Intix: Technology To Drive Box Office Evolution

The future is now for ticketing in Japan.

Use of wireless technology has far surpassed use in the U.S., to a point that Hiroshi Yanai, CEO, PIA Corp., said "access to the Internet is more often by mobile phone than by PC [personal computer]" in that country. One of every two people in Japan has a mobile phone.

Addressing attendees of Intix here Jan. 30-Feb. 2, Yanai said PIA currently has 65% of the market share in ticket service in Japan. It deals with 80,000 events with sales of more than 11 million tickets to everything from films to parks to events.

They have 400,000 PIA Card members who pay $35 annually for advance ticket reservations, discounts on travel, etc. Payment is via the Internet with credit card partners like JCB, Visa and MasterCard. Club PIA has 100,000 members paying $5 for advance ticket sales.

While people order tickets via wireless transaction, most are picked up at 14,000 convenience store outlets throughout Japan.

High tech companies are stockholders in PIA, and it has taken ticketing well beyond entertainment into travel, hotel, and restaurant tickets, often tied to the event, Yanai said.

Speakers from several leading edge companies in ticketing technology spoke during Intix. John Pleasants, president, Ticketmaster, believes "live event ticketing is a rich area that will survive the shakeout" in technology, but he added "this is the eye of the storm."

In Pleasants' opinion, it's imperative to "look for risk; that's a mandate of leadership" in the ticketing marketplace.

Andrew Donkin, Tickets.com, pointed to the San Francisco Giants "digitizing the venue to deliver the secondary market" as a major barometer of ticketing today. That baseball team's "Double Play Ticket Window," which allows people to sell seats they can't use, is revolutionary, he said.

A statistical and logistical triumph in Australia has to do with ezyTicket, a print-at-home, barcoded offer that went up for Cirque du Soleil. Craig McMaster, TickeTek Australia and TickeTek Hong Kong, said the ezyTicket was accepted by 720 turnstiles set up for Cirque du Soleil performances throughout Australia. The project was a success and demonstrated that "the best edge is the quality of customer service," McMaster said.

Donkin noted that by 2009, "the digital divide will go away." Everyone will have the same shot at a technologically distributed ticket. The change in mindset is already obvious. He noted that when the University of Nebraska decided to broadcast a football game on the Internet free of charge, "they had people buy computers just to access the game."

Putting any discussion of technology today into perspective, Angus Watson, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, Ill., looked back at remarks made on that same topic during an Intix (them BOMI) convention in 1985. At the time, the IBM PC was celebrating its fourth birthday; the Mac was 1 year old; the first cell phone had been launched in Chicago two years ago; windows were still looked through and palm reading was done at the fairgrounds, Watson recalled. "And the Dow was at 1200 points.

Change is more rapid than ever. "The common element is us," Watson said. "People like to deal with people, however good the technology is."

Jean Francois Brousseau, Ticketmaster, recalled the major topic of discussion in 1985, as he remembered it, was the service charge. "We fixed that. It became part of our life."

In predicting the future, one must not miss the nuances. Brousseau noted that it appears with the Internet, e-mail and portable devices, it's "the beginning. We've eliminated the operator and moved that work to the end user. The dream now is to find more ways to use technologies."

Brousseau recalled that in the '70s and '80s, "we made our tickets mobile with computerization. Now, with print-at-home, we keep the ticket mobile longer — until it gets used."

Ticketmaster's big success story based on the new technology was in group sales. Brousseau said the company sold 36,000 tickets to 14 shows of Cirque du Soleil to Cisco Corp. using print-your-own technology.

"Sixty percent of the people printed the tickets from the Web. There was no publicity, no press release. People just expect these things to be there. They explain it to us and then we build it," Brousseau said. The experiment had a 92% satisfaction rating, he added.

McMaster noted that there is still a lot of consistency, despite change and technology. Tickets are still sold across traditional channels. "Many things are the same as they were 10 years ago," he said.

The key to real change is the ability to interface, McMaster said. "We need open interface to connect to all new technologies."

McMaster also agreed with several speakers that the focus has to be the customer. "It's not about the toys, it's what the customer wants; and speed counts."

Looking down the road, McMaster believes "data ownership will be challenged. Who owns the customer?" The customer profiling systems being developed will allow for targeted marketing and 24/7 customer support, he said.

Donkin said the problem is competing platforms. "It will be a couple of years before technology is standardized in the U.S. Asia and Australia have one platform," he said of the successes touted in those countries.

The U.S. is even a laggard in terms of interactive TV. By 2004, 252 million households worldwide will have digital set top boxes doing $7 billion in commerce, Donkin said. The broadband satellite accounts for about 30% of Internet access and is 2000 times faster than analog.

That brings up the "issue of fairness. What about people with slower access at home," Donkin said.

Softix, a 100% owned subsidiary of TickeTek Australia, is headed toward "Internet sales, mobile telephony, print-at-home technology and multi-language capability," McMaster said.

It can only help that the big technology companies, like Nokia, see the ticketing product as very viable.