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That’s the Ticket!
By Melody Kramer
SPORT ARENAS and entertainment centers are always
searching for new ways to draw customers to their venues. Rising ticket
prices and affordable home entertainment options give few incentives for
customers to leave their homes to attend a movie or baseball game, and when
they do, these customers expect to get an experience worth the ticket price.
With this in mind, facility managers have started to rethink the way
ticketing can enhance the overall experience of their patrons while in turn
giving facility personnel valuable information about the customer
experience.
Dave Scarborough, executive vice president of technology for Tickemaster,
says the industry is in the midst of a second evolution in ticketing. In the
’90s, venues went from ripping stubs to scanning a bar code. Today, the
trend is to
make the process even more customer-friendly as
well as beneficial to facility managers.
“Ticket personnel no longer have to
count stubs. Also, the new forms of ticketing
help take some counterfeit tickets out of the
pool,” Scarborough says. “It also helps the
customer by giving them more control over
their tickets and how to dispense them.”
LESS WAITING, MORE DATA
Customers who don’t want to wait in line at the box
office now have more options before they even
reach the theater. They can print the ticket at
home, or have their tickets delivered directly
to a phone or PDA with the appropriate bar
code to be read by the venue’s scanners.
“Printing tickets at home has really
changed the way we do ticketing,” says
Fred Maglione, president of New Era
Tickets. “It has changed the way the
traditional ticket looks and feels, and gives more
control to the customer.”
Stephen Cassar, president and CEO of TicketSage Inc., estimates that
print-at-home tickets now average about 32 to 43 percent of the total ticket
market. That number will only increase over time, he says, eventually
reducing or even eliminating the need for box office ticket windows.
“Allowing customers to purchase tickets online frees valuable resources that
can then be used to increase the level of service the box office can provide
patrons,” Cassar says. “But more importantly, venues that see an increase in
online sales also typically see an increase in overall sales of 5 percent or
more.”
Customers can also have tickets delivered directly to their phone or PDA.
The bar codes on their device screens are scanned directly at the venue,
making it unnecessary for them to carry any paper copy of a ticket.
Ticketing officials believe that this electronic delivery will help to
reduce fraud. “Since the ticket goes directly to the owner of the phone or
PDA, it will be difficult for people who make counterfeit tickets,” Maglione
says. “I don’t think that it will get rid of scalpers, because there will
always be a market for consumers willing to pay
higher prices, but the chance of the ticket being genuine is much higher.”
Bar-code technology may soon be displaced, however, as venues integrate RFID,
or radio frequency identification, into their ticketing technology. RFID,
currently used in European ticketing markets, allows ticket buyers to place
tickets and value onto a smart card or device, which in turn lets them enter
facilities, purchase goods or services, and
receive interactive coupons that will drive them to
promotional on-site and off-site offers.
Robert B. Friend, vice president of sales and
marketing for Choice Ticketing Systems, says RFID will enhance the
integrated experience for the customer, and provide a new stream of revenue
for the facility. “The residual effect of this technology will be the
addition of new profit centers for the venue,
 as a percentage of each
interactive coupon used can be kicked back as a commission to the venue
for introducing the customer to an offer or
product,” Friend says.
Because each bar code or RFID is unique and directly linked to a customer’s
personal electronic device or smart card, it can also be used to set
predefined spending limits, allowing parents to prepurchase concessions for
their children. It also allows ticketing managers to move beyond raw
analytics and start zooming in on individual patron behavior to customize
the entertainment experience.
“As entertainment options continue to increase and patrons’ leisure time
shrinks, facility directors must become more targeted in their marketing
approach to ensure maximum audience sizes and revenue streams,” Cassar says.
“With the right technology and analytical/ psycho- graphic tools, there’s no
reason why facility managers can’t continually increase revenues and
attendance numbers, even in a down economy.”
Trackable metrics include how quickly a patron responded to a marketing
message, how often a patron purchases tickets and concessions, how early or
late a patron scans into the venue, and other purchases the patron makes
on-site. This information can be used to tailor individual experiences that
appeal directly to customers’ purchasing habits.
“Companies are realizing that it’s less about the ticket you just sold,”
says Derek Palmer, COO of Tickets.com. “It’s about helping your partners
sell the next ticket. Data availability and mobility are critical pieces to
managing the relationship with your patrons.”
Ticketmaster has created a process that allows customers to set up an online
account that will allow them to add
friends who can receive unused tickets. This process primarily benefits
people who have season tickets to a sporting event or a theater series,
Scarborough says.
“When you think about the migration of a ticket, it can go through three to
five hands before it actually gets to the venue so the venue really has no
control over that ticket,” he says.
The new flex system keeps the customer from having to physically hand out
tickets, making a more fluid exchange, and also gives the venue the
opportunity to know who is coming to an event.
AN INTEGRATED EXPERIENCE
Facilities are also examining ways to integrate concession sales with the
overall ticketing experience. One popular trend is to give customers the
option to buy concession items along with their movie or sports ticket at a
kiosk within or directly outside the theater. In addition to movie tickets,
concession vouchers can be printed from the kiosk, speeding up the
purchasing process for customers and providing more revenue for venues.
“Being able to load a ticket and provide one-stop shopping is what our
customers want,” says Jack Lucas, president of TicketsWest/WestCoast
Entertainment. “The challenge with one-stop shopping is developing an
integration between the ticketing system and your point-of-service stations
for food, beverage and merchandise. To be truly beneficial, you have to
create an interface to link the two systems so they can work in tandem.”
Greg Coman is the founder of Omniterm Data Technology,
a software company that has installed hundreds of kiosks at entertainment
venues to integrate one-stop shopping onto tickets for the consumer. He says
both the customer and facility benefit from the integration. “The cinema
sells more concession items, increasing profits,” Coman says. “The moviegoer
gets through the lines faster.”
AVOIDING FRAUD
Unfortunately for facilities, customers have a third option for obtaining
tickets: the secondary market, which includes resellers and auction Web
sites. For instance, sites
like eBay.com and Craigslist.com offer tickets for sale to customers, posing
problems for facility managers who want to measure key metrics about
individual customers. When a customer buys a ticket from Craigslist.com, the
facility manager accumulates metrics on the reseller, not the patron. In
addition, the secondary market prevents facility managers from accumulating
data about customers in order to provide increased security at events.
“If, heaven forbid, someone commits an act of terror at a game or concert,
the authorities will want a detailed manifest so they can immediately notify
families and properly conduct an investigation to determine the
perpetrators,” Cassar says. “This isn’t an easy task with the secondary
market as it stands.”
The solution, Cassar says, is to deal with the problem at the point of
admission, using products such as Flash Seats and TicketVerify to verify
tickets sold on the secondary market. Flash Seats is an e-ticketing system
that allows customers to resell their tickets online in a controlled online
marketplace. TicketVerify, from TicketSage, can detect whether a ticket has
been resold or transferred at an event’s point of entry. The venue can then
choose whether or not to admit the patron.
Facility managers and box offices can also work directly with the secondary
market. “I think that the secondary market will always exist,” Palmer says.
“But if we provide the best option through integrated products and services,
more people will choose to use our tools.”
IT’S NOT JUST A TICKET
Despite the move toward electronic ticketing trends, paper tickets likely
won’t become obsolete in the next five years. One reason: Customers want a
paper memento as a souvenir.
“In all reality, I think there’s still a lot of emotion in having that paper
ducat in your hand when attending your favorite event,” Lucas says. “Many
times, we find patrons coming up to the box office during the event
requesting that we print them off a paper ticket because they purchased
online and did a print-at-home ticket. They would rather have a ‘real’
ticket for a souvenir.”
However, for a new generation of concertgoers who are used to everything
being high tech, many bands offer a new form of souvenir, Maglione says. “A
lot of bands are beginning to allow concertgoers the ability to download a
live version of that night’s show. This will become the new memento for the
younger generation.”
Box offices, on the other hand, may be living on borrowed time. The days of
needing to wait for tickets in the mail or stand in will-call lines are
certainly over — a change that promises to improve the event-going
experience for customers and facilities alike.
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Melody Kramer is a writer living in Chicago.
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