Make it Social partners with Ticketmaster Sport

Group booking start-up Make it Social has followed up its strategic partnership with Paylogic with deals with Ticketmaster Sport UK, travel booking platform TrekkSoft, student tour operator Bus2Alps and the Kia Oval cricket ground (24,500-cap.).

The Edinburgh-based company, which says the new partnerships form part of its plan to “build its client base across live entertainment ticketing in travel, sports and large-scale festivals, has also announced the addition of Tim Chambers as chief commercial officer. Chambers – last seen becoming a non-executive director of TickX – was formerly a senior executive at Live Nation/Ticketmaster, where he founded TicketWeb, and is now an independent ticketing consultant and executive editor of the International Ticketing Yearbook.

Eddie Robb, the company’s CEO and founder, says: “Socialising checkouts is what we’re all about. The first ever online purchase was made in the ’90s and since then we’ve had the birth of social media with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram allowing us to be highly connected. While our friends are only a few clicks away, the check-out flow is exactly as it was back in the day. One person still has to select how many spots to buy and then put it all on their card.”

“Working with Ticketmaster Sport is the first big step for the business, as it means we’re now partnered with one of the best organisations in the country to deliver incremental ticketing revenues”

Make it Social’s application program interface (API) distributes planning responsibility for group bookings and automatically splits and processes payment. On the new Make it Social-enhanced Paylogic platform, unveiled in April, an ‘invite friends’ button triggers a group creation pop-up, allowing users to invite their friends via email or SMS. If invitees decide to join the group, each is walked through booking and payment, and the check-out amount is based on the total price split, with each group member paying his or her share only.

“Working with Ticketmaster Sport is the first big step for the business, as it means we’re now partnered with one of the best organisations in the country to deliver incremental ticketing revenues,” says Chambers. “We are delivering high levels of new customer data points across our client base and expect to announce a raft of new wins before the year is out.”

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Paylogic integrates Make it Social for group booking

Edinburgh-based start-up Make it Social has announced a strategic partnership with Paylogic that will see its proprietary group-booking technology integrated into the Dutch ticketing company’s entire platform.

Make it Social’s application program interface (API) distributes planning responsibility for group bookings and automatically splits and processes payment. On the new Make it Social-enhanced Paylogic platform, an ‘invite friends’ button will trigger a group creation pop-up, allowing users to invite their friends via email or SMS. If invitees decide to join the group, each is walked through booking and payment, and the check-out amount is based on the total price split, with each group member paying his or her share only.

It has already facilitated several group bookings for Mysteryland 2016 for groups of up to 20 people.

“An excited fan who convinces others to attend a festival is one of the best marketing tools in the industry”

“An excited fan who convinces others to attend a festival is one of the best marketing tools in the industry,” says Jan Willem Van der Meer, international CEO of Paylogic, one of Europe’s fastest-growing ticket agencies. “Make it Social is a terrific tool that’ll help fans buy tickets with their friends – and, as a result, help our events sell out quicker. This new partnership is yet another way for Paylogic to make its platform even more useful for our customers.”

Make it Social published a study earlier this year demonstrating that 25 per cent of social group bookings – defined as events, including concerts, sporting events, films and holidays, booked in informal groups of two or more people – are abandoned sometime during the planning process, mostly due to wrangling over group members’ preferences and payments.