A Big Update from the Broadway Tech Accelerator
8/15/19
Back in March, we announced the launch of the Broadway Tech Accelerator, a way for tech startups to access resources to develop smart solutions to some of Broadway’s biggest obstacles.
One of the companies chosen to participate is True Tickets, whose goal is to make buying, selling, and transferring entertainment tickets simple and safe. As part of the Broadway Tech Accelerator, True Tickets believes they can reduce what they see are the biggest problems with ticketing today: shows sold out in seconds, outrageous resale prices, and fraud.
According to Matt Zarracina, Co-Founder & CEO, “Many of the issues with ticketing today boil down to two challenges: Venues lack control over tickets to their own events, and ticketing, for some reason, is often ignored as a part of the live events experience.”
Zarracina is concerned about the secondary market’s power to hoard tickets and sell them at inflated prices for a profit—money that venues and performers never see—but knows that we need to leverage the secondary market for distribution. He also believes the ticketing experience has been overlooked and wants to help venues focus on ticketing as an essential part of the overall event. He proposes several steps to address these challenges:
For more information on The Shubert Organization, visit www.shubert.nyc.
One of the companies chosen to participate is True Tickets, whose goal is to make buying, selling, and transferring entertainment tickets simple and safe. As part of the Broadway Tech Accelerator, True Tickets believes they can reduce what they see are the biggest problems with ticketing today: shows sold out in seconds, outrageous resale prices, and fraud.
According to Matt Zarracina, Co-Founder & CEO, “Many of the issues with ticketing today boil down to two challenges: Venues lack control over tickets to their own events, and ticketing, for some reason, is often ignored as a part of the live events experience.”
Zarracina is concerned about the secondary market’s power to hoard tickets and sell them at inflated prices for a profit—money that venues and performers never see—but knows that we need to leverage the secondary market for distribution. He also believes the ticketing experience has been overlooked and wants to help venues focus on ticketing as an essential part of the overall event. He proposes several steps to address these challenges:
- Give control back to venues. Venues should be able to track every ticket as it changes hands, easily set price floors and caps to control resale prices, and collect transaction data that can inform their pricing strategies and whether the costs are fair.
- Strengthen the connections between patrons and venues. In addition to pricing data, venues should know who is actually using the tickets, not just who bought them in the first transaction.
- Create solutions that work with current ticketing systems. Any technology that does the above is worthless if it requires venues to rip and replace their current systems. A true solution will easily and quickly connect to venues’ existing ticketing systems, so there’s no expensive back-end change.
For more information on The Shubert Organization, visit www.shubert.nyc.
Originally published in Broadway Briefing.
