticketing Technology

At Tickets.com we believe technology is the key to your success. We offer the latest in ticketing solutions to meet your organization's needs.

ProVenue® - The next generation ticketing system
ProVenueInsight™ - Provides seamless, unprecedented reporting power
ProVenueMobile™ - Enables ticket purchases and delivery on your mobile website
Campaign Creator™ - A comprehensive e-Communication platform
Uptix™ - Drives incremental revenue by utilizing stored value tickets

Visit INTIX booth #404 and ENTER TO WIN a "Tour of the Stars" getaway to Hollywood, CA.

For more information visit provenue.tickets.com or call toll-free 1.888.397.3400.

Larry Witherspoon Nominated for the 2008 Venues Today Hall of Headlines

Larry Witherspoon and his Tickets.com team have been nominated for wholly developing and launching ProVenue®, a web-based enterprise ticketing solution using Oracle database architecture, while still successfully providing service to its extensive client portfolio.

About Tickets.com:

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


About ProVenue:

ProVenue is a powerful, full-featured ticketing platform specifically developed with open architecture design, unsurpassed flexibility, innovative data management tools, and an easy to use graphical interface to meet the expectations of today’s dynamic marketplace.


About Larry Witherspoon:

Chief executive officer of Tickets.com, Larry Witherspoon is responsible for the execution of the company's overall direction and strategic plan, including global technology development, sales and marketing, and the operation of the business. He joined Tickets.com in 2005 as chief information officer, overseeing information technology, product development, architecture, and operations. Mr. Witherspoon has more than a decade of sports entertainment experience, along with an extensive engineering background. Prior to joining Tickets.com, Mr. Witherspoon served as vice president of technology services for the Seattle Mariners, where he was responsible for all aspects of the Mariners' technology services department, including information services, audio/video, ticketing operations and concession services.

Learn more about Tickets.com >

Tickets.com Technology Days This Weekend at Nationals Park

The 2008 Tickets.com / Washington Nationals Ticket Technology Days are coming up on July 11 and 12 at Nationals Park. Technology Days are designed to help Fans get the most out of their tickets.

Nationals Fans can now use the Internet, mobile phone and automated kiosk technology for faster and more convenient ticket purchasing, ticket delivery and entry into the game. Nationals.com utilizes the newest and most advanced technologies to enhance your baseball experience at home and at the ballpark.

Automated Kiosks
Fans can purchase and pick-up tickets for same day or future games without waiting in box office lines.

Added Value Tickets
When purchasing your ticket in select seating areas, you will have additional value added to your ticket for use inside the ballpark.

My Nationals Tickets
Washington Nationals season ticket holders can enjoy even more exclusive benefits of advanced ticketing technology through Nationals.com. My Nationals Tickets enables season ticket holders to manage their inventory of season tickets online.

Print At Home
Nationals.com offers the convenience of printing authentic tickets from your computer. Print your tickets from your home or office printer at your convenience. You no longer need to wait in line at the box office or will call to get your tickets. A print at home ticket makes for easy, smooth entry at the ballpark. It scans just like a regular paper ticket, so you can go straight to the gate and into your seat.

Mobile Ticket Delivery
A North America Industry First!
Tickets.com is the first North American ticketing company to provide a paperless, bar-coded ticket delivered to your mobile phone. Present your phone at the admission gate where a bar code scanner will validate your ticket directly from your mobile phone display. Your trip to the ballpark is now paperless. Save time… and save the planet.

Come visit us at Nationals Park this weekend to learn more!

Tickets.com 2008 ProVenue Software Summit is in Full Swing!

The annual Tickets.com ProVenue Software Summit conference is in full swing! The event kicked off on Monday, June 16 with a poolside reception in Long Beach, California. Through attending the conference, Tickets.com clients are learning about the latest in ticket technology and exciting new ways to market their venues and increase ticket sales.

Learn more

Tickets.com Announces Andy Beal as 2008 Summit Keynote Speaker

The 2008 ProVenue® Software Summit Docks in Long Beach, Ca

This year's ProVenue® Software Summit will be held at the Hyatt Regency in sunny Long Beach California, on June 16-19. We have much planned, and are extremely excited to share with you the latest in ticketing technology!

We are pleased to announce Andy Beal as this year's keynote speaker. Mr. Beal is a world-renowned Internet marketing expert, blogger, and author of the groundbreaking new book, Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online. Join us at Summit to hear him share both his knowledge of online trends as well as easy, insightful tips for your organization.

Session Highlights Include:

• Our newest, revolutionary web-based ticketing solution ProVenue®

• Innovative tools that meet business needs and strengthen customer relationships

• Digital ticketing features and online marketing strategies

• A wide array of reporting topics

By popular demand, this year we are also offering a one day "Executive Track" that highlights incremental revenue generating opportunities specifically designed for your management team.

Learn more

Mobile Ticketing Delivery and the Washington Nationals

Tickets@Phone Ticket Delivery on Mobile Phones
Washington Nationals

In its efforts to provide an exceptional customer experience, the Washington Nationals wanted to enhance fans' ability to purchase and receive tickets, as well as gain faster entry into the ballpark. The team also wanted to take advantage of the latest in ticketing technology. Using Tickets@Phone from Tickets.com, the Nationals became the first organization in the United States to deliver tickets to mobile phones.

Read more