Features
Future Of Flash Seats
Veritix’s Flash Seats, an electronic ticketing platform that got its start in the sports world, recently inked deals with Denver’s Kroenke Sports Enterprises and the
The company’s showing no signs of slowing down any time soon.
Veritix President Jeff Kline told Pollstar Flash Seats is poised for substantial growth in the concert world given its unique capabilities. He also gave a reason as to why Ticketmaster hasn’t offered up ticket transfer capabilities in its own paperless ticketing product.
“We are the only computerized, fully integrated platform that has a primary and secondary ticketing solution,” he explained. “So in other words, you can buy your ticket on our primary system, then choose as a method of delivery Flash Seats, making it digital – never there having to be a hard ticket. Then you can either go to the event, can sell your ticket or transfer your ticket. It provides the maximum in flexibility.”
Kline said artists can set the rules on secondary sales and ticket transfers using Flash Seats. His company also apparently has an ace up its sleeve – a patent on the technology that allows people to transfer tickets electronically.
He referenced the upcoming Miley Cyrus paperless ticket arena tour as one example where those ticket transfer capabilities could prove useful.
“If for example we were able to do that on Flash Seats, understanding they didn’t want there to be any reselling of tickets for obvious reasons, you would still, with our technology, have had the ability to transfer a ticket to somebody with a unique ID,” he said. As it stands right now, parents who purchase tickets for their children will have to walk them to the door and swipe their credit card.
Asked about ticket transfer capabilities, a spokeswoman for Ticketmaster, which is ticketing the Cyrus tour, told Pollstar the company’s paperless platform is an “independent technology” and how and when it’s used is determined by TM clients.
Kline talks a lot about content owners, whether that means a sports team or an artist, and putting the control of ticket distribution and data back into their hands.
On the concert side, Flash Seats provided ticketing for Houston venue client the Toyota Center’s Elton John / Billy Joel date in March – reportedly the single largest digital paperless ticketed event ever.
Out of 16,612 tickets to that sold-out event, Kline said about 12,500 were provided through Flash Seats.
“With the cooperation of the venue and the artists, we were able to track and understand who was in each one of those seats, where they got those seats from, what they paid for those seats and where the fees and revenue would go,” he said. “One of the beauties of our platform and of Flash Seats is that when you have the ability to sell resell or transfer tickets electronically, every one of those transactions has data that comes along with it that is the power and the property of the [content owner].”