2020 and Beyond: How ticketing will revolutionise the entertainment experience
You are looking to buy a ticket to an interesting event for the upcoming weekend. Instead of navigating to your browser, you ask Siri or Alexa, “What’s happening this weekend in town? What are my friends and family doing?”
Within milliseconds, your AI assistant searches the internet for the events that seem most appealing to your interests and that appear in your family and friend’s social media feeds. Your AI assistant responds asking you follow-up questions on your desired experience and budget.
Once you have found the perfect event, you give your AI assistant the go-ahead to buy the tickets. Almost immediately, your tickets are purchased, verified and readily available in your mobile wallet. This transaction was likely processed through a mobile payments solution and automatically added to your calendar. Your AI assistant asks if you would like to invite friends, because if they also attend the event, the brand offers you an incentive.
The day of the event is here. When you get within a geofenced area of the event location, you receive a notification asking if you would like an augmented-reality tour guide to assist you to your gate of entry and seats. As you approach entry to the event, your face is scanned to verify your identity and your radio-frequency identification (RFID) or mobile phone ticket is checked-in in a near frictionless entry point.
A ticket is not just a piece of paper, but the direct connection between a person and an experience
Once you enter, your phone becomes a second-screen experience, providing your choice of merchandise, food ordering, artist or athlete information, game statistics and live betting experiences. When you arrive at your seat your food and drink order is waiting for you and you settle in for a great time.
This glimpse into the near-future is closer than it might seem. All of the referenced technology already exists. The next step is bridging the gap between the intersection of the experience, technology and human behaviour.
A ticket is not just a piece of paper, but the direct connection between a person and an experience. It is also the core mechanism for how organisations will gather data to better engage with you and provide offers you will find interesting.
The smartest organisations invest not only in technology, but also commit to securing the treasure trove of data on their users. Piecing these together will be the key to continually providing users with great experiences in a world of increasing entertainment options.
Mark Miller is the co-founder and chief executive of TicketSocket, a white-label ticketing and registration service for venues and events.
Ticketmaster teams up with Amazon Alexa
Ticketmaster has announced that it has teamed up with Alexa, Amazon’s cloud-based voice service, enabling fans to discover events and buy tickets to live events using their voice.
The integration allows fans to ask Alexa-enabled devices to open Ticketmaster, voicing an artist or band name, city or date range to search available tickets. From there, buyers can finalise order details and purchase tickets by linking their Ticketmaster account to Alexa.
In recent years, Ticketmaster has integrated with marquee streaming services, e-commerce sites and social media platforms, including Facebook, Spotify, Groupon, BandsinTown, Samsung and YouTube.
“This new integration with Alexa will offer another avenue for fans to access live events, allowing them to discover and buy tickets using only their voice”
“Ticketmaster has the largest ticket inventory in the world, and our team is always looking to leverage it along with our open platform to reach new fans,” says Dan Armstrong, senior vice president and general manager of distributed commerce at Ticketmaster.
“This new integration with Alexa will offer yet another avenue for fans to access the best live events, allowing them to discover and buy tickets using only their voice. We’re excited to be working with Amazon Alexa and look forward to seeing fans utilising it to see the artists, teams and events they love the most,” added Armstrong.
Discovering and buying tickets with Ticketmaster on Alexa-enabled devices is currently only available in the United States and will expand to more countries in the near future.
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