TM’s McAuliffe On Self-Service Ticketing

There are a couple of players in the market that cater to the individual needs of event organizers, for example Eventbrite, Ticketlight and Universe. They call themselves self-service platforms. Joseph McAuliffe, director of business development at Ticketmaster subsidiary Universe, spoke to Pollstar about what that actually means.

“In the context of Universe, self-service means event organizers using our tools have control over every aspect of their events independently. They can fully set up their event ticketing, manage attendees, create discount codes or access keys, issue refunds and run promotional campaigns on their own,” he explained.

It also means that event organizers “can sell tickets directly on their website or Facebook page,” without being redirected to Universe, “integrate with over 500 third party apps and bulk upload comp tickets – all independently, without help from IT,” McAuliffe continued. “We also offer self-service tools at-the-door, allowing organizers to use our free apps to manage attendees, scan QR coded tickets and even sell onsite.“

When developing any ticketing platform, the lifecycle of an event including the known pain points have to be taken into account. Selling tickets and managing attendees is only the first half of the equation. The second half is marketing, which is why respective tools have become a standard.

“For example, we help event organizers leverage data from their marketing initiatives and easily track conversions from individual campaigns through our built-in integration with Google Tag Manager. 

“Another example is our social deals, which allow event organizers to incentivize fans to spread the word about their events. Organizers can offer an optional discount at checkout if fans tweet about the event. We see around 70% of attendees tweeting about events when this feature is turned on, leading to far greater awareness and ticket sales,” McAullife explained.

There is a difference between the traditional concert or festival world and events such as conferences, fundraisers, workshops, shows, galas to independent festivals and free gigs, which is the space self-service platforms get involved in.

“Some concerts and festivals typically take place in arenas or venues with seating charts, or a complexity that requires a lot more set-up and infrastructure, and some even require a physical box office solution and more hands on approach. These types of events aren’t the best fit for a self-service solution like Universe, and are much better served by Ticketmaster or TicketWeb,” McAuliffe sums it up.