On Tuesday the 25th and Wednesday the 26th of September 2018 Oxynade hosted the first eTicketing as a Service (eTaaS) event in Europe.
The goal was to give the attendees an inspirational experience and let them meet international like-minded ticketing individuals.
There were 14 nationalities represented, 8 interesting topics covered and 45 attendees joined together.
In other words, a successful event.
Unfortunately, you might not have been able to join us. No worries, here is a small recap:
Oxynade is shifting its focus onto eTicketing as a Service. Having years of experience in a 'typical' ticketing agency ourselves, we experienced growing technological ticketing needs and challenges. We spotted the opportunity that many ticketing competitors/ colleagues are lacking good software for their business and struggled to develop new software in-house. This while we had developed a hyper-flexible, ultra scalable and extremely interactive SaaS platform. Being an innovative company, we have decided to evolve to a 100% SaaS company targeting the large group of Ticketing agencies and distributors worldwide (with an initial focus on Europe).
Howler offers more than ticketing by focussing on cashless payments One of the ways to increase your revenue is to check other opportunities in the event revenue. These can be insurance, sponsorship, merchandise and food and drinks. Based on your current, positive relationship with the organiser, you can try to get involved in these areas. Howler started with specialising in cashless solutions. Of course, this means your approach towards your current and new customers has to be balanced out. The current clients (promotors) might have different needs and expectations than the new ones (vendors and other suppliers). But if you get it right, you will have customers and vendors actually asking events to go cashless.
Internationalisation and customisation, integrability and performance are the 3 common challenges when scaling ticketing Based on years of experience, we have developed different ways to handle one of the most well-known difficulties for the ticketing world: scaling. With a platform build for international usage and a complete white label approach, the challenges of internationalisation and customisations are the most obvious ones. A hack like "IF organizer ID" might do the trick for a while but that’s not scalable for sure. Customisation of languages and other properties should be built in if you want to scale properly. We solved this by creating a hierarchy on which you can configure (and overrule) translations and webshop properties. Setting up an open API will improve your integrability but there's a lot of knowledge required to do this properly without calling for an overload of data that you don't need. And that's just the multi integrator flexibility part... Last but not least, there is the issue of performance. Pick a technology that fits your needs and that has a living community, is just one of the tips our CIO Brenden shared.
Vertical SaaS solutions and platform neutral service provision are the “next big thing Marcus Garbe shared his insight into the ticketing landscape. He explained that the development of the ticketing industry was always closely tied to technological developments with significant disruption in market structure. Based on his findings, he believes the current business model of ‘ticketing intermediary’ is under pressure. Vertical SaaS solutions and platform neutral service provision are the “next big thing”. Where valuation metrics will become more consumer-centric there will be a clear move from “content is king” to “consumer is king”. We were happy with his statement that ecosystems will become a success factor: The competition dictates thinking in ecosystems, meaning that the digital transformation strategy analyses possible business areas and links them. Our Oxynade connect story fits perfectly into this trend.
Consolidation and fragmentation were trending in 2018 Some of the major vertically-aligned aggregators decided to consolidate in 2018. This way, they combine aspects of the management of the Intellectual property, live entertainment, venue management and much more. On the other hand, we've seen quite some fragmentation as well thanks to the capital requirement of developing a complete ticketing eco-system and the emergence of new technologies. Additionally, there continues to be an expansion of ticketing-related functionalities and therefore operating companies specialising in limited aspects of the overall ticketing experience. This was Tim Chambers answer to our top question "What was trending in 2018 (or past years) and will change/evolve in 2019?".
An unexpected business model: a cooperation between a radio station and a ticketing agency. Aula, a start-up in Latvia, combines the offering of media and a full-service ticketing solution. Thanks to the unique situation of the radio station SWH, the opportunity had arisen to distribute tickets through Aula in exchange for marketing. This uncommon collaboration can mean a win-win situation for both the organiser (who gets more airtime) and the media owner (who can monetise what they're currently offering for free). Off course this isn't a setup that can be extrapolated to any other country or media channel but it's surely an inspiring way to look at your current market.
How to re-invent yourself You might be facing challenges in finding new customers or keeping your current ones. TIcketcounter offered a few insights on how to handle that situation. First of all, redefine your value for your home market. Your current clients have been working with you for such a long time that they've started to take you for granted. And, as you know, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Time to let your customers know what you're actually doing for them. You're probably offering more than they realise. By having an open conversation, you can check what else it is that they need and if you might already help them with it. Secondly, to find new clients you need to define new markets and products. Building everything by yourself isn't a future-proof solution. Instead, you should find a technical partner that knows the business and go into new verticals, based on their technical know-how.
An exclusive sneak preview of our new back office. With an UX/UI expert in our team, we have completely redesigned our current platform. We've created a short demo to give you a first insight into their our layout, set up to humanize the user experience. Curious? Contact us!
Can't believe you've missed this ticketing event of the year?
Contact us, we'll keep you informed about our next edition!
