The ticketing sector needs an ‘Uber moment’ if it is finally meet the demands of consumers, according to Marino Fresch, Eventbrite’s UK and Ireland marketing director.
Fresch told the PollStar Pro website that ticketing is ready for the kind of disruption that Uber has brought to transport and AirBNB to travel and accommodation.
Fresch, who worked for Expedia and eBay before joining the event management firm in 2013, said: “Ticketing is an industry where there has been very little innovation for a long time. It’s ripe for innovation.
“Ticketing is an area where that disruption is overdue.”
Fresch said Eventbrite’s vision since its launch in 2006 has been “to take technology that had only been available to the largest of events and democratise it, make it available to all sizes of events, from five people to 50 to 500 to 50,000.”
With more than a third of Eventbrite’s staff employed as engineers, Fresch explained that it is a tech rather than ticketing company.
With this in mind, he said Eventbrite is concentrating its efforts on being able to offer its clients a comprehensive one-stop shop without the need for any other suppliers. Eventbrite makes a variety of services available, from ticketing to scanning and marketing to merchandise sales.
“One key theme for us is integration of features,” he said. “Being able to have everything in one place and have an overall view of the customer. So you don’t have to use one organisation for your scanners, another one for ticketing, and another one for RFID etc.
“Historically, promoters have thought about the event itself, and they focused very much on maximising the experience at the event. There’s an increasing realisation that the event is also about the memory afterwards and the anticipation beforehand. There’s so many opportunities for promoters to tap into that all the way through.”
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