It’s been a busy week in the war against high ticket fees. String Cheese Incident is taking on Ticketmaster by “scalping” its own tickets and there’s a new version of the BOSS ACT – These new high profile ticket fee disputes seem to shout “It’s on like Donkey Kong!”.

The String Cheese Incident

It was a front page headline. It was a lead story on mainstream TV news. It was the story of the week.

Popular jam band String Cheese Incident ( SCI ) defied convention and purchased all of the tickets for its appearance at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles and then put the tickets up for sale without any per ticket fees or service charges. The widely read New York Times article reports:

“We’re scalping our own tickets at no service charge. It costs us money to sell the tickets, but we are going to eat that cost this summer in order to make a better deal for our fans and let them know how much we appreciate them. If the tickets are 49 bucks, we want them to be 49 bucks when the kid buys them at the end.”

In addition to the Greek Theater performance, the band intends to buy more of its own concert tickets, then re-sell sans fees on the their website, for other stops on their nationwide tour this summer. SCI’s intent is explained on their website:

The String Cheese Incident is proud to announce that we have figured out a way to finally achieve the ultimate goal with this whole ticketing exercise! Every ticket bought through SCI Ticketing will be SERVICE FEE-FREE! That’s right, if you order tix through the band’s website there will be no service charge add-ons.

The ticket price that is listed is the price that you will pay. The band is going to cover the credit card fee. The band is going to cover the cost to take the orders and fulfill the tickets. The cost of a $49.95 ticket to Red Rocks will cost you $49.95. The cost of a $49.95 ticket to the Greek will cost you $49.95.

We may not have heard the last of SCI vs. Ticketmaster, the legalities of a band “scalping” its own tickets are yet to be hammered out in court. Until the other shoe drops, the Fan Freedom Project sums it up best:

Fans are increasingly frustrated by drip-pricing, which obscures the true cost of a ticket until the final point of purchase and can increase the cost of a ticket by as much 30 – 40% over face value once all the hidden fees and surcharges are accounted for. The solution, which String Cheese Incident elegantly presented to their fans via this stunt, is “all-in pricing,” where the total cost of the ticket is presented to ticket buyers upfront. All-in pricing is an important consumer protection, and one that would drastically improve the ticket-buying experience for fans.

Of special note is where the Fan Freedom Project is located – Washington D.C. That puts them just steps away from the K Street supported back room dealings that are associated with event ticket legislation.

BOSS ACT 2012

U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ)  held a news conference early last week to announce an updated, more robust, version of legislation to protect concert-goers who buy tickets online.

Know as Better Oversight of Secondary Sales and Accountability in Concert Ticketing Act ( BOSS ACT ). The BOSS ACT focuses mainly on making computer automated acquisition of event tickets illegal, but also included several provisions addressing per ticket fees. Rep. Pascrell held the  news conference in front of Newark’s Prudential Center, just hours before the Bruce Springsteen concert to announce the legislation. The Congressman sums up his intent with the bill:

Bruce is pretty popular around these parts, and he’s got millions of fans who would love to see the shows. Before this show even went on sale, sites like Stubhub and TicketNetwork had scalped tickets for this show listed for sale for hundreds of dollars. Yesterday, tickets in the lower level were listed on StubHub for over $10,000! Where does this end? How is the average guy or gal supposed to compete? Are only people who can afford a $10,000 ticket supposed to be able to see the Boss?

Reading through the provisions you can see the BOSS ACT 2012 has some teeth to it. Note this line item that addresses ticket fees specifically:

The primary ticket seller must make public the total number of tickets offered for sale to the public, disclose all tickets being withheld from public sale and the number of tickets held back under each method, disclose all ancillary charges to customers when the price of tickets are advertised, and print these charges and total cost on each individual ticket.

So once the revised bill is passed, a concertgoer will see the base price plus additional fees and services charges printed clearly right on the ticket. We suspect there will be more than one person up in arms about the unreasonable fees.

Fox Theater abandons Ticketmaster

The historic Fox Theater announced that they have partnered with Atlanta-based Ticket Alternative.

Similar to the issues being addressed with the BOSS ACT, lack of primary market availability, the move to a new vendor is primarily made in response to consumer being unable to buy tickets for an event directly. PR spokes person for the Fox Theater explains:

By telling customers to come directly to us for tickets, we can provide them peace of mind, [We] have been working with a local law firm to crack down on “cybersquatting,” when ticket resellers present themselves as the Fox’s (or any venues) ticket outlet and then sell tickets at an obscene markup.

There are still some exceptionally high fees being leveled on tickets purchased from the new Fox Theater outlet. A Nicki Minaj $76 base price ticket has a $14.25 fee tacked onto it.

…So an availability battle has been won, but the war against unreasonably high fees rages on.

All kidding aside, your bottom line is of paramount concern to us. Your ThunderTix account gives you the option to have your event be fee free and we encourage you to do so. If you do charge per ticket fees we urge you to use temperance.

Fee Free Friday will be back next week with more trials and tribulations from the front lines. Until then, have you or someone you know been hit with excessively high fees for an event ticket? Let us know in the comments below or join the conversation on by using the #FeeFreeFriday hashtag!

New Percent Off Coupons

We are excited to roll out often requested percentage based coupons! Now coupons can offer a flat percentage off the order subtotal. This will prevent large face value coupons from being redeemed on your lowest ticket offering. We’d love to hear your feedback, so do share your thoughts.

Search Orders via Sales Method

You’ve asked us to provide a way to find orders sold through your website or via Facebook, and now you have it! Go to your Orders listing, click search in the upper right corner, and then in the “Sold Via” box, select Website, Facebook, or any of your sales agents. Keep your ideas coming so we can continue to improve the system!

Note: for our Internet Explorer 9 users, please visit this link to learn how you can access this page without error.

Voids Now Included in Daily Sales

Earlier this week, we removed Voided orders from the Daily Sales report, so your sales data was correct. We received a request–and a better idea–to include Voided orders in the Daily Sales Report, but to change the sales dollars and ticket totals to zero to ensure complete reports. We include the voiding agent and the original ticket quantity sold for your records.

Report Fix:When using the Orders tab, we previously included voids in the total dollar amounts. Those have been removed.

Secure Image Path

For those venues using their own SSL, our display of event images may have caused a browser warning about non-secured items on the page. We now return all images over ‘https’, so your buyers have complete confidence in the purchase process. Be assured that buyer security has never been compromised at any time when entering credit card data.

HTML Email Confirmation Improved

It was brought to our attention that the formatting of confirmation email receipts delivered in HTML to Gmail addresses were not properly styled. That has been addressed and fixed. We expect that the style and formatting of ALL email clients will improve with this update.

Page Load Time Reduced for Seating Charts

If you use a Seating Chart, you will be thrilled with the huge reduction we made in page speed. Your pages should load within a few seconds for even the largest seating charts.

Access Seating Chart for Sold Out Events

Previously for sold out events, venue admins could not access the seating chart. We now allow access to help you with refunding certain seats directly from the seating chart or to the patron name for each purchased seat.

Email Confirmation Changes

We removed the “shipping” field when your venue uses no shipping to reduce clutter. We’ve also removed the “amount” field when you offer free tickets.

Timeout Errors on May 16, 2012

Bugfix: This afternoon between 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. we had several timeout errors. This was caused by a routine action but the time it took to complete on a very large performance caused intermittent interruptions. First, we apologize for any inconvenience this caused, and second, we researched and implemented a change that will prevent this from occurring in the future.

Sales Tax “Remainder” for Overridden Orders

Bugfix: If the stars aligned just so, some overridden orders that should have resulted in no charge actually carried a balance of one penny due to rounding errors. This too, has been fixed.

Negative Balance for Overridden Orders

Bugfix: Fixing the rounding errors also addressed another issue: negative ticket totals on some order when they should have been zero. (Dollar amounts for reports have never been in jeopardy)

A convergence of designers, retailers, bloggers and activists celebrate plus-size women in Manhattan during Full Figured Fashion Week.

Positive and empowering, the 4th annual Full Figured Fashion Week is next month, June 13-16, 2012, in New York City. ThunderTix is proud to be the ticketing software of choice for fffWeek and we love the way they use social media to promote their event and cultivate a shared experience.

From model to mogul

The event is more than just high fashion and glamor, the daily schedule includes workshops and talks that motivate and educate retailers to take notice of the market segment fffWeek represents so well. Gwen DeVoe, CEO of the event’s production company DSE, describes the event:

It is time for designers, retailers, boutique owners and businesses with an interest in the plus size market to combine their resources and talents and partner with a plus fashion event that will rival other Fashion Weeks

Short, Curvey, Fierce recently spoke to Ms. DeVoe and we encourage you to read the ‘From Model to Mogul’ interview.

Command of the medium

The fffweek website has all the requisite links to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, in addition to a treasure trove of information on the event sponsors, but we would like to direct your attention to the social media best practices seen in their Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Note many of the thousands of people following fffWeek in Twitter and Facebook, are asking questions and receiving answers via “@’s”. This is an often neglected aspect of all too many event management efforts. An unscientific examination shows that for every nine self-promotion tweets and status updates fffWeek is answering one ( or more! ) questions. That is sincere engagement. Such a ratio shows fffWeek is just as concerned with answering people’s questions and fostering a shared experience as they are with self-promotion.

Of course self-promotion is important, it will always be an aspect of event awareness but the times they are a changin’.

The days of doing nothing but one-way soap box marketing are coming to an end. Event awareness is becoming more and more reliant on genuine interaction between the venue, the event promoter and the attendees in a direct honest way. fffWeek’s use of Twitter and Facebook is exactly that.

fffWeek’s command of the (social) medium also includes excellent use of a hashtag, “#SonsiFFFWeek“. The extremely well formulated hashtag is not only unique ( Something we always want to see ), it also promotes event’s premier sponsor Sonis. A hashtag that’s business friendly and people friendly at the same time? Brava!

Finally, a cautionary item for those who may be attending fffWeek – Apparently tickets to the event are so sought after there is a secondary resale market ( aka “scalping” ). The fffWeek Facebook account recently cautioned all:

Please note that FFFWeek does not promote on Craigslist. We do not sell tickets there, we do not look for models or staff there, nor do we promote there. Please do not send any money to anyone on Craigslist who claims to be selling tix or collecting fees for a FFFWeek.

We feel the exact same way and that good advice applies to all events, regardless of who the ticket software provider is.

Be like savvy Full Figured Fashion Week

We hope this spotlight on Full Figured Fashion Week helps you with your event awareness as a great example of the how it’s done.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be posting many more “spotlights” on events, venues, our beloved ThunderTix users and some “secret” lesser known technical aspects of a successful event ( Speaking of secrets… Pssst you can subscribe to the RSS feed of this blog here http://feeds.feedburner.com/thundertix ).

If you have an example, or want to be in the spotlight yourself, just let us know in the comments below!

In our earlier post we showed you examples of hashtags in real life. Now in part 2, we go more in-depth with a “how-to”, “when-to” and, most importantly of all, why unique hashtags raise event awarenss.

Why do we blog this? Our experience shows that there is a direct correlation between event awareness and ticket sales. The success of your venue/event is paramount to us and we take pride in bringing new tools to your attention. By formulating your own unique hashtag and then politely suggesting your ticket buyers share their experience using it, awareness of your venue/event increases.

As an example of how to formulate hashtags, we’ll spotlight one of our beloved ThunderTix users: Oli’s Trolley Tours in Maine.

How to Formulate Hashtags

Oli’s Trolley is a familily friendly tour of the Arcadia National Park in Bar Harbor Maine. Overall Oli’s Trolley does a very good job of promoting themselves with their website, Facebook and Twitter. With the baseline self-promotion using social media covered, the next step is to extend the scope and scale and let tour participants share their experience with others.

We can almost hear you ask – “How can Oli’s Trolley know which social media platform each person is using at any given moment?” Great question. The answer is: Oli’s Trolley Tours doesn’t need to know.

Hashtags are ubiquitous across all the major social media platforms, so Oli’s Trolley Tours need not know of each person’s choice beforehand, nor do they need to have a social connection established with each person ( e.g. following on Twitter, Google+ and Instagram, or “Like” on Facebook ). A hashtag is “good enough”.

We can hear your next question too – “Facebook doesn’t support hashtags, how can Oli’s Trolley make use of hashtags on Facebook?“. You’re right, at least for now. Facebook recently bought Instagram. Hashtags are deeply integrated with the sharing of photos on Instagram, and as the new owners of the platform, Facebook will fully support hashtags naively ( Facebook has already co-opted Twitter’s “@” mention functionality ).

The hashtag in this case is quite easy to build. The event name is unique and uses a small number of characters. We just remove the space between Oli’s and Trolley, then throw out the apostrophe and volia! The #olistrolley hashtag is born.

With their unique hashtag established, Oli’s Trolley can take the next step –  when to use it.

When to use your new Hashtag

The Oli Trolley tours run twice a day, one at 10:00 AM and another at 2:00 PM. The schedule is consistent and the tours run on consecutive days during the week, every week. The consistency of a repeating event is an advantage for when to use a hashtag.

Before the Event ( “anticipation” )

The hashtag gets the ball rolling right away, immediatley after the ticket buyer prints out their ticket at home ( The hashtag can appear on your choice of fullfillment options ) as seen below.

The ticket buyer can start participating right way too. Anticipation of the fun event can be shared with a tweet like “Our family just got our tickets to ride #olistrolley!” or they can just search for the hashtag using the social media platform of their choosing as a “look-ahead” to what others are saying. No need to follow or like, just a simple, no-commitment search.

During the Event ( “expression” )

As we saw in with ‘The Hills’ season premiere party in Part 1, the MTV producers simply put up signs around the venue politely asking that when partygoers share on their social media platform of choice, they use the unique “#TheHills” hashtag. The same polite request is what Oli’s Trolley ( and you! ) should do.

Small signs can be made by local signmakers for a nominal cost. Like this for example:

Once made, the signs are placed inside the trolleys, politely asking the tour takers to share their experience in real time, using their favorite platform (i.e. Twitter, Google+). No need to dictate to the tour goer which social application to use, just let them do what’s easiest for them.

After the Event ( “nostalgia” )

Once the event is over, the experience changes from one of real-time expression into a fond memory. What remains are the status updates, check-ins and photos taken, each, regardless of the social media platform used, now contain your unique hashtag. That moment captured in a photo during the event may look something like this:

Why Hashtags are Important

Note the feedback loop that is beginning to emerge — this is the business-critical “why” you should take the time to formulate your own unique hashtag.

Folks on the trolley sharing their experience as they take the tour are the source of the aforementioned “look ahead in anticipation”.

The photos taken during the tour become the source of the nostalgic look back .

The hashtag generated feedback loop is self-perpetuating.

Anticipation, expression and looking back in fond memory are innate behaviors of all humans – no need for elaborate advertising or complicated public relations – it’s just what people do naturally.

Once this dynamo of human activity is initiated, very little is required to maintain it. The dynamo generates event awareness all on its own.

Monitoring the human activity that surrounds your unique hashtag is a critical aspect of running a successful venue/event. There are lightweight monitoring tools like simple searches:

There are also heavy weight tools like Radian 6 and the new Social Reports from Google Analytics.

What do you think? Has this Oli’s Trolley example inspired you to formulate a hashtag of your own? Need help? Just ask! Contact us, ask us on Twitter, Facebook or Google+, or let us know in the comments below!

Why do we blog this? There is a direct correlation between event awareness and ticket sales. We know you are making every effort to wrangle the direct channels that you have control of, but there is a vast resource that may be going underutilized – hashtags. Hashtags exist outside the constraints of any one given social media platform and function as a way for your ticket buyers to raise awareness of your event through the shared experience.

The Internet is leaking

Lately, it seems like an hour does not pass without seeing a well worded, unique hashtag on some product packaging, the TV screen, a store window or billboard. There’s even a hashtag shaped skyscraper being built. Sure hashtags have been a great way to participate in the digital world, but this is IRL. For those new to hashtags and their use, a quick summary:

Hashtags 101

In the digital language of emoticons and LOL acronyms, hashtags are now solidly embedded as a cultural shorthand—something akin to quotes around a topic or idea. Created by Chris Messina  in 2007, the hashtag has moved from an insider’s tool on Twitter, to common parlance both online and off. From CNN to American Idol, it seems everything has a hashtag.

Some recent examples of hashtags IRL include…

During the 2011 Major League Baseball playoffs, every center field fence of every game had a 100 foot wide hashtag painted on it.

The Mississippi State Bulldogs football team painted a 200 foot wide hashtag in both end zones of their stadium. Now fans can share their experience using the “#HAILSTATE” hashtag during games.

Virgin America airlines flight from San Francisco to San Jose is nicknamed “the nerd bird” because so many tech industry professionals fly on it. Those tech professionals would update their status simply tweeting “I’m on the #nerdbird!” and everyone knew what they were doing and where they were going/had been. The nose of the plane now has a “#nerdbird” hashtag painted on it.

The Farmer’s Insurance Group is making its first foray into using hashtags with their sponsorship of NASCAR driver Kasey Kahne. This is the first time a hashtag ( #FARMERS5 ) has ever appeared on one of NASCAR’s race cars.

At the season premiere party for the hit TV show ‘The Hills‘, attendees were politely reminded “If you are tweeting, please use #TheHills” as seen in the image below.

The polite reminder from the MTV network producers to their guests is the best example of how and why you should formulate a unique hashtag for your venue/event.

#HelloBrooklyn

In what may be the largest event hashtag awareness campaign ever, the Nets basketball team has launched their “#HelloBrooklyn” hashtag as the leading method for fans ( and ticket buyers! ) to know that the team is moving to Brooklyn New York next year. The Atlantic Yard blog has been keeping a close eye on the event:

#HelloBrooklyn – Get used to new Nets tag line and promotional phrase. After all the hype in the last few days regarding the Nets’ last home game in New Jersey the Nets moved directly into Brooklyn mode. The Nets/Barclays CEO Brett Yormark and others began tweeting with the #HelloBrooklyn hashtag.

Moving a sports franchise from one city to another is not a trivial task and is often met with resistance from die hard fans. The savvy owners of the Nets ( which include rapper Jay-Z ) fully appreciate the potential for negative backlash. By participating in the experience, using the #HelloBrooklyn hashtag, the naysayers can see that the overwhelming sentiment is positive, lessening the need for expensive PR campaigns to counter whatever backlash occurs.

The season tickets for the Nets at their new Brooklyn home stadium are already sold out and regular seats for each game are selling at a brisk pace, but not without some mild controversy.

The #HelloBrooklyn hashtag has raised event awareness and the direct correlation to ticket sales is self-evident.

Try creating a Hashtag yourself

When considering a hashtag for your venue or event, be sure to make it unique. Ambiguous words like “concert” or “ticket” do not make for good hashtags. Words that reflect the nature of the experience are best, especially when combined with your venue/events established name.

If your venue’s name is “Monsoon Saloon”, use that entire string combined together without spaces to avoid being lost in the discussion of some terrible natural disaster. “#MonsoonSaloon” is fairly unique and when people are there they can utilize such a unique combination of words as they share their experience.

If your event is named “The 15th Annual BBQ and Horseshoe Throwing Championships of Greater Springdale County” that is, obviously unique, but far too lengthy to make use of as a proper hashtag. You could either truncate it to the keywords ( “#SpringdaleBBQ” ) or use the first letter of the keywords to form an acronym ( “#BBQHTC” ). There are no strict rules to formulating your hashtag, only that it be unique.

Once you’ve formulated something truly unique, it is simply a matter of making the polite request to event attendees to use your hashtag as they share their experience, like the aforementioned ‘The Hills’ party example.

In part 2 of ‘OMG hashtags IRL’ we’ll be taking a pragmatic approach to the how, when and why unique hashtags raise event awareness.

Not sure how to truncate your events name down to a proper hashtag length? Our offer to help you formulate a unique hashtag for your venue or event remains open. Contact us, ask us on Twitter, Facebook or Google+, or let us know in the comments below!

Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in the film classic ‘Mommie Dearest‘ (1981)

Mother’s Day is this Sunday so #FeeFreeFriday goes all “Tina bring me the axe!” Mommie Dearest on unreasonable per ticket fees and services charges. Today, we find three more topics of interest. Live Nation made $868 million in the past 90 days, and we wonder how much of that is from exorbitant ticket fees. A disturbing news item of scalpers re-selling tickets reserved for the disabled. Finally, a K.D. Lang concert venue has a “constant craving” for high fees.

Live Nation says they’re “kicking [the concertgoers?] ass”

Live Nation Entertainment has reported it made $868 million in revenue in the last 90 days, citing a 23% increase in concert ticket sales. The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Live Nation’s CEO Michael Rapino about the company’s first quarter of 2012…

We’re kicking ass from a year-over-year perspective. More artists are on the road, and we’re selling more tickets to each show. Importantly, we also saw a 6% increase in ticket sales this quarter as compared to last year, reflecting strong demand for our live events and giving us great confidence that we are well positioned for the summer concert season.

It is encouraging to see concert ticket sales are up, not for just Live Nation, but for the industry as a whole. Given the current state of the economy, it may not be prudent to [continue to] put the slight uptik in concert ticket sales at risk with unreasonable fees.

Mr. Rapino’s boastful revenue claims come just two days after a Maryland federal judge refused to throw out a putative class action alleging Live Nation Entertainment Inc. imposed illegal service charges on tickets.

The city of Baltimore prohibits ticket service charges and fees to be more than $0.50 cents above face value. The class action against Live Nation asserts that Andre Bourgeois was charged a $12 service fee for a $52 Jackson Browne concert ticket.

While we’re on the subject of alleged scalping by Live Nation, the next news item is very disturbing. Pausing the normally light-hearted nature of Fee Free Friday for a moment, we report on it in a serious manner and with great concern.

Scalpers re-selling tickets reserved for the disabled

CBS news investgation in Denver Colorado reports that unscrupulous ticket scalpers are re-selling Red Rocks concert tickets reserved for the disabled. The investigation does not fault the Red Rocks Amphitheater expressly, leveling the blame fully on the immoral and unethical scalpers.

It seems the horrendous act is a loop hole exploit of the federal ADA law. CBS4 reports

The scalpers are very much profit driven and they aren’t thinking in terms of the moral conditions there. There are loopholes and they are quick to exploit them. Ironically, the very law that mandates disabled seating at concerts makes it nearly impossible to fix the problem. The Americans With Disabilities Act says that someone buying an accessible seat can then buy up to three additional seats for their companions in the same row. The ADA then allows the disabled purchaser to resell those seats, even to someone who does not have a disability.

Making it even more difficult to alleviate the problem, the ADA also prohibits venues or ticket sellers from requiring proof of disability as a condition for buying accessible seats. “They’re not breaking the law, but there’s a moral question there of how they’re taking advantage of people with disabilities”.

The victim who was the center of focus in the investigation, Matt Feeney, a paraplegic, said of the scalper’s immoral and unethical actions  “I wonder how these people sleep at night doing this.” We wonder the same.

The Overture Center’s “constant craving” for high fees

Ticket prices for the K.D. Lang concert at Overture Center seem reasonable at first glance, with seats listed at $35 each when purchased on the venue’s website. But Madison On The Cheap took exception to that price, citing fees and services charges.

The cheapest tickets online from Overture are $35.50. However, there is a $5.75 fee added to the cost of each ticket and a $3.50 order charge added to the total. Two balcony tickets purchased online would cost you $86.

Madison On The Cheap did go on to say that Groupon had a pretty good deal for the K.D. Lang show. Using their affiliate link to Groupon, one could have purchased a lower-balcony seat ( a $60.50 value ) for just $30 and that price included all fees.

More importantly, we applaud MotC for their transparency, as stated in their post:

If you are already a Groupon member and click through on one of our links to purchase an offer, Madison on the Cheap receives a [very small] commission. We appreciate your support.

The Groupon offer has since expired, leaving the venue as the only ticket sale outlet and the 12% of face value fees and service charges remain. Queue Joan Crawford….

It goes without saying that people do not like unreasonable per ticket fees. Your ThunderTix account gives you the option to have your event be fee free and we encourage you to do so. Your bottom line is critical and should market forces require ticket fees, we urge you to use temperance and think of the long term success of your business.

Fee Free Friday will be back next week, and until then, we sincerely wish all the mothers a happy Mother’s Day.

As always, we want to hear from you about excessively high per ticket fees. Let us know in the comments below or join the conversation by using the #FeeFreeFriday hashtag!

It’s Fee Free Friday! This week’s rancor includes a look at how dynamic pricing algorithms may be hiding tickets fees, an example of 150% per ticket service fee(!), and a fee-free victory in Kansas City, Missouri.

Baseball’s new dynamic pricing algorithms

Earlier in the week Ticket News wrote how Major League Baseball teams are using so-called dynamic pricing algorithms for tickets sales to games.

Dynamic pricing has been used by hotels, rental car companies and airlines for years ( and it’s none too popular ), and its use at popular sporting events is a relatively new practice.

Two companies, Qcue and Digonex, are providing the back-end software that imposes dynamic pricing on baseball ticket buyers. Qcue’s Director of Pricing and Operations, Dan Meehan, discussed how the algorithms work with TicketNews:

We’ve put the technology in place that makes it a lot easier to change the pricing on thousands of tickets at once. [Baseball stadiums are] bigger stadiums than almost any other sport, there’s a bigger percentage of seats not held by season ticket holders. Then there’s all kinds of factors that go into determining price. The weather, the day of the week, who the opponent is, the starting pitcher.

The somewhat nefarious practice of charging more or less money for a ticket based on the weather or the physical health of a player may not be well received by fans. If such extraneous conditions are being calculated openly into the ticket price, what undisclosed conditions are being added?

Qcue’s  Barry Kahn was quoted in the Ticket News post as saying dynamic pricing algorithms are a foregone conclusion.

Dynamic pricing in sports is rapidly becoming commonplace and I think you’ll start seeing the term ‘dynamic’ getting dropped as this just becomes how sports tickets are priced…Some teams are using the terminology to describe minor price changes or changes to a variable pricing structure. Those teams don’t necessarily need tools to do this and may opt to make changes manually, but it is our experience that this approach does not drive nearly the same revenue benefits as true dynamic pricing.

So if the weather is extra nice on game day, the ticket price goes up – Is that an ethical “fee” to charge baseball fans?

The jury is still out on what impact dynamic pricing algorithms will have on ticket prices and attendance at Major League Baseball games. We’ll be updating future Fee Free Fridays should the tolerance threshold be exceeded and a fun day at the ballpark is ruined by a “nice weather” fee.

A 150% service charge

Last year Kevin Lang started a Facebook group called ‘Stop Ticketmaster’s 100% service fees’. The group has since gone mysteriously dormant but leaves the unsettling legacy of Lang’s first hand account of a 150% per ticket fee

My last three experiences with Ticketmaster have been 100% or more ‘convenience charges’. Example, Iron Maiden lawn seats are $18.50 face value, $36 after fees. Motley Crue lawn seats were $10 face. After fees, $25 each. That is a 150% service charge.

Fee free victory in Kansas City

Timothy Finn writes of a small fee free victory on the ‘Back to Rockville’ music blog of the Kansas City Star newspaper. Finn has been a long time opponent of unrealistically high ticket fees, something he encounters quite often as part of his job as a music journalist.

Earlier in the year the company that manages the Sprint Center abandoned TicketMaster and introduced it’s own service offering called Axs. The ticket service provider switch is seen as a victory for Kansas City music fans. Finn spoke to Shani Tate, senior director of ticket sales at the Sprint Center:

Axs will not charge a delivery fee to customers who  print the tickets they purchased on-line. Axs pricing will be “transparent,” meaning the full price of the ticket, with fees, is evident up front and no extra fees are added as the transaction proceeds.

According to the website, Axs is the first initiative under Outbox Enterprises, a joint venture among AEG, Cirque du Soleil‘s ticketing business and Fred Rosen, former chief executive officer at Ticketmaster ( Heh ). Axs’ transparency and willingness to list tickets for sale on its website from companies other than itself is very encouraging. We hope this openness is the start of a new industry trend.

The victory at the Sprint Center, however, is in sharp contrast to Finn’s previous experience, which he details in a blog post entitled ‘$23 reasons to go to the box office‘. Note this ticket fee atrocity:

“That’s after spending $12.10 in “convenience” and processing charges the $28 ticket will run you $50.75.”

As always, your ThunderTix account gives you total control over per ticket fees including the option to go fee free. Patrons love venues that don’t add fees. It’s that simple. Lower ticket costs through no added fees translate into higher sales and greater patron satisfaction.

Fee Free Friday will be back next week after we accumulate more wins and losses from the front lines of the War on High Ticket Fees. Until then, have you or someone you know been hit with excessively high fees for an event ticket? Let us know in the comments below or join the conversation on Twitter by using the #FeeFreeFriday hashtag!

Concert ticket collecting is a popular hobby and a lucrative commercial industry. In this post, we spotlight some examples of concert ticket collecting, past, present and future.

Why do we blog this? Your ThunderTix account supports the three most popular ticket printing methods and we recommend that you use the print-at-home option to lower costs – but that option may not have enough of the “souvenir” value that is so important to music fans. By knowing what makes traditional concert tickets collectible, you can create your print-at-home tickets with that same emotional value.

A look back

The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane performed at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco during the late 60s as part of legendary promoter
Bill Graham’s ‘Live at the Fillmore’ concert series. The printed tickets from those concerts are highly sought after by music fans and serious memorabilia collectors alike. Authentic vintage Fillmore concert tickets are available from the official Bill Graham Archives, also known as Wolfgang’s Vault.

To get an idea of the scope and scale of the vintage concert ticket collection kept in the Graham Archives, watch Katherine York’s video tour here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCBaNhNRWck

In the video York details the process used to print the tickets for the Yardbirds’ Fillmore performance in 1967.

Note the face value of the ticket was three dollars – Today a set sells for $125.00.

Of course the beautiful artwork of vintage tickets contribute to their value. The artwork that appears on the Yardbirds ticket is from the concert poster designed by Bonnie MacLean. The original poster is part of the ‘The Psychedelic Experience’ exhibition currently on display at the Denver Art Muesum.

The Bill Graham Archive is but one example of vintage concert ticket collecting. The offical websites for The Grateful Dead and Led Zeppelin have sections for vintage ticket collectors as well.

Ticket collecting today

While vintage pre-printed concert tickets often feature color artwork, tickets for contemporary concerts are usually “all-text” and printed on thermal paper – but the passion remains.

There are thousands of websites for collecting concert tickets from today’s most popular artists. Some are the labor of love by music fans often devoted to just one band, others are virtual clubhouses and serve as a place to re-live the experiences from attending a concert.

Commercial grade collectors buy and sell modern thermal paper tickets too, often at the same lofty high prices as the vintage ones since all concert tickets are of a limited supply and therefore inherently scarce.

Even the artists themselves collect concert tickets as seen in the photo below shared recently by The Henry Clay on Instagram.

The use of Instragram by the Henry Clay People hints at what may become of concert ticket collecting as more and more events are “paperless” e-tickets. The Performing Arts And Entertainment blog describes the transistion:

Baby boomers should be advising their concert ticket buying offspring to put the present day tickets in their own scrapbooks and memory boxes…Of course the way the modern youngster acquires their concert tickets could not be more different from that of their parents. The Internet has revolutionized the concert ticket buying process as it has revolutionized so much else. No more sleeping bags and tents for overnight stays to be sure of first place in the queue at the box office. Live music fans these days have the whole world of concert tickets on offer at numerous online concert ticket sites.

The photo future

Websites like Flickr and Instgram are quickly becoming the most popular places to share photos of concert tickets, but there are even more specialized “ticket photo” websites like Ticket Stub Collector, which recently partnered with the venerable industry supplier the National Ticket Company. Ticket Stub Collector does not sell music concert memorabilia, nor does it solicit its users to sell their used tickets – the website exists soley to foster the shared experience. Russ Havens said of his new site:

Everyone loves memories, and stubs are basically time-stamped keepsakes that connect us with those memories. Tearing the ticket adds to the patina of it. It shows use, like a mark on a game-worn jersey.

Ultimately, the future of concert ticket collecting may be in websites like Stublisher that encourages music fans to do more than upload photos of the ticket itself, but to add photos and videos taken while at the event.

With the print-at-home option of your ThunderTix account you can lower the costs of your event and still provide your customer the satisfaction of a virtual keepsake suitable for sharing on the popular sites mentioned above.

Upgrading your account to either ‘Plus’ or ‘Premium’ levels gives you the means create a custom branded print-at-home PDF so you can add a meaningful photo of the artist or a professionally designed graphic – the choice is yours.

Need help designing your print-at-home concert ticket? Contact us and let us assist you in creating a memorable experience for your event attendees or just leave a comment below!

ThunderTix is the only box office software with no per ticket fees, utilizing a subscription based pricing model, so we’re already “fee-free” – why not pass that savings along to the consumer?

Ticket fees are one of the most controversial aspects of an event. The ticket industry as a whole is rife with litigation stemming from consumer dissatisfaction with high ticket fees, some of which are 125% of the face value of the ticket ( That’s too darn high! )

To foster a healthy debate on the issue of high fees, we’ve started a new blog post series called Fee Free Friday.

What can you expect from Fee Free Friday? Examples of consumer dissatisfaction with high tickets fees, our guidelines and best practices for establishing reasonable ticket fees for your event, breaking news on the ticket fee litigation front and, just for fun, a little bit of “What were they thinking?” armchair quaterbacking of events gone awry.

For the first Fee Free Friday post, we’ll examine two recently published editorials on the high price of concert tickets and the associated per ticket fees.

Madonna vs. The Boss

A few days ago Bob Sirott mentioned the high cost of concert tickets in his widely read ‘One more thing’ editorials. Citing two of the top grossing tours with tickets currently on sale, Sirott wonders if the costs consumers pay are detrimental to the concert tour industry:

Bruce Springsteen tickets go on sale Saturday for his Wrigley Field show. Top ticket price is $103. Madonna  is coming to the United Center in September. The best seats for that concert have already been selling for $355.

Note the potentially prophetic end to Sirott’s OpEd;

Some in the concert industry think if ticket prices keep going up there will eventually be push-back and business could be adversely affected. It may get worse before it gets better.

Without going into the specifics of what percent of the Bruce Springsteen and Madonna ticket prices are fees, it is safe to assume the dissatisfaction about the face value is exacerbated by them. You can get a feel for the push-back in the comments of Sirott’s OpEd and in the lively discussion he had with his fellow music fans on his Facebook page.

Consumers are savvy and fully aware that there are costs in producing a big professional concert, but they also have a shrewd sense of when undue gouging is occurring. The economy has not yet recovered from the 2008 crisis – returning to pre-2008 ticket prices ( and fee percentages ) too rapidly may spoil the burgeoning profitability that the concert tour industry is enjoying.

With signs of life returning to the live music concert market, the opportunity is there to abstain from charging exorbitant per ticket fees as a “welcome back” to music fans and concert goers nationwide.

Fee is 125% of the ticket face value

In a different OpEd, Jim Stingl wrote of his dismay for the price of tickets to the popular Summerfest music festival in Milwaukee Wisconsin, criticizing the very high per ticket fees specifically:

I contracted a bad case of sticker shock when someone told me that the fees tacked on to each ticket for Summerfest’s main acts had ballooned to $25 or $30. Weren’t the convenience fees maybe 5 or 10 bucks before, enough to cover the cost of someone being nice enough to sell the tickets to you? I clicked on the fest site on Monday to see if this could possibly be true…
It showed, for instance, that two lawn seats cost $40, but that the added fees were $50.20. That’s $25.10 each, or 125% of the face value of the tickets. Concerts are fun, but you really have to hold your nose until you get past the ticket ordering. Personally, I love Summerfest, but you’ll find me at the side stages where it’s clear no fees are added.

Just like the Sirott’s OpEd, Stingl’s elicited a torrent of comments from his readership. The rancor exhibited in the comments of both opinion pieces pales in commarison to what concert goers are saying on websites like The Consumerist and Amplicate. The latter has four hundred pages of less-than-pleased comments made by consumers about TicketMaster.

Rather than ignore these examples of adverse consumer reactions to high fees, we encourage you to use them as a guideline when choosing a per-ticket fee amount, if any at all.

Temperance

Unlike Summerfest, there are several music festivals that have chosen ThunderTix as their box office software to set fees at a level in-line with consumer expectations. In addition to low fees, one of those festivals, the Finger Lakes GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance in upstate New York, has an “early bird” special, effectively addressing both issues in the OpEds cited earlier in this post.

Other ThunderTix music festivals are Long’s Peak Scottish-Irish Highland Festival, Rooftop Rodeo at the Estes Park fairgrounds and the Georgia Mountain Roots & Music Festival.

Each of these use their ThunderTix account to apply fees with temperance, finding the balance between the cost requirements of a successful event and serving the consumer’s best interest. ThunderTix founder Dawn Green has written of the need for ticket fee temperance:

With ThunderTix, you have complete control over fees including the decision to go “fee-free”. Understanding that customers don’t mind paying a reasonable fee, ThunderTix provides a great opportunity to add to your venue’s profitability.

You are encouraged you to read our guidelines for tickets fees, which can be found here:

http://www.thundertix.com/social-networking-2/understanding-the-5-types-of-event-ticketing-software

http://www.thundertix.com/guides/should-you-charge-ticket-fees

Not sure if you are using temperance when charging ticket fees? We would love to work directly with you on a ticket fee temperance strategy, or better yet, convince you to make your event completely “fee free”.

We have written about the time-sensitive nature of re-starting a past event, now we’ll discuss another time-sensitive aspect of ticket sales – the importance of graceful non-availability prompts once your event has concluded.

Why do we blog this? This post is part of an on-going series of “spotlights”. We want to bring examples of how others use their ThunderTix accounts to your attention. We feel strongly that pragmatic, real-world results convey the value of our tools to you in a more meaningful way than press releases and feature descriptions alone.

Yesterday, former president George W. Bush was the keynote speaker at Plumstead Christian School’s 2nd Annual Founder’s Forum fundraiser. Plumstead used ThunderTix to manage advanced ticket sales for the preisdent’t visit to Calvary Church’s 1,550-seat auditorium in Souderton, Pennsylvania.

We are honored that President Bush will be coming to Bucks County to speak with our students and the larger Plumstead Christian School community,” said PCS Head of School Patrick Fitzpatrick. “We’re especially looking forward to his visit because we know that President Bush’s personal message mirrors our own mission to teach students to think Biblically, serve effectively, and lead Christ-centered lives.

President Bush’s keynote was well received and the event has concluded. Although tickets for the event are no longer available, it is important to note the way in which non-availability is conveyed to visitors of the Plumstead web site.

Graceful non-availability

For several weeks leading up to the event, the Plumstead website landing page displayed a well-worded promotion for Bush’s visit. Clicking through to the event’s dedicated page displayed the event description and, of course, the link to buy tickets. The event’s dedicated page is here:

http://www.plumsteadchristian.org/support_founders_forum.php

As you can see, where there was once a link to buy tickets, now a polite “Online ticketing is now closed for this event.” text is shown. In addition to the text display, Plumstead created a polite notification that ticket sales were closed just a few hours after the keynote had finished.

The final example of graceful non-availability can be seen in a Google search for “Bush Plumstead”. Before the event began, that search term combination returned a direct link to Plumbstead’s ticket purchasing page as page rank result five ( applicable to “performer name + your venue name” too! ) . Clicking the link displayed our standard ticket purchasing event display, seen below.

That same search performed again today still yeilds a similar page rank, but the title display now states “There are no events available at this time” which you can see for yourself, live, here: http://pcs.thundertix.com

Post event inquiries

Without going into the nerdy details of Search Engine Optimization or how Google keeps a snap shot of each and every web page published, we simply want to encourage you to think in the long term about how your events are found and represented after they are over.

President Bush’s keynote address at Plumstead was a one time event, but inquires by the media, historians, scholars and school kids doing homework will continue on indefinitely. How you display post-event non-availability is important because search results represent you and your business.

If you have questions about how best to display graceful non-availability using your ThunderTix account, you can write us directly, use our Twitter, Facebook and Google+ pages, or leave a comment below!