MARCH | COVER FEATURE
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GETTING INTO THE ‘NITTY GRITTY’
Following recommendations in the
DCMS ' Live Music report, Access
rounds up some of the key industry
figures' concerns…
TICKETING REFORM, AND
RISKS
The minutiae of how ticketing
companies and venues can operate
responsibly has been hotly debated…
» 1. Lucinda Brown, venue business
manager, Islington Assembly
Hall
We are often on the frontline
receiving the emotional distress
of fans that ticketing companies
and promoters maybe don’t see so
much. As Islington Assembly Hall,
we decided that we wanted to be
part of the solution to stop touts
and secondary ticketing by making
the decision to go with DICE, which
is a digital ticketing company. We
have noticed a dramatic difference
in even our business, because before
when a show was sold out, we would
be at 75% capacity. As a small venue,
it is one of the most distressing
things: you are losing your bar sales,
which is the thing that keeps you
afloat in your business.
With our change to digital
ticketing, we have noticed that we
are at 90% capacity on a sold-out
show, which is where obviously all
venues just want the customers
to come in, the customers who
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are buying the tickets to be in the
venue. In this short space of time it
has really improved, so we hope that
everybody else will engage with a
solution like this.
The fact that all the other
ticketing companies are having
resale within their ticketing
platforms is following the line
that DICE have started with their
waiting list, which enables fans to
buy tickets from other fans who
cannot go, and also ticket transfers,
which is what we get asked as a
venue every day: how can I give my
ticket to my friend?
» 2. Stuart Galbraith, Kilimanjaro
Live
To put it bluntly, we are starting
to clear up the acne that has
blighted our industry, and I think
that we are coming to the point
where we just have one major boil
left to lance: Viagogo.
Certainly, our company’s
objective in our ticketing strategy
is to sell as many tickets as possible
and put as many tickets as possible
into the hands of customers at face
value. To that end, we run a wide
distribution model. We sell tickets
or make ticket allocations available
to as many different outlets as we
possibly can, and then obviously
we benefit from the marketing
input that we get from those in
return and it helps amplify the
profile of the tour. The problem we
face is that if a rogue company or a
company refuses to co-operate, at
this point in time, because of the
non-compliance on the detail of
listing tickets under the CRAs—in
other words, if a ticket has been
blatantly sold at above face value, if
it does not carry seat, row and block
information or its unique ticket
number, we are powerless because
we cannot identify where that ticket
came from or, indeed, the exact
detail of that ticket to enable us to
cancel it and then put it back in the
marketplace at face value.
» 3. Andrew Parsons, managing
director, Ticketmaster
There has been much greater
effort to be able to establish who
those primary sellers are and who
you should be looking to go to.
STAR, the Society of Ticket Agents
and Retailers, is obviously also
offering an official kitemark for that,
which we always try to be able to
point to. I think there is a greater
degree of transparency now than
perhaps there once was, but I am
sure there is more that can be done.
We want to get to a point where
more and more we take away
the pieces of paper that enable
people to very easily move them
on—for them to be very easily
touted—and to move to a digital
world where we are able to exercise
controls in conjunction with the
artist, manager, producer, event
organiser, whoever that might be,
and their wishes. I do absolutely
agree that technology is going to be
the solution to this. We are already
seeing it now and I think it will go
further in that direction, absolutely.
As experienced across many
e-commerce businesses, there
is a war against bots. Bots have
become really sophisticated and
represent a moving target. As such
it is impossible to give a definitive
position as to any one specific bot.
In response we have assembled
a dedicated team that have built
and constantly update a very