Ticket to the future
Two years of relative event inactivity during the pandemic gave ticketing companies time to explore new and innovative ways to gain income and drive the sector forward .
Access investigates the latest developments
Words : Joe Gallop .
With the events industry coping with an extremely crowded market , it is not just promoters and event owners who are looking to stand out from the crowd .
Since Covid-19 struck , the ticketing sector has seen operators including Dice , Ticketmaster and Festicket move into livestreaming , companies explore new ways of using technology such as palm recognition software and blockchain , while othes have found alternative ways to differentiate themselves – for instance , Ticketpass focusing on ethical initiatives .
With contactless digital transactions having become almost ubiquitous since the arrival of the pandemic , the move to mobile digital ticketing has significantly gathered pace . The decline in paper ticketing has not only brought logistical and environmental advantages but helped reduce opportunities for touts .
Driving digital Festicket and Event Genius COO Reshad Hossenally , who began selling tickets by hand while at university , says the advantages of digital tickets are endless .
“ We can do upselling , we can sell cashless credits and do promotional offers that are linked to a ticket . Our ticket is now much more powerful than just a simple ticket for entry – it actually becomes a payment device and an access device across the event .”
Among the ticketers focusing heavily on digital mobile ticketing is AEGowned AXS , through which AEG-owned and operated The O2 arena has moved to 100 % digital ticketing .
AXS launched its digital ticketing system Mobile ID in spring 2019 , which was tied into it also becoming the resale partner for The O2 arena and OVO Arena Wembley – having taken over from StubHub . The company ’ s Mobile ID system underpins its secondary ticketing platform AXS Official Resale , which was launched around the same time and limits the price of re-sold tickets to a maximum of 10 % above the face value .
AXS director of ticketing Paul Newman says the pandemic accelerated the move to digital by three to five years : “ One thing that the pandemic did afford all of us was a chance to look at procedures and the need to go to digital for many reasons .”
He says that one of the huge advantages of using digital ticketing is it enables operators to know the identity of everyone in a venue , which brings safety advantages and means they can be contacted if there is a last-minute change to an event .
Newman also emphasises the environmental advantages : “ Before , someone on the venue ticketing team would have to print off hundreds and thousands of physical tickets a year and send them off to ticketing companies . If they weren ’ t sold they had to send them back and these were going around the country in couriers .”
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