Our news hound, The Insider, digs deeper behind the headlines into key ticketing business moves. This week: TixTrack as it makes its move from Broadway to West End, via Las Vegas.
TixTrack, the Santa Monica-based ticketing technology firm, announced it has integrated Apple Pay into Nliven, the company’s mobile-first ticketing system.
By adding Apple Pay to a buying process that already includes a fully interactive 3D-view from seat (pictured) as well as clear, colour-coded pricing, Nliven’s online ticket buying process is arguably the most informative and simple to use on the market.
The ApplePay website integration is a neat move. Currently, most Apple Pay implementations for ticket sales are built within apps. But TixTrack has, we believe, the first usage in a mobile-friendly web site.
Steven Sunshine, TixTrack’s CEO says the firm is committed to “improving the customer experience” and its mobile-first focus appears to be paying off. Cirque du Soleil has sold more than US$100m of tickets this year using TixTrack/Nliven for its resident shows in Las Vegas (up from a reported US$80m in March).
“In short, we do things that promoters need in the ticketing space”
“We’re seeing 50-300% improvement in conversion rates with our Nliven front end when compared with previous buying flows. Cirque seems to like what we have,” says Sunshine.
Francois Quirion at Cirque, told us that “in addition to boosting sales, TixTrack has greatly improved the overall experience our customers have during the ticketing process. Mobile really is the next frontier in online ticketing and Nliven has been at the core of our mobile efforts.”
“We’re not a ticketing company, but a ticketing technology company. That’s a key difference,” says Sunshine. “Yes, we have an enterprise-scale, white label ticketing solution but we’re also able to source feeds from third-parties to meet our client needs.”
He cites recent software tools developed for Broadway clients – which include Nederlander, Disney and Jujamcyn – as further examples. TixTrack now offers a tool to manage the dreaded ‘house seats’ and ‘holds’. These allocations typically eat into the manifest and have historically required a lot of manual intervention to keep sponsors and other rightsholders happy. TixTrack’s PCI-compliant tool to manage house seats was developed for Broadway but now available elsewhere. Similarly, TixTrack also developed a Group Sales management tool which allows sales agents to manage blocks of typically 20+ seats. These latest tools, along with existing pricing analysis and inventory tracking solutions, are helping to drive its clients’ revenues.
“In short, we do things that promoters need in the ticketing space,” explains Sunshine. And his firm’s success with mobile and Broadway has brought it to the attention of overseas markets.
“We’ve opened an office in London. We’re now supporting the backend of one West End theatre group providing an improved buying experience on both desktop and mobile. We’ll be saying more about this in the coming months but we will be staffing up the London office as we grow the client base.”
“Integrating with Apple Pay is part of our broader strategy to make it as easy as possible for consumers to purchase via mobile,” stated Sunshine. “We’ll continue to roll out new features and integrations in the coming months that serve that goal.”
But, The Insider understands, it won’t just be theatre that will benefit from TixTrack tools. Its sports client base in the US includes Toronto’s Air Canada Centre and sports teams such as The Los Angeles Clippers, New York Islanders and Chicago Cub. We suspect it won’t be long before we hear of some UK and European teams taking advantage of TixTrack tools.
Image credit: Cirque du Soleil/Select Seat
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