Technology in Stadia Seating & Ticketing

Historically stadia use to sell tickets and leave it to audience about where they want to sit, irrespective of the stadium occupancy. Now, it is evident that seating format is equally one of the focus areas in the trends & developments we have seen in stadia industry. While there is also a change in sitting preferences in the audience in terms of physical comfort and the people with whom they want to sit with.

Role of technology in stadia seating & ticket pricing

There is an emergence of technology that is supporting the stadia for more profits as well as the spectators for improved and better experience. The technology industry and other related vendors are making business out of this opportunity. Ticketmaster, Ballena Technologies, Comcast-Spectacor etc are playing are major role in supporting stadia for proper & more spectator occupancy and better experience.

Ticketonomics is an old model for market predictions & decisions. While Ticket Analytics is the tool, which is currently in demand for proper ticketing and to make strategic profit-making business decisions. Ticket Analytics supported with in-depth database is one of the major revolutions in ticketing technologies. This allows ticketers to see past ticket sales and other statistics about their ticket purchasers in real-time as well as easily manage and add events. Hence the emphasis on customer preferences, ticketing trends, industry benchmarks and other customized data gives ticketers insight into how, where and to whom they should sell tickets. This leads to strategic planning of spectator occupancy & ticket pricing based on the game, season, demand for the game, market conditions to predict number of audience, etc,. These kind of comprehensive analytics and reporting dashboard ticket tools allow ticketers to

• » Access real time sales data for a specific period or event or over a period to understand trends or patterns in ticket purchase traffic from different sites, geographies, etc,
• » Understand graphical comparisons of ticket sales demand statistics month to month or event to event to see which events are top-selling
• » Understand the site traffic through web analytics, like site visits, average time spent on site, unique visits, and page views
• » Add and manage multiple events and
• » Manage social media tools

The real time data on the origin of ticket purchases allows clients to understand where they should focus their marketing efforts. The user friendly feature in software lets user to understand statistics in the form of charts, graphs and data interpretation. Based on this information ticketers make immediate and necessary changes to their marketing efforts to be more strategic in their business steps.

Ticketers are equally focusing on spectator experience and taking steps to give improved services. In order to give more open choice to spectators, venues adopted 3D view of its stadium seating that is integrated into their ticketing process in online and manual ticket booking. This method enabled ticketers to make more effective ticket pricing based on the view angle, distance from the ground, etc that led industry more profits.

Sponsor Interactive is an interactive sponsorship administration tool from Ballena Technologies assist with the sales, marketing and management of sponsors. So, this is not just a sales tool, it is a main platform to share, track, review and alert sponsors during the relationship period. The core features involves

• » Interaction with current and future sponsors on one platform
• » Inventory showcase in 3-D
• » Generating customized sales decks for each presentation and
• » Manage the sponsorship experience

Innovation in seat mapping

There is a large pool of market which is ready to pay more to select where they want to sit. In order to trap this market, Ticketmaster has come up with an Interactive Seat Map in 3-D, through which spectators can select their seating beside or around the people they prefer. This tool is placed on Facebook where individuals get a chance to select the seats they want to sit, tag them to seat and share their entertainment plans with friends or everyone or no one. This revolution is moving online ticketing experience to social media platform and brings a wide online conversion rate at high ticket pricing for the ticketers.

Ticketmaster web site has launched this new Interactive Seat Map feature for 2012 Toyota AFL Season and Gold Coast Suns Fans to choose their preferred seats at the 27,500 seat Metricon stadium. Currently more than 35 of its clients are taking advantage of this feature and has seen acceptance by users to personalize their live entertainment experiences to their own needs with Interactive Seat Maps that resulted generating a dramatic increase in online conversion rate. So, the maps have helped sell more overall tickets with a significant increase in sales within higher price categories.

A successful customer delight brings in successful customer engagement. So, these innovations generate lot of demand for the tools and services in the ticketing industry, from business to businesses and business to customers.