Unofficial Partner Podcast
Unofficial Partner Podcast
UP463 Ticketing is a terrible experience, so who's to blame?
Nobody's ever happy with the process of buying event tickets.
Why's it so hard?
Join us in an enlightening discussion with David Hornby of SecuTix and Stuart Cain, CEO of Warwickshire County Cricket Club, as we explore the complexities of the ticketing process. Discover the roles of different stakeholders, the evolution of ticketing technology, challenges like bots and secondary markets, and the nuanced dynamics of pricing for events. We also dive into the unique aspects of ticketing for cricket, both for high-demand matches and regular county games, and the ongoing quest for fair, transparent practices that enhance fan experiences. Don't miss out on this deep dive into the world of sports and entertainment ticketing!
00:00 Introduction and Guest Biographies
03:48 Understanding the Ticketing Industry
06:28 Challenges in Ticketing and Fan Experience
14:23 Combating Ticket Fraud and Scalping
20:20 Dynamic Pricing and Market Perception
33:27 Ticketing for Women's Sports and Future Innovations
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Why is buying a ticket such a painful process and who should I blame that's basically the conversation I'm having today with David Hornby of Secur Ticks and Stuart Kane, who's the Chief Executive Officer of Warwick Shear County Cricket Club. if you're listening to this, you'll also like the Unofficial Partner Substack newsletter, which goes out to subscribers every Thursday. If you want to join them, sign up either via unofficialpartner. com or go to Substack and search for Unofficial Partner.
gillis ticket track:Let's just start off with just a bit of hello. First of all. So, both of you just give us a bit of biography and a, and a sort of, what do you do all day? Let's start with you, Stuart.
Stuart Cain:So currently I'm the chief exec at Warwick's here. So I sit on two sides of the fence. One is the high performance, managing the teams and the squads. So Bears, Birmingham Phoenix now with what's going on in the sport and then the commercial and community side as well, the stadium side, part of that. I've always. Been around sport, so chief exec at Wasps, worked at Rangers in Glasgow, Warms as the commercial director, worked for Mindshare, WPP for three or four years in their sports practice. I ran the ticketing business, the Ticket Factory, when I worked for the NEC group. So I've kind of been around sport and entertainment. Started in the booze trade, did seven years working on carling. my dad still says you're going to get a proper job one day. I'm having done sport music and booze. That's about me, mate. Does that give you what you want?
gillis ticket track:Yeah, you should try podcasting. If you want to answer that question, go to a, go to a middle, go to a middle class dinner party and say, you know, when someone says, so what do you do, Richard?
Stuart Cain:I'm a podcaster. At least you haven't said influencer. And
mike tickets full final:Yeah,
gillis ticket track:well, you know, it's coming.
Stuart Cain:my my old man was a civil engineer. So in his world, he traveled around, dug big holes, built things and then went on to the next one. So when you say, what do you do all day? Well, I did a PowerPoint, had a couple of team zoom meetings, watched a bit of cricket. He goes, yeah, yeah. When did the job start? So
gillis ticket track:when he, when he says he's, he's been in the workshop, he really has been in
Stuart Cain:has, yeah. It, and it's done.
gillis ticket track:of the, none of this whiteboard
Stuart Cain:No, no. He's dug some very big holes in his time as well. But there we go.
gillis ticket track:Brilliant. Same question.
mike tickets full final:Same question. So yeah, I'm, I'm David Hornby. I'm currently the managing director of Secutex in the UK and Ireland and I lead a a growing team of people and look after some interesting clients across the world of sport and entertainment here in the UK. Previous to that I I've been in many roles, but fundamentally, I suppose I trained and grew up in the world of hospitality and hotels. So service was at the heart of what we did and leverage, you know, for intercontinental to Marriott, to Thistle hotels, I finished in that world. As a main board kind of director of Thistle Hotel Group, which was a big PLC at the time. It used to be part of Scottish Newcastle when I read their event, read their events and conference business which was a significant part of what we did. And then I spent eight years in, in London being the commercial and officer for London and Partners. Which is in effect the, the tourism agency for the capital and part of my role was leading the new evolving growth of strategic events in the capital. We created a new body called Events for London and I was very involved in the bid for the Olympics in 2003 onwards to 2005 when we won the bid for the Games. So, got involved in sport then, understood and got to know international federations and that world, how that interacted with cities. Yeah, and I've been with SecuTix now for, since 2016. Started with a blank piece of paper in the UK and a mobile phone and And now we have a strong business. You know, probably about 35, 40% of the group business comes out of the UK with the partners we work with here.
gillis ticket track:So what is it? What is second deck? Cause I get confused with ticketing and we're going to talk about. That I find ticketing, I say this often, whoever wants to listen, I find ticketing really revealing about, you know, it's the bit of the sports business, which is really fundamental, really important. Everyone has an opinion on it, either price, how you get the ticket, secondary markets. It also, I think is quite revealing about the company's sort of relationship with tech, how digital it's become. Whether, you know, how people can game it and cheat and get in or all of the questions. I love a ticketing conversation. So I'm looking forward to this, but what, what just frame second ticks for me? Cause I, I get confused.
mike tickets full final:Yeah. So Tics is a 20-year-old business Swiss owned. And fundamentally we're an it. software business that has honed our skills and focused our efforts on the world of ticketing and the world for sports and entertainment. And so we were a kind of 180 degree different, I would say from your traditional Ticketing consumer facing brand with purely B2B. Our clients are the brand. So Warwickshire Cricket Club and it's a suite of brands are our client. We deliver the software for them. We support them. We help manage the processes behind the scenes and we bring them hopefully a newly evolving platform to allow them to run their business better, connect with their fans and grow their incomes and produce hopefully good, good results. Experiences for those fans that the only thing that kind of really differentiates as I suppose Is that as that, you know, we put the power in the in in our clients hands whether that be Sport or entertainment. They are the data controller They own all the data. They are the, they're in charge of the pricing. They're in charge of any fees they want to charge. We fundamentally enable that. And I think this has been an interesting six to eight years that I've been now involved in ticketing in a lot more detail. And, and that evolution has seen more and more people want to take that control. So international federations, governing bodies, rights holders as colleagues and clubs are really looking at, you know, Do I really want to outsource my fan experience and that data and the ultimate control of how the fan experiences an important part of the process to a third party? And our belief is not and, and there is a better way now because technology can enable that.
gillis ticket track:So you're saying an in house service that they can buy. Right. Okay. I get it. Right, Stuart. And this might be a question related to where you are now or in the past, but whenever I think about ticketing, whenever I buy a ticket, whenever I go and buy a ticket for an event, no one likes. That process. And I quite often think, I wonder if I'm blaming the right person here. So I don't know whether to blame a Spurs faggot, the club. I don't know whether to blame Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift. I don't know whether to blame middlemen. I don't know whether to blame ticket master and stub hub. Take me for it. What's your, your view on that question? Cause it's confusing. And I think there's a whole load of sort of. Politics in there as well as tech.
Stuart Cain:there's a lot more politics than tech probably that drives some of it. So, you kind of, if you think, the whole ticketing industry started because promoters and clubs, rights owners, didn't want the hassle of trying to organise tickets because 50 years ago tickets were printing 30, 000 of them and then trying to get them in envelopes, getting them out the door. And that was just hassle. So, if you're a promoter on the side of a stage and Los Angeles. Do you want to have sort of doing all of that? What if somebody comes and says, well, pay me cents and I'll do all that for you. Go happy days. Why wouldn't you? So I think that was the genesis of where the ticketing industry came from was to take basically a hassle out of a promoter's job or a club's job and go, we'll pass it on to somebody else. And if that means we put 50 cents on a ticket, then that's a price worth paying. That's morph now into this big global industry of ticket master. But I think he kind of an adjunction Some people will go. I only organize one sports event a year. I might only have one tournament, which is one week, or I'm a promoter that only does one Bruce Springsteen concert a year, and then I'll do a Taylor Swift concert, and then I'll do a whoever. So the reality is if you're that promoter, you're not going to have all the data about Bruce Springsteen fans or Taylor Swift fans. Somebody else might have that. So, and you don't, you don't, you don't have the hassle of setting up an organization to sell just tickets for one Bruce Springsteen concert. So I'll sell tickets to one week of a tennis tournament or a hockey tournament. So you kind of go, it's the right thing to do for somebody else to do that. But the trade off there is you've lost the relationship with the fund is buying the ticket because they're not buying it through your website or your app. You are not managing the customer service or the interaction. And the first time you'd actually meet that fan is probably when they walk through your turnstile. I'm going to say it's much harder to build a relationship and get to know them. So that model works for certain environments, but for someone like Warwickshire or Football Club, where we've got about 40 games a year coming through the doors, Edge Bastard, it makes sense for us to invest in the infrastructure to provide a good experience so people can get in, buy the ticket off our app or web, we manage the customer service, we own the data, and we can start to look at how we integrate the ticket piece into the wider experience of the day. Because actually, put your ticket in the Edgbaston app on your phone, so you just wave that at the turnstile, then you use the same app to navigate around Edgbaston to find out where the loo's are and the bar is and everything else, and then you can have a player cam watching your favourite player through it, all with one single sign on. That's a very different kind of experience. So I think that's the ticket industry started because it was taking hassle out of an old fashioned printed model of just getting tickets out through envelopes. And it's morphed now into a tech business, and it really depends what you are. Are you a promoter setting up a single gig or a sports club having a single event where it's easier to outsource it? Or actually, if you want to own the fan relationship and build a deeper partnership with the fan, you've got to invest in the technology to run it yourselves. And you should be quite obsessive. I'm a bit OCD. I want to own the relationship. I want to understand the fan. I don't want to pass it on to Ticketmaster and let them go and monetize that by selling it to somebody else.
gillis ticket track:There's a question. I guess there's a question probably it's, it might be David here that what do I reveal about myself? That's useful when I go through this process, because I, you know, we're all conscious of people say, I will collect the data, but I'm quite struck by how mundane and pedestrian quite often of outcomes of that are. I don't mind particularly giving my data out for something useful, but I'm just wondering what it is that happens. And I absolutely get that point about that difference between Bruce Springsteen and Warwickshire, that rate, the frequency and the relationship is different, I guess, slightly, but take me through what it is that. Is happening at that point when I'm, that I, what I'm doing when I'm buying my ticket.
mike tickets full final:I think, you know, ultimately if you look at someone like Stuart's business or a football club's business, it's about building trust and that trust can then evolve into value and hopefully value for the club and value for the fan. The more you share and the more they understand you, the better they can service you and provide goods and services, products and experiences that, you know, you know, and love. You know, because Stuart isn't always doing cricket there. He's got, you know, bonfire night and fireworks events. He's got, you know, he's a multi event stadium now. And a mul and a multiple experience stadium and event space. And he's, you know, he's going to have a hotel soon. So, you know, he can all of a sudden do a destination stay and experience Birmingham kind of solution as well. So you know, he's got You know, it's no longer about, I don't think just purely the ticket to get through the gate. It's the start of an engagement process and an ongoing relationship. And it's obviously different. That process, if you're a fan of a club, whether you live in the States and you're supporting a premiership football team, or if you live in the edge of Birmingham and you're going to Warwickshire on a regular basis to watch cricket. So I think from a data perspective, Anything that helps that club and org, I mean, they shouldn't be asking them, you know, what's their date dental records, but truthfully, it's, you know, how often do I go out? What do I really enjoy in life? Those kind of questions you know, do I have a family? Are they interested in sport? Are they interested in that? You know, some of the academy stuff that Stuart does with
gillis ticket track:So this is research data. This is not, you're not getting this from, it's not like, Tesco or Amazon who, or Facebook who are following me around and know stuff more about me than I know about myself. This is, I'm offering this data up willingly. This is a, this is a market research.
mike tickets full final:think, I think if you're talking about someone that's a member A seasoned ticket holder and has an ongoing 20 year relationship, 10 year, 5 year relationship with a club like Warwickshire and, and Stuart will see those in and out on regular days of the game. I think that's exactly where it's at. I think obviously he's trying to introduce new people into the start of that relationship and he's trying to find ways to bring those people into the world of sport, but also into the world of Edgbaston. I think the difference between that and You know, a Taylor Swift on sale or an Oasis on sale is that, you know, these are flash moments when someone who's a real fan wants to be able to get a ticket because the direct relationship with Taylor Swift is not via Ticketmaster or AEG or whoever's selling the tickets in that myriad of sales channels that is open to that is that they don't have that relationship with the fan specifically, which means that the trust that they need to be able to say, I'm a true fan of Taylor Swift. I'm not a bot. I'm not just doing this to harvest tickets and then go and resell them. That's difficult to engage with and to find processes for. And that's what we, we see as challenges in the future and what we're trying to address, which is some of these big kind of one off events like Like, you know, there is such demand for these kind of tickets that we want processes that identify that true fan early in the process so that we can get them to the top of the queue, put the bad actors to the bottom of a queue, or at least, or even knock them out of the queue. So that true fans are getting a ticket and that value is passed on to. The real fun for those events because at the moment it's getting into the wrong hands and therefore being leveraged. So, two very different processes and Stuart's on the good end of that, I think.
gillis ticket track:Let's talk about bad actors. How do you break the system? How do, what are you defending against Stuart? What's the, what's the keeps you up at night and David mentioned trust there and it's central to this thing, but I, I want to know how you get attacked.
Stuart Cain:I guess there's, there's two ways really. One is about just tech attacks. So bot attacks when we put an India test match on sale, big global event, Ash's test match. As David quite rightly said, what you want to do is make sure that the people that get access to those tickets are the ones that you know have been kind of expressing for years or are proper for England fans or cricket fans, not a piece of tech from some bunker in Siberia or back end of nowhere. How you do that is really hard, but I think that's where Secutex has got a, a really healthy approach. This is how do we create technical solutions to try and drive out those bots. And that's when you start to look at things as well, like sort of pre sales ballots. member only pieces. So you need, as David said, if you built the relationship, you kind of know that's a proper fan before you have to ask them they're a proper fan. Cause what you don't want to do is say to people sign up to our database to get access to a pre sale for India test match tickets. Cause you can, you can attract all those bad actors then. So really what you want to do is have a database of two or three years. engagement that goes. We know you love test match cricket because you've come every year for the last four years, or we know that you bought tickets for India for the last three India tests that we've stayed. So actually, we're going to give you access to a priority key or a ballot, whatever. And there'll be a piece of technology David can run to make sure that only people can get into the element of the ticket sale at that moment in time that helps us with the bad actors. So that that's that's the side of it. We focus on is how can we use our data? How could build our relationships? What? processes that we put in place about ballots, pre sales, et cetera, to try and manage that piece. And then David looks after that bot attack and that technology piece on the day, where suddenly you get swamped by 2 million people trying to buy a ticket at the same time. So that's the one bit. And then the other bit is just how you start to manage how many tickets that people have. How can they swap them and transfer them? Cause you've got to make it really hard. So we're, we're through Dave, David and what Secchi ticks have done with ticks and go, you know, get your ticket through the app for this year for the India test match. So. It's getting really hard for scalpers and touts to, to operate because they can't use paper printouts of old, of old fashioned tickets and they can't sort of literally take a screen, grab something and pass it onto somebody's phone outside Edge Bastion. So I think there's, there's a whole bunch of stuff in that there's, there's how do you try and make processes that mean the proper fan gets the front of the queue based on the relationship that you have. There's then some stuff that David can do around managing the tech attacks on the day. And then there's some stuff that tech can do as well to make it really hard to pass on tickets.
gillis ticket track:It's funny, David, and well, it's for both of you really, but there are these moments where ticketing becomes a front page story. So it's stuff like, you know, the Euros, for example, you know, the Wembley final people flying through and people, and the second level of the analysis is, you know, whither the ticket industry, you know, what, what's how, what lessons are learned from these sort of catastrophic moments where the system is appeared to have been gamed by, you know, smart. And, you know, bad actors, football fans trying to, you know, just get in for nothing, all of those sorts of stories. So when you look at something like that, what do you think? You think, okay, that's just a system failure, or do you think, okay, no, there's something new going on there. We need to learn and evolve our product,
mike tickets full final:I think with things like Champions League finals and Euro finals. It's difficult to go. There isn't one answer to that. I mean, you know, some of those people, the ticket was absolutely nothing to do with it. They just literally barge their way through. And it was more around security, stewarding and all of the things. I do think with those processes, the more, let me flip it around slightly in a, in a, in a fully digital. So the euros this last year was 100 percent digital 99. 9 percent of tickets were delivered by a, a mobile ticketed product that someone had to have on their phone now, unless you clone the phone, unless you clone someone's login and therefore their account, you can start to see hundreds of tickets on someone's phone. And because we know the traceability of every single ticket and we know how many are sat on any one phone at any one time, you can see immediately who, who are suspects. You know, and, and therefore you can start to take action against those suspects. So you can do that pre event, pre game, pre being there on site. And, and, and it depends on the rights holder as to the action they take, and the police in these circumstances, and what they want to do. For many years, some of these rights holders have watched and tried to learn. And not necessarily enforced potentially the ticketing rules they've set because they wanted to really understand how the tech was enabling them to understand the insights of this. But now I think most of those organizers are getting a lot more savvy now as to say, well, you know what, these are the terms, these are the conditions. If you've got 15 tickets on your phone and you as a person don't attend the match the last three times, then you're probably someone that actually isn't a fan. And you're absolutely someone that's distributing tickets and harvesting them and then reselling them as a digital town. And actually you know, without getting into a huge amount of detail, we've got a few customers in the UK and around Europe that are now cancelling those tickets, that are now taking them back. And actually, funny enough, those people don't turn up at the customer service desk and say, oh, by the way, you've just got rid of my tickets, they then recognize that they've been caught.
gillis ticket track:Yeah, okay. We can't have a conversation like this and not mention dynamic pricing. Because, you know, it's, it's, it's almost like it's become a sort of toxic brand in many ways. So, and the Oasis thing, you know, that again, it, it, it takes ticketing and puts it on the front page. So, I've got a few questions. Stuart, I just wondering about, I've always wondered about cricket and test cricket. I'm a huge test cricket fan, love Edge Baston. And I wonder about, sometimes I hear people say, Oh, there's, they could innovate a test match in terms of ticket pricing. Session by session, you've heard all of the theories about, you know, how to fill a ground when you've got, it doesn't matter, you know, the, the ashes and India will take care of themselves. But when you, you have to fill a ground, how price plays into this, just. Give us your, just a general view on that, because I think I find it a really interesting subject and, you know, economists, I remember my old economics lessons, they would have loved dynamic price. It's all about market and blah, blah. But I know it's again, beings aren't quite as simple as that.
Stuart Cain:You know, I, I don't actually see a problem in dynamic pricing as long as it's managed properly. And the OSC situation in my mind wasn't managed properly. So when you go and buy it, if you want to buy a plane ticket on EasyJet, you might go on today and it's 75 quid. You might go 85 quid. That's dynamic pricing. But you accept that you went on today and it's a different price. That's just the consequence of going on in different days. I think where it went wrong with Oasis, anyone else runs it is you could go onto the website. And it was 150 quid. And by the time we got to the basket, it was 250 quid. That, that's not right. I think if you're going to dynamically price, it should be fixed at the point of entering the website to buy the ticket. So if you, if you logged in at nine o'clock in the morning for an Oasis ticket, and it was 150 quid, but then you logged in at 10 o'clock. And it was 250 quid and it stayed at those prices. I could buy that because that's about supply and demand, isn't it? And whether it's hotels, plane tickets, a bunch of other stuff these days, that model works. But I think this idea of having technology that can't transact a ticket straight away at a price point and then you'd be disadvantaged by being in that queue is just either poor planning by the tech business that's running it. Or the promoter just going about, hey, well, when they set the rules and the parameters for how they managed it. And again, it's tricky because Oasis were the ones on the front page of the Daily Mail. And the challenge is the Gallaghers were probably lying in bed, didn't have any idea what was going on with this because a promoter will have done all of this. And the promoter might have had to pay Oasis, I would imagine tens, if not hundreds of millions of pounds as a guarantee to secure the Oasis talent. And then they're thinking, how do I manage that? In terms of ticket sales and merchandise and any other revenue that I can make after the cost. So if a ticket and agent comes to me and goes, actually, here's a real great idea. Why don't we have a bit of a wheeze on this and see if we can squeeze a bit more money? Because there'll be loads of demand. I can understand the logic for that, but they just executed it poorly. So, so for us, something like a test match, which is a kind of a different environment, I think, to an Oasis concert.
gillis ticket track:Yeah.
Stuart Cain:of what it is and who is buying. I think for us, there is an element of dynamic pricing because you can buy a ticket as an early bird. You can then buy in general sale and then if ever released any last minute, then there's a premium for those. So you could argue there's dynamic pricing in cricket already, but it's just managed properly. And I think that that's the big issue for me is just managing it. So the expectations set from the start about what the fund is actually going to pay. And when they're going to pay it. And that's the bit I think that people hate to feel like they've been mugged off. Don't they? If you go, well, I thought it said on the post, it was a hundred quid ticket. Then I got to the website. There's 150 of them. By the time I went to give them my credit card details, it was 250. I'm being screwed over here. That just leaves a bit of taste. So that's the bit I think that needs fixing.
gillis ticket track:You've also got the sort of issue of fairness, haven't you? Or the perceit, the perception of fairness, which again is more important for you with a regular punter than it is probably for an Oasis, example where, and again, it gets back to, I'm quite skeptical. I mean, we had via go go on and they were saying, well, we take the reputational hit. We take the PR hit for Taylor Swift because, or Bruce Springsteen, cause they want their fans to. think about the fans and we want to bring prices down and, but actually they're taking a massive upfront and that's dictating what the price is going to be further down. So there's a sort of, you know, a bit of gamesmanship, let's put it that way.
Stuart Cain:Yeah. And I think that that's where you get into profiteering and stuff like that. Isn't it? Cause as David said, we try as much as possible to keep India test match tickets off the secondary market, keep them in the hands of the fans, but it's impossible to do all of that because even if you've got the sort of mom and pop kind of environment where someone will go, I'll buy four tickets cause I can, but it's only me and my grandson that are going to come, but actually if I buy four and that pays for the day out. And that, that, that's probably the low end of a market where people kind of don't think they're doing anything wrong there. They're just playing a system. Then you've got the industrial level stuff David talks about where someone's trying to get all the thousands of tickets. Which is absolutely wrong. But it's in both ways. If, if everybody, if there's 25, 000 people at Edgbaston and everybody buying a ticket buys one too many to sell it on, that's 000 people that have bought tickets through a secondary market, which can't be right. So trying to manage all of that is really, really hard because you're getting them back into, well, how many tickets do I let people buy? What happens if. You were coming, but actually the day before your game, the game, you broke your leg and you can't get here. Does that mean you've lost your money or should you be able to sell that ticket legitimately and you probably should. So that's why I think you've seen a lot rights holders now getting into having controlled secondary sites. So a lot of Premier League football clubs have got it now, haven't they? If you can't make the game at Spurs or West Ham on Saturday, put your ticket through the West Ham resale mechanism, which is controlled, or there's companies like Twickets, which. They, they are perceptually at the more ethical end of that where they, they, they sort of cap the amount you can sell a ticket for to try and keep it in the plan. So for people to be able to buy a ticket on, on perceptually secondary market, but you've got to manage it a lot better and it shouldn't be used as a route for profit. How you start that price line is that's more David's world than mine.
mike tickets full final:Well, I think, you know, again, it's about trust and communication. And I think when when she was talking about management, I mean, management to me is about understanding clients and customers and then communicating really well with them. And I think that was the missing piece. They weren't really well communicated with what to expect, what to see and therefore what to do. And. Our job is to enable people like Stuart to make good decisions and provide a platform that can execute those decisions. His decisions are on price, the number of seats available at that price, and when he wants to sell them, and who he wants to sell them to. So as you heard from Stuart, he can define, you know, a long time in advance of that India game. Who is who is target customers, and he'll have with that group also a bunch of people where he wants to use that amazing game and that experience to bring some new people into that experience. So everyone wants to not just reward existing but bring people new in those amazing experience because those things in life can become the things that change the way you perceive the sport, the way you mean they become magical memories. And I think our job is to enable that. I think fundamentally, Stuart's secondly very correct in saying. Everyone just dynamic pricing and it has been since Jesus was born in in Bethlehem, you know, I mean ultimately
gillis ticket track:selling tickets.
mike tickets full final:If there's only if there's only one room available, it's actually at the shed, you know, the shed's got a price and that's the challenge. So, you know, I come from a hotel background. Listen, you know, we've been doing best available rate depending on when you buy, how you buy, what you're willing to commit to, do you pay up front? Do you get a flexible cancellation fee that allows you to cancel up to 24 hours before all of those factors dictate the rate you pay for that room? And therefore it's the best available. A long time ago we used to put our prices behind the reception desk and say The the rack rate for a room is 100 pounds. Thanks very much new arrive. It's 100 quid and that's it And that's just not the world because you don't necessarily want to charge someone under quid on a sunday night Versus a midweek night during a major event that's going on in your city. So there's always an element of dynamic pricing I think the challenge is communication this profiteering because fundamentally you know think about the states the nfl the states is a very different market But fundamentally the season ticket holders at most nfl teams have this game that they play every year when their season tickets become available They try and buy one or two additional tickets And they're on that phone. They're on that process to buy that because then they then sell that. Through Vivid or StubHub or whoever it is. And that one ticket they sell then pays for all their, for their four tickets that they've bought for their family for the rest of the year. And, and I, I think that's, one could argue whether that's right or wrong. Fundamentally, that, that's also, if you can imagine, if every season ticket holder on average had two or three season tickets, you divide 60, 000 seats by three, if they're all getting one additional seat in this game, again, it's not really bringing to the market. And the rights hold the chance to bring new customers into the,
gillis ticket track:Well, it's funny, isn't it? It's a really good point. It's a, it's a good point because actually, you know, we've talked about trust, but it doesn't go both ways. Cause I, if you know, your, your, your best fans might be the ones that are, you know, most adept at ripping you off, Stuart, there might, there's a sort of, I just wonder if there's any good actors out there. We talk about bad actors, but there's a, there's a whole game that is played and we are, I quite often think, you know, in the sports business more generally, we do sort of, yeah. Talk about fans, like a sort of noble savage, you know, we sort of elevate them, but we all know the games we all play to try and get into a, an event.
Stuart Cain:Yeah. I mean, there's like David said, I said, do you buy four tickets? You only want two to try and cover your day out and pay for your drinks or even stuff like, do you buy two adult tickets and two kids tickets hoping that the guy on the gate isn't switched on enough to realize that the kid coming in at 14 is actually 36 with a beard and gray hair. There's a whole bunch of scams out there that you're trying to work and that it is about trust both ways, isn't it? About trying to have, the challenge you've got is if you try and revise a system which catches everybody or you try and get to the lowest common denominator, you're going to, 95 percent of people that are actually good people are going to get caught up in something they don't enjoy. So, do you let that 5 percent go? Then that's the balance between customer service and experience, isn't it? So do you want everyone to have a bad day out because they've been studying a key for an hour and they're grumpy because they've been patted down an inch of their life or they've had to show their passport, their birth certificate to prove they're not under 18 or over 18? That's not a great start to a day, is it? So, but how far do you go with managing this sort of stuff? I do, I do, I'm perhaps too naive, but I inherently think the world is a good place. So I think there's more good people than bad. So we try and balance it out. Are you going to get a few people that take the mickey? Yes. Is that serious enough? Do you stay awake at night thinking, how do I stop it? Probably not.
mike tickets full final:Now, I was just going to say you know, without naming names, you know, we were, we were very lucky to work with some fantastic brands and one of them is Wimbledon and, you know, they, they have a really interesting approach because they've obviously got a demand. Demand. They've got people who play tennis regularly that are around the country and they, and the LTA, they work with carefully on how does the LTA members, so genuinely people playing tennis, get the chance to go and watch. They then have people that play debentures, debentures and are big investors in the club, and therefore they get the chance to buy tickets in a slightly different way. And then they have members, and members can buy two tickets. One ticket of those memberships has to stay on the phone and stay with the member and and one ticket can be transferred To a guest but only transferred once that's it and our technology enables that process and then the final Customer is is the people that queue up the queue And they keep a percentage back every day. And that's really that democratization that if you're really keen to go, it doesn't matter whether you're from Australia or just a fan of Wimbledon or a mad keen fan of, you know, a certain player, you can go and queue up as well. And I think that gives every element of that customer base, the chance to go and see what you, what is an amazing experience that's taken them years to get to this point. Yes, they can tweak it, but fundamentally they've kind of found a way, which It really enables people to have four or five different ways of accessing it doesn't mean you're going to get a ticket every year, but there are ways you can actually get there in a proper way. And there are people that try to break those rules but they've got people that are looking at that on a regular basis. So, it takes a long time to get to that point though, and not everyone's willing to take the time and effort to get there.
gillis ticket track:on. I've got quite, there's a question, Stuart, which is about the other end. We talk about Oasis and, you know, India test matches. It's the sort of empty, you know, so it's a county cricket question. And what is. The relationship between price and empty seats, a county ground, how, you know, is it about price or is it about something else? Could you, is there, is there anything in there that you can do? Could you fill a county game? I guess is the question?
Stuart Cain:That's something we've, we've taught ourselves about for hours. Cause the reality is for Red Bull kind of championship game, four days at Edgbaston in April, May. Could we get 20, 000 people on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday to come and watch? Being straight, I don't think we could. So, I think you've got to look at what do, what do cricket fans want? How many of them are there? How do they want to use their time? What other competition have you got for their time? Because there's only certain people that could say I've got four days, eight hours a day to spend watching cricket. So naturally, if you kind of go, are you at school? Right, you're gone. Are you at work? Right, you're gone. There's only a certain market you can go for. And is there enough of those people that want to come and spend that day doing what they're doing? Because I think with county cricket, it's the social service side of it as much as it's the cricket. So you'll, you'll sit there for eight hours with a bunch of people you've probably sat there for years with chatting about Donald Trump, the weather, what you're gonna have for dinner, whatever it is, and watching the cricket. It's just a good day out for them. But that's very different to someone who goes, actually, I want a couple of hours of 220 or 100 cricket on a Thursday night, Friday night either come with a family or with a couple of friends for a few beers. They're, they're very different experiences and very different relationships. So, If, if I offered, I mean, members, members come for free anyway to Canada Championship cricket, it's that it's part of their membership. You could argue that's what they paid for, but they don't charge a, they don't pay for that ticket. But if I said pay a pound to come and watch a Canada Championship game, would I get 20, 000 people to the door? I don't think I would. And then you get into the whole value equation because we've seen it before where we've done promotions where you go, particularly try and drive audiences for the women's game, which we're really working hard on. You go get a free ticket to come and watch the Bears win or buy a ticket for a pound and you sell 6, 000 and think, Oh, this is brilliant. But then only 2, 000 arrive because a free ticket or a pound ticket hasn't got any transactional value. So you might buy four tickets for four quid for the Bears game. But I don't know if Love Island or Traitors is getting a bit interesting. You might think I can afford to lose four quid. We'll give it a miss tonight. Whereas if you pay 10 a ticket, it's 40 quid. You might go, well, we'll record Love Island and we'll go and watch the cricket. So I'm being a bit flippant, but you know, there's a
gillis ticket track:No, it's a really interesting question. We had a, there's a, we had a similar conversation in relation to netball and the building of value around netball. And it was exactly that there's a sort of psychology to pricing isn't there in terms of, well, How you get from a very low prices. It's a very live conversation in the WSL and women's football terms of, you know, filling stadiums, television needs full stadiums, but it's the perception of value within the product itself. And can you go from one to the other? Can you start at a quid and get to a higher price later on or whether, you know, it's really, it's, it's a conundrum, isn't it?
Stuart Cain:Well, the conventional wisdoms and build the crowd, doesn't it get the volume in and then drive the margin, but I don't think that's necessarily working. So we've got to think differently. And I think we've got to respect as well. We've got bears women here for the first time this year, professional athletes, they're training as hard as the men that play in the game as well as the men. Should they be people playing the same price? It's about respect as much as anything else. Are you devaluing the product? If you say. It only costs a pound to watch Bears women, but it's 20 to watch Bears men. So it's a tough question. I think for the whole of women's sport is how do we manage to keep growing volume, but grow value at the same time? Cause we've got to get to a point where we've got parity on wages. You've got parity with sponsorship. It's, and it's, that's going to be a bit of a journey and I think we'll make some mistakes along the way, but I think most people have got the right intentions with it. We just got to work out how to do it.
gillis ticket track:and the ultimate quote David, I'm going to bring you in in a sec, but just the old, just while we're on this thread, the other question is, is it the same audience that's coming? So again, there is some dispute. I assumed it was a different audience and we, you know, the, the data isn't quite there yet. I don't think we haven't, you know, you get the anecdotal, it's a different experience, different people, but actually we don't know that much, or do we, is it
Stuart Cain:Yeah, we know, we know bits about the audience. I think there is an anecdotal view that it's a different audience that comes to watch women's sport, but I think that's, that's about the maturity of women's sport as well as it moves away from being friends and family of the athlete that are coming to watch to becoming a mature, high quality, competitive product. I hate the word product, but you know what I mean. It sort of, I think then you'll drive a different audience because then it'll be, this is, this is actually really good to watch. It's, there's jeopardy, it's entertaining and exciting. I can see the physicality of the athlete in this. I'm happy to pay for this and come along to it, which is very different to the people that will come and watch, whether it be early stage women's special sport or even just amateur sport on the sidelines and happy masses on a Sunday morning. So I think we're going through that evolution of women's sport from its sort of introduction into maturity and growing it as an established sport with high quality athletes playing high quality games and competition that will probably bring you closer to an audience that is akin to the historic men's audience. And it'll be interesting with people at Birmingham City, they've just done a trial where you can have a beer on the terraces for a women's game, versus you can't in the men's. So, is that going to help or hinder? I don't know. Will that mean that you'll suddenly get the lads who enjoy a few pints before a game come into the women's game and change the atmosphere and alienate the audience? Or actually, will it still attract the traditional audience and build a new audience? I don't know. So as I said, I think the key thing is you've still got, we've got to be curious, innovative and brave to try new things, but not be afraid to switch them off if they're not working, but not be afraid to push it harder if they are working. Cause I desperately want to get to the point where we've got an India women's IT20 here at Edgbaston. I want that to be rocking with 25, 000 people in a great atmosphere in the same way as the men's game will be when we play the test match, but I can't mark it. Those are both games in the same way because the demand isn't there and I can't treat the experience as the same because it's not right but ultimately that's got to be the ambition is to get to the point where it kind of doesn't matter if it's a men's or a women's game. It's just another great day out at a good price point that people enjoy.