Ticketfly Doubles Ticket Sales, Gains On Ticketmaster
Today, Ticketfly released sales figures for 2011. The social ticketing platform increased ticket sales twofold, as well as doubled the number of venues and promoters choosing their services. Historic rock venues like Capitol Theater in Port Chester, New York, and the Congress Theater in Chicago are now using Ticketfly.
The San Francisco-based start-up is aiming to take a chunk from Ticketmaster’s stronghold by offering more than just online ticket sales processing. Ticketfly also provides its clients with email marketing campaigns, iOS application support, analytics and even printing the tickets and providing the scanner technology.
“We like to think of ourselves as an enterprise tech provider for promoters,” CEO and founder Andrew Dreskin told Rolling Stone. Dreskin, who also launched the Virgin Mobile Festival, became known as the “father of online ticketing” after co-founding the first ever ticketing site, TicketWeb. He eventually sold the company to Ticketmaster, but their lack of innovation with his pet product encouraged him to give birth to Ticketfly.
High convenience fees and a glitchy, user-unfriendly experience have made Ticketmaster the “most hated brand in America” and an easy target for Dreskin and his Ticketfly team, he claims. According to Dreskin, convenience fees on Ticketfly are usually half that of Ticketmaster’s.
Ironically, the 2009 merging of Ticketmaster and Live Nation has also given Ticketfly a noted boom in business. Live Nation competitors are weary of relying on Ticketmaster to process ticket sales, as well as concerned with the counterintuitive business plan of giving Live Nation a cut of their profits and access to insider information.
Since the merger, Ticketfly has partnered with over 50 venues and promoters actively seeking for an alternative from doing business with Ticketmaster (and by proxy, Live Nation).
A key component of Ticketfly’s ongoing plan is also embracing the social web. In December, Ticketfly launched a Facebook ticketing app to enable promoters to sell tickets directly on Facebook while notifying users whenever their friends purchased show tickets. Mark Zuckerberg name-dropped Ticketfly for their social efforts at f8 back in September.
“In 2012 we will continue to focus on reinventing the consumer experience,” Dreskin said. “Ticketmaster still relies on antiquated legacy technology.”
But Ticketmaster is not so behind the social times. In August, they enhanced their venue maps to let users check out where their Facebook friends were seating.
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