Ticketing REPORT 2013
2012 Year End Worldwide Ticket Sales: Top 20 Arenas ARENA
LOCATION
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
The O2 arena Manchester Evening News Arena Palacio De Los Deportes The O2 – Dublin Bell Centre Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy Staples Center O2 World, Hamburg O2 World, Berlin Allstate Arena Motorpoint Arena Arena Ciudad De Mexico Air Canada Centre American Airlines Center Hallenstadion Zürich Madison Square Garden Arena Monterrey Rod Laver Arena SECC HP Pavilion at San Jose
London, UK Manchester, UK Mexico City, Mexico Dublin, Ireland Montreal, Canada Paris, France Los Angeles, USA Hamburg, Germany Berlin, Germany Rosemont, USA Sheffield, UK Mexico City, Mexico Toronto, Canada Dallas, USA Zürich, Switzerland New York, USA Monterrey, Mexico Melbourne, Australia Glasgow, UK San Jose, USA
“ Email is dying on its backside because open rates are shockingly low, click-through awful and conversion infinitesimal. Gone are the days when you could do ‘spray and pray’ email marketing” – Craig Massey, Last Second Tickets
AXS Invite, a facility enabling friends to book seats together even when paying separately, has already proved successful claims De Wulf. “We’re seeing an average increase in transaction sizes of up to 30-40% when fans use AXS Invite,” he says. In an effort to enhance AXS, AEG has acquired website developer Carbonhouse and has become a strategic investor in ByPass, a company that provides in-seat ordering and payment solutions for venues via a mobile app.
Targeting Customers Aside from new opportunities presented by mobile platforms, the possibilities created by big data and dynamic pricing are inspiring ticket operators to develop new services and enhance existing offerings. Among them is Christopher Goodhart, MD of Blackbaud Europe’s arts & cultural division. Blackbaud’s Standing Room Only 4 (SRO 4) online ticketing solution was launched in 2012 and is currently being used as far and wide as Europe, North America, Australia and Israel. “It takes us in a new direction,” claims Goodhart. “It’s a solution that could handle an event as big as the Olympics and deliver dynamic pricing in a different way. If you know someone’s birthday you can offer a special price for an event a week either side of it.
48 | IQ Magazine May 2013
TICKETS SOLD 1,577,180 962,328 730,250 620,776 612,479 587,471 565,162 552,086 544,572 523,791 518,405 496,572 488,747 475,459 456,537 453,894 450,313 447,128 444,902 432,088
Data courtesy of ‘Pollstar’
If sales are slow 20 days before an event we can push it with reduced prices; if the weather forecast is poor for an outdoor event, we can drop the prices accordingly,” Goodhart says. With offices in Copenhagen, Gothenburg and Oslo, Venuepoint Group is a major player in the Nordic region. Recent breakthroughs for the company include the addition of the Norwegian National Opera, Göteborgs Opera and Stavanger Konserthus to its venue clientele. In Denmark, online transactions account for more than 90% of ticket sales and Venuepoint was an early adopter of social media platforms, yet commercial director Einar Sævarsson says that activity on the likes of Facebook and Twitter has not had a tangible effect on sales. Elsewhere, social media is being embraced equally vigorously with more encouraging results. Myriad services are enabling tickets to be purchased directly from social networks online and via mobile devices. For the consumer, the ticket transaction experience has become more convenient and social, with the interactivity beginning with the on-sale and often building through the live event. Fans help to promote the shows by sharing details of a gig and their attendance, while promoters, venues and ticketing operators gain valuable data about ticket buyers and their social network as communities build around each transaction far beyond the initial purchaser. As a result, white-label social ticketing services including Toronto-based AudienceView and San Francisco’s Eventbrite and Ticketfly are attracting a growing number of promoter and venue customers of all shapes and sizes. In March, Eventbrite announced it had sold its 100 millionth ticket and its systems are being used in more than 175 countries for events ranging from yoga classes to music festivals. In an effort to help independent event organisers