Congratulations 2012 Spirit Award Nominees

Congratulations to long time Tickets.com client AREN MURRAY of Texas A&M University for her nomination of the 2012 Spirit Award! Our question is, what took so long?

Also sending a 'spirited' congratulations to both Joe Carter of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Tammy Enright of Goldstar on their nominations for the same award.

The 2012 Spirit Award recipient will be announced at the 33rd Annual Conference & Exhibition Awards Luncheon on Wednesday, January 18 at the Grand Hyatt San Antonio.

Click here for more information on ALL INTIX awards.

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

Congratulations 2011 Box Office Stars: Sharon Dunaway and Bernie Berry

Congratulations to Sharon Dunaway and Bernie Berry for Winning the 2011 Venues Today ‘Box Office Stars” Award.

Each year Venues Today honors the people who make our industry move forward. This year, Tickets.com would like to congratulate two of our clients; Sharon Dunaway, BOK Center, Tulsa OK and Bernie Berry, Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, Vienna, VA. Each day these super stars make it happen and today we celebrate you! Congratulations on well deserved recognition!

Tickets.com Client Spotlight: AT&T Park

SAN FRANCISCO’S AT&T PARK GOES LEED

Venues Today Pulse
Matt Gunn and Dave Brooks

The city of San Francisco is typically known as a bellwether to eco-consciousness.

But in becoming the first previously existing major league stadium to attain Silver Certification in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), the San Francisco Giants had to address a number of environmental challenges. Existing facilities have to meet separate requirements from new buildings to achieve LEED certification.

“I think it’s infinitely harder for existing ballparks to effectively retrofit their facilities to incorporate current trends and technologies into their existing practices,” said Jorge Costa, Giants senior VP of Ballpark Operations. “And there’s also an awareness that has to be created with the vendors and the public in making them know of the changes.”

Since the first stages of planning LEED certification two years ago, Giants staff and AT&T Park vendors, including Centerplate, Pacific Gas & Electric Company and Linc Facility Services have made a concerted effort in evaluating everything from waste management, recycling programs, lighting, water usage and even products and packaging.

The systemic approach brought a new attitude to AT&T Park, even though it has won Major League Baseball’s Green Glove award for recycling the past two years. The seventh-inning stretch, for instance, now includes an announcement from Giants manager Bruce Bochy asking fans for help picking up recyclables. Ushers wearing “Green Team” vests go into the stands, collecting any recyclable items the fans have collected up to that point in the game.

“I think the public awareness and education is pretty key to succeeding, and getting the numbers,” Costa said.

The team also installed new compact fluorescent lights throughout the park, and built a solar energy system which it plans to soon deploy. Low flush toilets were installed throughout the park, along with a powerful new Mitsubishi Electric Diamond Vision HD Scoreboard, which is 78 percent more efficient than its predecessor.

The park also dramatically increased its waste diversion numbers, with 67 percent of the ballpark’s waste being diverted from going to the landfill through an aggressive recycling and composting program. At a couple points last year, AT&T Park reached as high as 70 percent waste diversion, Costa explained.

“It’s a difficult standard to achieve and you couldn’t get there without the awareness of the fans and staff and all of the vendors,” he added.

Costa noted a particularly strong relationship with Linc Facility Services, which handles the stadium’s HVAC and engineering, and Giants hospitality partner, Centerplate.

While he didn’t disclose the total expense for the project, Costa said it was costly. While ballparks like Target Field in Minnesota and Nationals Park in Washington were built with LEED certification in mind, Costa believes it was more difficult to achieve the high standard in a 10-year-old stadium.

Though the busy regular season schedule has kept Costa from speaking with many of his counterparts at other stadiums, he said sustainability has been a big initiative in Major League Baseball for several years.

“It’s about innovation and technology, good hard work, practices and awareness that are the key if you’re really going to try and accomplish this, and to maintain it long term,” Costa said.

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.

The Olympics Take A Stab At Secondary Tickets

Venues Today
By Dave Brooks

After years of opposing the resale of event tickets, the Vancouver Olympic Committee has introduced the first Olympic-sanctioned ticketing resale program. Powered by Tickets.com, the new system has separate tiers for consumers to sell tickets to other consumers, and an additional site for sponsors to trade and resell tickets to other sponsors.

For Canadian ticket buyers, the “fan-to-fan” marketplace at vancouver2010.com is designed to help fill empty seats and create a safe, reliable resale market where fans can sell their tickets without having to worry if they are stolen or counterfeit. Only Canadians who purchased their tickets through the VANOC system are allowed to list and sell tickets, although international visitors are allowed to view and purchase tickets.

“Obviously with any event out there, there is a secondary market, but we wanted to make sure we could keep control of it,” said Thomas Benson, director of Ticketing for Tickets.com’s Olympic operations. “Nothing is worse than somebody who shows up for the opening ceremonies and bought a ticket from a guy on the corner and it turns out the ticket is not valid after they shelled out $1,500. That’s pretty heart breaking. This is legitimate and it’s the only guaranteed way to get a ticket on the secondary market.”

The Olympic secondary marketplace will operate like most other sites — there will be no limits on price markup (although tickets can’t be sold below face), and like Tickets.com’s deal with StubHub and Major League Baseball, all tickets will be re-barcoded and reprinted for the buyer once the sale is complete. Secondary buyers will pick up their tickets from the will call window. VANOC will charge a 10-percent fee to both the seller and buyer for each transaction.

The VANOC team originally considered putting some limitations on how high a ticket could be marked up, but decided to scrap the caps.

“Basically we want to get as many people into the system as we can and as soon as you put a limit on it they go to Craigslist and sell their ticket because there is no limit there,” Benson said.

The other system announced was a platform for sponsors to sell and trade tickets to other sponsors. Unlike the consumer website, sponsors are not allowed to mark up the price of tickets, nor are they allowed to sell the tickets to the general public. If a sponsor has a difficult time filling a particular seat, they can consign the tickets to VANOC, which will place the inventory back into the primary market at no cost to the sponsor.

“Sponsors cannot directly sell to the public. VANOC was very adamant that sponsors should not be trying to pass off the tickets they purchased. They didn’t sign a sponsorship agreement so that they can scalp tickets. The sponsors are only allowed to sell to each other at face value,” Benson said.

The system was not budgeted for in the original Olympic contract with Tickets.com, explained Caley Denton, VANOC’s vice president for ticketing and consumer marketing. The fees on the consumer site are designed to help the platform pay for itself, and Denton said tickets can only be listed for up to 24 hours before an event.

“The message to the consumer is simple. If someone’s selling tickets outside of our Web site, people need to ask themselves why are they doing that and [question if that is a valid ticket],” Denton said during a press conference on Dec. 21. “We expect fairly high prices to start, as people test the market. Tickets will go quickly on the site, so people who are interested in a particular event should go fairly often.”

The other goal the new system achieves is striking a balance between sponsor tickets and public tickets. The goal was to have 70 percent of all tickets — and at least 30 percent of any event — available to the public. Allowing sponsors to consign tickets to the public through the site returns some high demand tickets into the hands of the public without a high-markup, said Dave Cobb, deputy CEO of the VANOC games, pointing out that the committee was also much more careful how sponsor tickets were allotted this year.

“We expect to have a minimum of 40 percent high demand tickets for each session [available to the public],” he said. “We think that’s a result of being very careful [during our review of ticket purchases] and making sure they are valid orders. That resulted in a significant reduction of tickets and provided 80,000 tickets more than we started with.”

If sponsors can’t trade or consign unwanted Olympic tickets, VANOC also has a site to donate the tickets to “children and families, Aboriginal peoples, and residents of Vancouver’s inner-city neighborhoods” through its Celebrate 2010 program. VANOC organizers hope to provide 50,000 free tickets to the public. Fans can donate their tickets for free on VANOC’s website, although Canadian law prevents them from writing off the tickets as a tax deduction.

Thomas Benson: Venues Today Box Office Star

Gold Medal Performance

Tickets.com’s Tom Benson is a consummate pro when it comes to the Olympics

Venues Today
By Dave Brooks

For Thomas Benson, the Olympics aren’t just another sporting event — they’re a way of life.

The ticketing veteran has worked three of the last four Olympiads and will be managing box office operations for Tickets.com during the 21st Winter Olympiad from Feb. 12-28 in Vancouver and Whistler, British Columbia. Benson will oversee the sale and allocation of 1.6 million tickets for 15 separate venues and 86 sporting events.

“If you put a concert on sale, even if you have 10 nights, people are coming to buy one thing. They get in and get out. With this someone comes in and spends 45 minutes shopping because they don’t know what all the different sports are during the last two weeks. There are a lot of decisions to make and tickets are pricey,” said Benson, among winners of this year’s Venues Today Box Office Stars Awards.

Benson’s main task is to manage Tickets.com’s relationship with the Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC). Besides being the official ticketing provider, Tickets.com is also a sponsor of the games.

“We are in charge of setting up all of the box offices at all of the venues and hiring a couple hundred people to staff them,” said Benson. “We actually opened a call center up here in Vancouver, so that we could have French speakers and people that are familiar with the area.”

This is the first Olympics for which Tickets.com is implementing access control at every venue with hand scanners and bar-coded tickets. All box office managers will report directly to Benson, and the Tickets.com team plans to bring up several American box office managers to help with the games, including Debra Duncan, the director of ticketing for the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

“We’ve got a number of people like that who have done it and loved it and are coming back,” Benson said.

Benson got his start working at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. The University of Utah grad was hired after spending several years working with ArtTix. He came back four years later to work the winter games in Torino, Italy.

“I was still in college at the time I started; it was my last year. It was kind of a big deal, especially being from Utah,” Benson said. “Salt Lake was a challenge because it was the first time the Internet was really a force in ticketing. We sold some ridiculous percentage of our tickets online there, 90 percent I think. That was kind of a first.”

Benson said one of the biggest challenges with the Winter Games is that most tickets are sold well before the venues are completed, so ticketing personnel don’t get a lot of information about how their venues will be configured.

“You don’t really know what your inventory is going to look like, but you have to put them on sale anyway,” Benson said.

When Benson is not working for one of the Olympic Games, he handles special projects for Tickets.com. After the Salt Lake games, he spent some time working with the Cleveland Indians, before moving to Virginia and later to Huntington Beach, Calif., just a few miles from the Tickets.com office. He said he gets a rush working the Olympic Games — when competitor Ticketmaster won the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, Benson took a temporary position with Coca-Cola so he could be part of one of the games.

“Each host city is totally different,” Benson said. “In Torino there were a lot of people who bought late. They procrastinated and they didn’t really get excited until the Olympics started. We went into the games with a lot of walk up inventory. [In Vancouver] people are pretty excited about it. Anytime there is release of any tickets, they get snapped up pretty quickly.”

A lot of people ask him, “‘Why were you there two years before, how hard can it be to sell tickets?’ It’s a big deal. It takes a whole lot of planning to put together something as big as the Olympics in such a short amount of time,” he said.
While he’s in Canada, Benson is also expected to do some business development. The 2010 games are the biggest deployment yet for Tickets.com’s new ProVenue system, a powerful ticketing solution developed to compete against Ticketmaster and Veritix.

“We are hoping to leverage this to get more business in Canada and get more people familiar with our system,” Benson said. “Some of the box office managers we have coming in say they applied for the job so they could see us and get to know our system better. We are excited about that.”

For the first time, the Olympic committee is creating a secondary marketplace to allow both fans and sponsors to resell tickets. Benson said his company is also offering a consignment program for unsold sponsor tickets.

“Sponsors can go back online and consign them to us and we will sell them — online or at the box office. When they do sell, we will credit the client back. It’s basically them giving back the tickets and if they re-sell, we give them a credit.”

Benson said the goal is to get spectators into the best seats. He noted that during the Beijing Games, there were thousands of empty seats at every venue because many sponsor would over order tickets.

“And you had people who would give their right eye just to see anything and they were lined up down the street,” said Benson. “It’s not fair to the athletes who worked so hard to get there and would like to have a full stand cheering them on.”

Venues Today Industry News: Regional Ticketing

Ticketing companies get aggressive for regional business

Venues Today
Dave Brooks

History has a funny way of repeating itself. In 2002 when Daren Libonati and his group at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, launched their own in-house ticketing system, many wondered if the Paciolan-powered platform could hold its own against uber-robust Ticketmaster.

Fast forward to 2009, and Libonati is again asking if the provider is up for the job. Despite nearly seven years of impeccable functionality in a building that consistently ranks among the top 10-grossing facilities worldwide, changes in the marketplace have put another question mark around the Irvine, Calif.-based company.

After being purchased by Ticketmaster in 2007, Paciolan has changed its name (it’s now Ticketmaster Irvine) and slowed the development of its enablement software system, directing its engineers to focus their attention on the newest version of Ticketmaster’s Archtix platform; a potentially powerful, but largely unknown application, said former Paciolan Chairman Jane Kleinberger, now the executive VP of College Athletics for Ticketmaster. But what Archtix lacks in details, it makes up for with marketing punch. Ticketmaster has one of the largest consumer databases in the world.

“We love our distributor clients and continue to want to re-earn their business,” Kleinberger said. “We understand that some might not be comfortable with the Ticketmaster acquisition, but we’re here to help our partner venues with whatever they decide.”

While the Paciolan legacy system still dominates the regional market, the momentum seems to be behind Cleveland-based Veritix, which has scored two huge regional deals with the Denver Nuggets and the Utah Jazz. Not to be left out is Tickets.com, Major League Baseball’s ticketing wing that hired a former Paciolan executive to help Veritix develop its own regional business plan.

And that’s perhaps where history diverges. Where there once stood only one leader, now stand several.

“For us, we’ve come to the end of our seven years and we owe it to ourselves to evaluate and do our own due diligence on what else is out there,” said Libonati, who began accepting bids for his system in October and hopes to award a contract by the new year.

REBEL NO MORE
Libonati partnered with Paciolan in 2002 for one of the company’s first regional ticketing projects. The contract would cover the Thomas and Mack Center, a collegiate arena home to Rebels basketball and some of the biggest events in Sin City.

The move also allowed UNLV to collect its own consumer data and more importantly, the creation of UNLVtickets shifted the revenue models for both the venue and the ticketing company, he said.

“Vendors that go after the regional ticketing companies have to employ a different model, such as low flat transaction fees or annual subscriptions,” said Steve Demots of Tickets.com, a former Paciolan executive who has made regional ticketing contracts a top sales priority for its ProVenue platform.

Of course there are tradeoffs. Promoters are familiar with Ticketmaster’s reporting system and few can challenge the company’s marketing database. Not signing a full-service ticketing deal could also leave doubts about one’s throughput capabilities and whether their system could handle 20,000-40,000 transactions in a matter of seconds.

When the Utah Jazz’s 10-year-old ticketing contract with Ticketmaster expired earlier this year, Dee Dee Hill found herself in an odd position. Her regional Salt Lake City ticketing company Datatix had previously held the Jazz’s ticketing contract, and she desperately wanted them back.

“When I was with Paciolan, I could have gone to them and said, ‘Hey, let’s work on getting this client. Paciolan would have sent their sales force out and we would have gone to meet with the Jazz,’” she recalled. “When Ticketmaster bought Paciolan, I couldn’t call the Ticketmaster office and say, ‘Hey, I’m going to be bidding against you.’”

Using Ticketmaster software while competing against the company is nothing new. TicketAlternative, a regional ticketing group out of Atlanta, powers its platform with Paciolan. That hasn’t stopped the startup from going after Ticketmaster’s clients; in September, TicketAlternative signed over the Black Cat night club in Washington, D.C., a former longtime Ticketmaster client.

In Salt Lake, Hill needed a strong technology partner to make her pitch to the Jazz attractive, so she turned to Veritix, which already had ticketing deals with the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Houston Rockets. Working with Veritix CEO Jeff Kline, Hill developed a sales pitch that had Datatix branding and marketing the platform, while Veritix provided the backend technological support and retained exclusive rights to the team’s secondary market through its Flash Seats platform.

It’s the second such move for Veritix; the company recently signed a deal with the Denver Nuggets and owner Kroenke Sports and Entertainment, which partnered with Veritix to power the TicketHorse system for the Pepsi Center, Infinity Park, Dick’s Sporting Goods Park and the Paramount Theater, all in the Denver area.

“We started thinking about doing our own ticketing because with that much volume, you could afford the infrastructure that would be required, and the investment levels,” said Paul Andrews, director of Kroenke Sports and Entertainment. “We should be able to staff and run a pretty efficient ticketing operation for what we we’re paying a third-party vendor.”

BACK TO THE FUTURE?
Still, many regional operators taking a wait-and-see approach to how the market develops.

“We’re not hitting any type of panic button,” said Jack Lucas of TicketsWest, one of the country’s oldest regional ticketing companies, currently operating on the Paciolan platform.

Next year could provide a much better picture of where innovation in the enablement model lies. Ticketmaster will launch the latest version of its Archtix platform, which takes software updates originally slated for the Paciolan system and combines them with updates from Ticketmaster. It will also allow Archtix users to list their events on Ticketmaster.com and take advantage of the company’s huge marketing database.

“It makes more sense in the long run to have one superior platform rather than two,” Kleinberger said,

Tickets.com is also working on developing its own updates to its ProVenue suite to make it more suited to the regional model. Demots said he wants to develop the ability for any venue client within a regional model to put their own events on sale; most regional clients rely on a central administrator to update the system.

Meanwhile, many regional ticketing companies are content to sit back and wait to see what goes to market in the next 12-24 months

Who makes the next move is anyone’s guess, although many eyes are on New Era tickets, the Comcast-Spectacor owned ticketing company. The group recently put out a bid for its ticketing system — since 2004, the platform has been powered by Paciolan.
“All of the regionals talk with each other, and I think a few of us plan to wait and see what New Era does,” said Iain Bluett, TicketAlternative cofounder. “We’re not in any big hurry, except we’re always worried about keeping up with the latest technology and not getting left behind.”

Interviewed for this story: Daren Libonati, (702) 895-3727; Jane Kleinberger, (949) 823-1679; Steve Demots, (714) 327-5550; Dee Dee Hill, (801) 467-1055; Jamie Dwyer, (404) 897-2371; Jeff Kline, (216) 466-8055; Paul Andrews, (303) 405-1133; Fred Maglione, (610) 854-1100; Iain Bluett, (404) 897-2379

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.”

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 >

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

Ticketing Industry News: Room for More?

Room For More?

AudienceView makes a case to end exclusive deals

Venues Today
By Dave Brooks

Is neutrality an option in 2009?

Live Nation is close to launching its new ticketing platform, a much-anticipated move that has it severing ties with Ticketmaster. Using a system powered by German-based CTS Eventim, the new platform is being rolled out this month and has already gained headlines following a major deal with venue operator SMG.

The Live Nation ticketing formula seems simple. The world’s largest concert promoter can now tie its ticketing system to its concert series, giving it leverage over buildings in highly competitive markets which rely on Live Nation content. Want a concert for your building? Then agree to use the ticketing platform, at least for individual Live Nation concerts seems to be the theory.

It’s a proposition that is both simple and terrifying to primary ticketing giant Ticketmaster, which has staked its decades old business model on signing long-term exclusive contracts with venues. Well aware that Ticketmaster is entrenching itself to fight against per-event Live Nation ticketing contracts, one Canadian company is touting its long-established policy to not require contract exclusivity. Kevin Kimsa, CEO of Toronto-based AudienceView, said his venues are free to use whatever ticketing system they like when they sign an AudienceView contract.

“It’s become attractive because Live Nation and Ticketmaster are no longer working in partnership,” said Kimsa, whose six-year-old company represents 120 venues and 80 clients including the Toronto Blue Jays and Churchill Downs, Louisville, Ky.

“Venues are asking themselves, ‘If I go with Ticketmaster, am I limiting myself with regards to what Live Nation content exists for me in my future?’” Kimsa said. “We’re just taking advantage of the fact that we don’t hurt anybody in the middle. We’re a neutral play for organizations.”

Is this the death of the exclusive ticketing contract? Not likely. Ticketmaster’s Mike McGee said non-exclusive contracts are akin to “telling your girlfriend that you want to take someone else on a date,” during a panel at the Sport, Entertainment and Venues Tomorrow Conference in Columbia, S.C. Fred Maglione of the New Era Tickets told an audience at the Arena Managers Conference in Kansas City that “ticketing companies need to stand up against these type of contracts because they threaten the millions of dollars we invest to enable a venue.”

Not to be outdone, Ticketmaster has its own ace in the hole — Irving Azoff. The artist management megastar recently sold a $123-million stake in his Front Line Management firm to Ticketmaster prompting a name change to Ticketmaster Entertainment and the installation of Azoff as CEO. Now both Ticketmaster and Live Nation have tickets, software and performers. Is AudienceView’s strategy going to be essential for smaller ticketing firms hoping compete?

“You wonder if building managers are going to come together and say, “We have a promoter who wants to do our tickets. They have all the functionality that you currently have and there’s nothing you can do they can’t do, so we’re going to have them handle the tickets for this current event,” said Jack Lucas of Spokane, Wash.-based TicketsWest, powered by Ticketmaster. “Or, are the building managers going to come to me and say, “You know Jack, we don’t want to lose the show; you’re going have to work with these guys.”

So while Kimsa’s business model allows for non-exclusivity for new ticketing contracts, many are wondering how building managers are going to make exceptions for Live Nation concerts using existing Ticketmaster contracts.

“It really depends on what position you’re into to negotiate,” said John Fuhrmann of the Neal Blaisdell Center in Honolulu. Top buildings in must-play markets will be less susceptible to pressure from Live Nation or Ticketmaster, “but if you’re in the situation to fight hard for a concert — which the majority of buildings are — then there’s a good chance you’ll be calling your ticketing company and trying to find a way to make the two work together.”

And when venues’ ticketing contracts do come up for renewal, will they be rushing to sign non-exclusive deals with companies like AudienceView?

“I think many are going to resist going in that direction because they all know that, in the case of TicketsWest, we bring some stability and fiduciary responsibility,” said Lucas. “That’s especially important to municipally-owned facilities.”

Lucas said cancelled shows are a major concern for publicly-owned facilities. If a 10,000-ticket concert gets cancelled, it’s the fiduciary duty of the contracted ticketing company to have the available capital on hand to issue refunds.

“When you have non-exclusive deals, typically a lot of that fiduciary responsibility flies out the door and there’s real potential to get people in a lot of trouble,” Lucas said.

And without an exclusive ticketing agreement, facilities should not expect a lot of upfront cash or investment, said Derek Palmer, chief commercial officer at Tickets.com

“It’s very contrary to what traditional ticketing relationships are right now. Ticketing companies pay a lot of money for that exclusivity, whether it’s signing bonuses, hardware or investing in suites and tickets,” Palmer said. “An organization would have to be interested in walking away from a lot of upfront capital from a ticketing company to be able to do that.”

But Kimsa questions how much infrastructure investment is really required to get a ticketing system running.

“To be honest with you, the cost of infrastructure isn’t that much,” Kimsa said. “Ticketmaster may lead you to believe that’s the case because it is opportunistic. An exclusive five-or-seven year term deal was necessary back in the 80s or early 90s when it did require a lot of hardware, a lot of infrastructure, and a lot of call center technology but, in today’s world, the need for infrastructure isn’t really that great.”

It’s an assertion that is not agreed upon by a majority of Kimsa’s ticketing contemporaries, many of whom contend that the high cost of infrastructure, upfront capital and implementation make ticketing a very low-margin business. At the end of the day, Palmer said few ticketing companies will allow their ticketing contracts to be ignored but there is always one incentive that will get any businessperson’s attention — cold hard cash.

“If an organization came to us wanting to use another ticketing system and we could work out a deal where we could still make a fair margin, then they could have the freedom to sell tickets to whomever they want,” Palmer said. “Ultimately it is about the money.”

Kimsa said his firm wouldn’t require a quid pro quo — in fact part of his formula is tied to a trend nearly all other ticketing companies have tackled: Venue-branded ticketing services. As Tickets.com, New Era and other ticketing companies allow their venue clients to sell tickets on private label platforms, venues will be hesitant to exercise their non-exclusive options for Live Nation shows as they invest more and more marketing capital into their own ticketing platforms.

“And if they choose not to use their AudienceView-based system, they’ll also forgo control over their marketing, service fees and data collection,” Kimsa said. “So even if we offer our clients the option to use the Live Nation platform, many will want to keep as many events as possible on their own ticketing brand.”

Interviewed for this article: Kevin Kimsa, (416) 356-4121; Jack Lucas, (509) 459-6100; Derek Palmer, (714) 327-5400

Venues Today Q&A with Steve DeMots

Venues Today Q&A
STEVE DEMOTS, TICKETS.COM
Dave Brooks

Tickets.com is continuing to expand the capabilities of its new ProVenue software suite and has signed a deal with gift card maker Givex to create Uptix, a stored value system for event tickets. The San Francisco Giants will premier the system this season.

Has the dream of combining concessions and tickets into a single purchasing experience finally come to the Big Leagues? Venues Today caught up with Tickets.com’s Sr. V.P. of Business Development Steve DeMots to learn more.

Venues Today: We’ve heard about this concept for a few years now. What is Tickets.com doing with stored value?
Steve DeMots: Our overall strategy right now is to focus on the core ticketing technology. All our additional functionality is being developed through strategic partnerships, so instead of building stored value ourselves, we partnered with one of the largest gift card companies in the world — Givex out of Toronto. We created a product with them called Uptix; our stored value offering.

VT: How does it work?
SD: In a nutshell, it means having a separate database that keeps track of value tied into the barcode on the ticket. What the Phillies have done with their own stored value system is take one of their $60 seats and make it into a $90 seat with $30 worth of stored value. Through the barcode, you can go to any POS station and redeem the remaining value on the ticket. The other way it is used is to add stored value on an existing ticket. A corporate season ticket holder can use the system to load concessions money onto the barcode of the ticket. This allows the corporate ticket holder to give his client four tickets and $40 each (or whatever amount they choose) to spend on concessions.

VT: How does the season ticket-holder manage his stored value account?
SD: The system has a customer portal for online management of stored value accounts. Imagine that a season ticket holder has a $1,000 of stored value that floats over their season package. This system allows them to assign different dollar amounts to different tickets.

VT: What kind of promotional opportunities can the teams build into the stored value system?
SD: Tons. Let’s use a hypothetical example. Imagine you’re an Angels fan and Coke sponsors a promotion that if Vladimir Guerrero hits a homerun in the 7th inning, everyone in section 330 gets $15 worth of Coke products, valid for that day. If he did hit a homerun, you could do a mass upload onto everyone’s ticket in that particular section, and that value could only be used to purchase Coke products. The promotional opportunities are endless.

VT: What happens with any left over money on the ticket?
SD: It can be used anywhere else in the park. It’s almost the same as a gift card, but instead of a magnetic strip you’re using the barcode on the ticket.

VT: Can you get a refund of your remaining balance?
SD: It’s all business rules of the individual client. Some clients have a “use-it-or-lose-it” mentality.

VT: Aren’t there federal laws mandating that vendors can’t take left over gift card balances?
SD: Yes there are. But, many teams are calling stored value a “coupon” because it's no longer a $60 seat with a $30 gift certificate. It’s now a $90 seat with a $30 coupon. If, however, someone buys additional value on their ticket through a customer portal, then the teams are subject to federal gift card laws.

VT: Which teams are implementing stored value?
SD: The Phillies are using Paciolan software and they’ve developed their own system. The Giants will be using Uptix this season with ProVenue. The competitor is a company called STADIS, which has launched stored value with the Washington Nationals and the Pittsburgh Pirates.

VT: What is your projected growth for Uptix?
SD: Within the next few years, a majority of the sports and entertainment organizations that have a lot of season tickets will have some type of stored value product. It intrigues everyone. The key is getting your arms around it on a venue-by-venue basis and deciding what you want to accomplish.

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 >

Venues Today - Talking Points: Tickets.com Employee Profile

Chaeli Walker
Marketing Manager, Communications
TICKETS.COM

HOMETOWN: Huntington Beach, Calif.

FIRST JOB IN THE INDUSTRY: Associate Marketing Manager at Tickets.com

FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOUR JOB: I love all the different people I get to meet and no two days are ever the same.

HARDEST PART OF YOUR JOB: Deadlines. It seems there's always a deadline.

FAVORITE VENUE: The Greek Theatre, Los Angeles

FIRST EVENT EVER ATTENDED: Depeche Mode during the Black Celebration Tour at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre in Irvine, Calif.

FAVORITE FOOD AT CONCESSION STAND: I always go for the frosty beer, but I'm not sure if that is food.

WHO WOULD PLAY AT YOUR DREAM CONCERT: Led Zeppelin and Frank Sinatra. The two would make a very unrealistic ticket.

BEST ADVICE: Accept whatever situation you're in and do your best to deal with it.

THINGS PEOPLE WOULD BE SURPRISED TO LEARN ABOUT YOU: When I'm on the basketball court, I can shoot a mean three-pointer.

Tickets.com Congratulates John Bolton, Winner of VenuesToday Award

The 2008 recipient for VenuesToday "Hall of Headlines" Award in Bookings goes to Tickets.com client John Bolton, General Manager SMG-BOK Center

John Bolton, General Manager of the SMG-BOK Center , Tulsa, OK., won this honor for the grand opening of the 19,000-seat arena with separate dates for the Eagles, Kenny Chesney with LeAnn Rimes, American Idol Live, Rascal Flatts with Taylor Swift, Jeff Dunham, World Tour of Gymnastics Superstars, and an NBA Exhibition Game (Houston Rockets vs. OKC).

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 >

Ticket industry News: Ticket Summit Wraps Up Conference with Justice on Their Side

by Dave Brooks
August 2008 issue of Venues Today

LAS VEGAS - Ticket Summit wrapped up its third annual conference in the desert, bringing together its broadest mix of primary and secondary ticket providers to date. TicketNetwork CEO and President Don Vaccaro said he plans to expand the event to twice per year and will be holding the winter session in New York City on Jan. 6-8, 2009.

"We're continuing to see the blending of the primary and secondary in many segments of the marketplace and we're seeing a continued demand for this type of dialogue," said Vaccaro. "It's also an opportunity for our partners on the East Coast to participate in Ticket Summit."

Vaccaro estimated that over 450 registrants and 22 exhibitors participated in this year's conference, which included a keynote address from Avery Gardiner, counsel to the Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department's Anti-Trust division. Gardiner told the audience that she would not be able to comment on specific cases, but that didn't stop the audience from getting a pulse on Ticketmaster's recent acquisition of TicketsNow.

"What alternatives do customers have if prices suddenly increased because of the acquisition? Our job is to predict how consumers will act in the future," she told the audience, offering a tacit pact to watch the acquisition deal years after it is complete.

"Just because something doesn't seem to harm competition today doesn't mean we can't revisit it five years from now and take up the issue again," she said.

And as it had been just one week prior at the National Association of Ticket Brokers annual conference, Ticketmaster's acquisition of TicketsNow remained a hot topic of discussion, surfacting in almost all 12 panel discussions.

"Ticketmaster thinks that if they can eliminate brokers, they can capture all the revenue," said Eric Baker from resale site Viagogo. He believes Ticketmaster's recent attempts to control ticket transferability are an example of their malaise for brokers.

"Tickets will always be transferable because that's what people want," he said. "If you tell me I need to show my passport, blood type and eyeball scan, I'm not going to want to go."

Derek Palmer of Tickets.com said most primaries aren't trying to squeeze out brokers, but they do want a piece of the action.

"The cost to participate in this market is going up while our revenues are going down," he said. "I assure you that we have the lowest margins in this room."

Palmer said primaries are beginning to change the way they look at ticket value, scrutinizing "the final price the ticket is sold for."

"We have the key differentiator - we have the data about the customer and the remaining inventory," he said. "The data can be worth more than the individual ticket sold."

Ticket Industry News: Ahead of the Curve

Venue managers keep pace with technology, but there's room for improvement

by Dave Brooks
Venues Today

Venue managers are continuing to adopt new technologies, although most find themselves catching up with current trends instead of leading the pack, a Venues Today survey in conjunction with Turnkey Sports and Entertainment found.

Venues Today surveyed 91 facility operators at arenas, amphitheatres, convention centers, fairgrounds, performing arts centers and stadiums and found that 86 percent believed the industry as a whole is keeping up with innovations, or leading the way. But when asked how they thought their own facility was keeping pace, only 64 percent answered in the affirmative.

"That's the thing about technology, there's always a sense that you're behind someone else," said Mark Petracca of Vtech Communication's Network Division, which helps install networking platforms for large-scale consumer business. "We tell our clients that technology tends to dramatically evolve every 18 months and becomes obsolete every 30-36 months. With a pace like that, it's no wonder that a lot of our clientele feel it's pointless to buy into new systems because it could be useless in three years."

But in the same breath, Petracca notes that not evolving technological touch points, especially in the communications sector, is perilous.

"You have to upgrade your system in smart ways, one that does its best to foresee future technological improvements and can adapt to those changes," he said.

Petracca is overseeing the company's installation of wireless internet systems for large commercial facilities. Wireless Internet upgrades were the top technological improvement identified by venue managers in the survey, with 27 percent saying they have installed wireless platforms at their facilities.

"It's not just about creating a space where people can get on the web and check their MySpace accounts," said Felix Hernandez, director of communications for the Los Angeles Convention Center. "Wireless capabilities are central to almost every aspect of the meeting planning industry and our clients are demanding we provide this service."

Hernandez said the Los Angeles Convention Center's network can be subdivided between users, each getting their own secured server to share information. Broadcast media have increasingly used a specially secured "media server" that allows them to send feeds to their newsrooms without running cables to their news vans, while planners tap into the network with wireless control devices that keep an accurate head-count of attendees.

Tickets were the next advancement in technology, with 35 percent of respondents estimating that their box offices would lead the venue's technological revolution. Approximately 21 percent said their facilities used some type of wireless ticket device to control access to their facilities, while five percent said they even had success with mobile phone technology.

The Arizona State Fair, Phoenix, is taking its tickets wireless after a successful two-year run with a wireless midway powered by Ray Cammack Shows, said Kristen Walsh, the fair's marketing director.

"The goal was to eliminate counterfeit tickets and get real time attendance updates," she said of the system powered by Ticketmaster. "We've also had some success using it for our concert series."

Derek Palmer of Tickets.com said he wasn't surprised that mobile phone ticketing was identified as the largest technological growth area behind advanced LED displays.

"There's a lot of curiosity out there about this product," Palmer said. "Essentially it delivers the ticket to the user's mobile phone via SMS text messaging, which in turn can be read from a barcode scanner."

Like "ticket-less" credit card tickets being developed by Ticketmaster, Palmer said the cell phone tickets prevent scalping because they're nearly impossible to exchange.

And while ticketing took the lead for most likely to introduce change, concessions was voted most unlikely to adapt to new technological trends wit 50 percent of respondents reporting that they were doubtful they would see any long term technological changes from their food providers.

"That doesn't surprise me because kitchens are developed for long term use," said concessions consultant Chris Bigelow of Bigelow Industries. "Kitchens are a major part of the design phase and we're getting much better at making the right decisions early on. If you ask venues if they felt their concessionaires were adjusting to today's tastes, a majority of them would respond yes."

In terms of budgeting, two-thirds of respondents said they spend between zero-to-10 percent on technological innovations, while 19 percent said they spend between 11-20 percent of their budgets on technological improvements. While an overwhelming majority of respondents reported that their technology budgets hadn't changed in the last two years, 58 percent reported that their budgets have increased over the past five years.

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Venues Today: Blending of Primary and Secondary Still Causing a Stir Between Ticket Pros

ANAHEIM, Calif. & LAS VEGAS — There’s little doubt that the merging of the primary and secondary ticket markets is underway, but just how close are the two sides to coming together as a single industry? Two recent panels at industry conventions — one for ticket brokers, the other for venue managers — show that both sides are far apart on many issues.

Ticket brokers who gathered in Las Vegas July 24-26 for Ticket Summit said they were still frustrated with major ticket companies over what they considered to be roadblocks to the buying and selling of tickets. Just days later, facility managers and box office professionals gathered at the International Association of Assembly Managers conference in Anaheim, Calif., July 25-29 and told a panel of ticketing professionals that they still didn’t believe they were getting their fair share of secondary revenue.

Ticket Summit was a mix of the primary and the secondary, hosting a panel that featured Eric Baker from Viagogo, Greg Bettinelli of StubHub, Jeff Lapin from Razorgator, Derek Palmer from Tickets.com, Jeff Scheman from TicketNetwork and Chris Tsakalakis from eBay.

“There continues to be this sense of unfairness by the consumer, the promoter and in many cases, the venue manager, that tickets for concerts in taxpayer-funded facilities are inaccessible to most people,” said Rod Pilbeam, executive director of AEG Ogden in Brisbane, Australia.

Pilbeam’s comment reflected a larger sentiment that still prevails among many facility managers — that buildings and box offices take large risks on concerts, often face excruciatingly tight margins and usually only see the negative side of brokers; namely counterfeit or misleading tickets.

“I’m getting squeezed by promoters who want a piece of every revenue stream,” said Michael Combs of the Tacoma (Wash.) Dome. “Our margins are shrinking all the time, but we log onto sites like StubHub and see tickets going for two to three times their face value, and we’re not seeing any of that income.”

The sense of inequity is coupled with a growing frustration towards aggressive ticket acquisition, where brokers use automated and non-automated means to purchase and resell tickets, along with an increase in secondary ticket listings that aren’t yet available to the public.

“We’re seeing a lot of this frustration communicated to the primary ticket companies because there are very few avenues for direct dialogue between the box office and those reselling tickets,” said Alan Rakov of Ticketmaster’s TicketExchange.

Primary ticketing companies were also the focus of frustration during Ticket Summit, with many brokers complaining that primary forays into secondary tickets could shrink overall market share for brokers.

Broker Russ Altman said he considered paperless tickets, like the ones used on the recent Tom Waits tour to block resale, to be an act of hostility toward the broker community.

“Why don’t the ticket companies stand up to the venues and refuse to develop technology that limits the ability of the buyer to control the ticket,” he said. “It’s our ticket, we paid for it and the ticket companies shouldn’t assist the venues in blocking us out.”

The paperless system Altman spoke of was developed by primary giant Ticketmaster, who recently purchased secondary marketplace TicketsNow.

“The big question is going to be how Ticketmaster balances out the needs of its primary clients while also continuing to rely on brokers to provide the inventory of secondary sites,” said broker Harris Rosner. “There have been some signs that Ticketmaster can move some inventory directly onto the secondary, but in our conversations with (Ticketmaster CEO) Sean Moriarty, he’s made it very clear that Ticketmaster will continue to work with brokers to supply the site.”

The other big disagreement between the two sides will likely center around customer data, said Jeff Lapin of RazorGator.

“Owning your customer is going to become more important than ever,” Lapin told the audience at Ticket Summit. — Dave Brooks