Online Ticket Sales Bolster Crowds
Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
Bernie Mullin and Brenda Spoonemore, senior executives for the N.B.A., with an online service from Ballena Technologies that enables prospective ticket buyers to see views from the seats. Seventy percent of the N.B.A.'s non-box-office tickets are sold online.
As last week's earnings report from InterActiveCorp indicated, the growth of online ticket sales continues unabated. More than half of the $1.1 billion worth of tickets sold by the company's Ticketmaster division in the third quarter were bought online, reducing Ticketmaster's reliance on more capital-intensive sales channels like ticket outlets and telephone banks.
And just as the Internet has proved a boon to Ticketmaster and competing brokers like Tickets.com, so too has it helped entertainment businesses and sports franchises fill seats that might otherwise have gone unsold.
The National Basketball Association's Memphis Grizzlies are a case in point. The team moved from Vancouver, British Columbia, in 2001 after a feeble six-year tenure there. It settled into the 21,000-seat Pyramid, and is planning a new $250 million arena, the FedEx Forum, scheduled to open in Memphis next year.
In either arena, the Grizzlies face the challenge of selling seats for one of the worst teams in the league, playing in the N.B.A.'s smallest market. Mike Golub, the team's senior vice president for business operations, said that because the Grizzlies must attract fans from well beyond their metropolitan area, the Internet has become an important sales tool.
"This technology makes our region smaller," Mr. Golub said. By e-mailing 25,000 people on the team's e-mail newsletter list, as well as past customers, with news about coming games and other Memphis-area events, he said, fans are more likely to make the trip. "People around here are conditioned to driving five hours for a game,'' he said.
It is difficult to quantify the Web's effect on sales, he said. But e-mail alerts and other online features - like one that enables groups to buy and manage tickets in bulk - have "helped fill seats, no question."
The Web will also be instrumental in helping the Grizzlies sell advance-purchase seats at the new arena, Mr. Golub said. Using a service by Ballena Technologies, the Grizzlies plan to begin enabling prospective ticket buyers for the 2004-05 season to see 360-degree views from any section in the arena, including the 59 luxury suites.
"You can talk all day about the new sight lines in the Forum, but until you demonstrate it with this tool, it won't really hit home," Mr. Golub said. "Fans get very emotionally invested in their seats. It's like buying a new home, just not necessarily the same price. Well, in some cases, maybe."
Indeed, luxury suites at the new arena will sell for $99,000 to $225,000 for a 41-game regular home season.
The Grizzlies are hardly unique in their reliance on the Web. According to N.B.A. executives, online sales represent 70 percent of all non-box-office ticket sales. "For tickets sold remotely, it's far and away the preferred medium," said Bernie Mullen, the NBA's senior vice president for marketing and team business operations.
Among other things, Mr. Mullen said, the Internet has reduced ticket buyers' reliance on scalpers, thanks to technologies that allow ticket holders to forward unused tickets to friends, or sell them online.
With services like Ticket Forwarding, which is provided by Ticketmaster, ticket holders, for a transaction fee of about $2, e-mail a digital version of their ticket to a recipient. In the handoff, Ticketmaster voids the bar code on the original ticket and issues a new one to the recipient, who then prints out the ticket and bar code from the computer. Bar code scanners at the ticket gate validate the ticket.
The N.B.A. is also working with Ticketmaster to study the buying history of its fans, and it sends e-mail alerts about games they may be interested in, said Brenda Spoonemore, senior vice president for interactive services at the league's entertainment division.
Other sports leagues are also enamored with online ticket sales, even in cases where such sales might seem superfluous. The New York Giants football team have sold out every game since it moved to Giants Stadium in 1976, and have about 23,500 people on its season ticket waiting list.
Yet John Mara, the Giants' executive vice president and chief operating officer, said Internet ticket sales were a potentially important tool in reducing no-shows. The economic effects of no-shows are significant. Parking alone costs $10 to $15 a car, and the team receives 25 to 30 percent of stadium concession sales.
Last month, the Giants were the first National Football League team to roll out Ticketmaster's TeamExchange service, an online auction that works similarly to Ticket Forwarding, except that recipients pay a percentage fee above the face value of the ticket.
As of late last week, about 500 tickets had been resold for the team's first three home games, but the feature could grow in importance, Mr. Mara said, depending on the team's performance.
"It's not unusual late in the year for us to have 5,000 or 10,000 no-shows," Mr. Mara said. "If it's a poor season, that number could go way up."
No-shows are more problematic for the National Hockey League, which depends heavily on parking and concession revenue because the money it receives from television rights is much less than that of the N.F.L., N.B.A. and Major League Baseball. Scott Carmichael, vice president for club relations for the N.H.L., said about 90 percent of the league's fans have online access, and more than 60 percent of single-game purchasers now buy their tickets over the Web.
"We'll see that 60 percent number continue to climb as this technology evolves," Mr. Carmichael said.
Beyond sports, music fans have also been quick to migrate to online ticket purchases, said Chris Hearne, the executive vice president for tickets and customer services at Clear Channel Entertainment. Clear Channel, which owns or operates more than 125 arenas and other entertainment sites in the United States and abroad, will sell more than $1 billion in tickets online this year, or more than half its total, Mr. Hearne said.
Clear Channel relies on Ticketmaster to provide ticketing services in most of its locations.
Mr. Hearne said Clear Channel's online sales efforts "have allowed us to do things that were never before possible," like e-mailing last-minute offers for concert tickets, merchandise and backstage meetings with band members. One such offer this summer, auctioned by Clear Channel on eBay during the Lollapalooza tour, resulted in the sale of 10 tickets for an average of $900 each.
Ticket auctions have been a source of controversy since Ticketmaster introduced a service last month allowing entertainment sites to sell seats to the highest bidders. Clear Channel tested the service with a Sting concert in October in New York - with prices averaging about $90 in the 1,680-seat Hammerstein Ballroom. But the company is "moving very carefully with this,'' Mr. Hearne said. "We're most concerned about pricing tickets out of the reach of fans."
David Goldberg, Ticketmaster's executive vice president for strategy and business development, said none of the company's clients was currently planning another auction. "They're approaching it cautiously,'' he said, "probably rightfully so."
But, Mr. Goldberg said, lost in the speculation that people might be forced to buy the best seats for $1,000 at auction is the idea that the new system might benefit other fans. By his reasoning, if people paid the venue higher prices for the best seats, rather than buying them from scalpers or brokers, the remaining seats could be offered at lower prices.
"The biggest story shouldn't be that someone paid $1,000 for
a front row seat," he said. "It should be that because
of that person, someone else was able to see the show in the last
row for $5. And those seats might've gone empty.
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