Select Ticketing is world leader in electronic-ticket sales

CNY Business Journal (1996+), Oct 28, 1996 by Apte, Vivek

A traveler from Berlin planning a trip to Syracuse wants to arrange some entertainment for her stay. Logging on to ticketslive.com, she quickly finds the Syracuse Symphony's listing. Going to the symphony's home page, she's delighted to find a Friday-night performance of The Nutcracker. She clicks on Ticket Information and specifies a section on the seating chart from which the system chooses the two best available tickets. She keys her name, address, credit-card number, and other details into a dialogue window. Moments later her reservation is confirmed, and prepaid tickets await her at the door on the night of the performance.

This scenario is quite real. At this writing, TicketsLive, an instant Internet ticketing service of Select Technologies Corporation, a Syracuse-based corporation, is in the secondary (or beta) stage of testing. The Syracuse Symphony is among TicketsLive's first clients. Another TicketsLive client is Syracuse University's Carrier Dome. The first ticket sold via TicketsLive--for a Syracuse University football game--was at this year's New York State Fair on Aug. 30. TicketsLive is offered to the public through its Select Ticketing systems division.

Real-time ticketing

Tickets had been sold on the Internet before Aug. 30, but SelectTicketing was the first to do it completely electronically, in "real time," and with reserved-admission tickets. Ticketmaster, for example, had sold tickets to the Lollapalooza concert event over the Internet. But these were general-admission tickets (no seating chart) and were processed manually with a two- to three-day wait between placing the order and receiving confirmation. According to Select Technology Corporation's director of corporate marketing, Charles Shatzkin, "TicketsLive stretches the box office from the venue to the consumer. This direct access to the venue's ticket inventory means that consumers get the best selection of the available tickets and instantaneous confirmation of their purchase."

Customers have the advantage of buying from home, at any hour. The advantage to event and venue promoters is higher sales resulting from increased visibility and access to tickets and information. Shatzkin predicts that these advantages will, in time, expand the overall ticketing market.

One drawback to Internet ticketing is buyers' reluctance to disclose their credit-card numbers over the Internet. Shatzkin says he understands consumers' fears about keying in their credit-card number on the Internet. To prevent fraudulent use of buyers' credit-card numbers, Select Ticketing installed the most advanced encryption software available. In Shatzkin's view, the level of encryption provided allows for a greater level of security than buyers have when using a credit card at a restaurant, where the waiter can do whatever he wants with it out of the customer's sight. Plus, Shatzkin says, credit-card fraud is less likely in the ticketing market because whoever orders the ticket then has to show up at the venue and take the risk of being caught. To reduce further the likelihood of fraud, for a given performance or venue, TicketsLive restricts the number of tickets sold to any one credit-card account. This prevents people from buying large blocks of tickets to be "scalped" later.

The TicketsLive system is slated to be fully operational in January 1997. Although individuals can purchase tickets through the Web site, Shatzkin says that the primary points of sale initially are likely to be travel agencies and airlines. Select Ticketing is forming marketing alliances with some of these. Most U.S. airlines already have Internet Web sites to which TicketsLive can be linked. Select Ticketing's aim is to link TicketsLive to existing ticketing networks and strategic Web sites around the world.

In addition to being a place to buy tickets, Select Ticketing's Web site is also a clearinghouse for information on entertainment and places of interest. The Web site includes the names, addresses, and other contact information for events and venues worldwide, regardless of whether they are Select Ticketing clients. However, Select Ticketing's clients can be contacted with a single mouse click, whereas nonclients must be contacted via phone, mail, or fax. Select Ticketing provides clients, such as Syracuse Symphony, space for a Web page on its own Web server. In the future, non-Select clients' tickets will become available on a consignment basis through TicketsLive, Shatzkin says.

Revenue streams

Select Ticketing's primary source of income is service charges on tickets sold. Another source of income, as a visit to Select Ticketing's Web site reveals, is advertising. The Web site is popular with advertisers, Shatzkin says, because it is an excellent way to reach a specified target market. The company also expects to make additional money on software sales because of TicketsLive.

Although Select Ticketing's software and systems are geared primarily toward selling tickets, the company has for years been an industry leader in fundraising and marketing software. "Our systems are geared toward the effective marketing and management of a customer's operations." While anyone can sell a ticket, Shatzkin says, "Nobody has the level of comprehensive marketing and customer-history management that our system has."