Step into the fascinating world of ticketing with Andrew Thomas, a veteran of the industry and Director of the Ticketing Professionals Conference (TPC). In this enlightening conversation, Andrew takes us on a captivating journey from the pre-digital era of queues and paper tickets to today's cutting-edge mobile solutions.
With decades of ticketing experience, Andrew offers unique insights into the challenges and triumphs of ticketing technology. He shares amusing anecdotes about handwritten tickets and sleeping on streets for coveted seats, while also diving deep into the future of customer experience in the arts and culture sector.
But this isn't just a trip down memory lane. Andrew's passion for accessible professional development shines through as he discusses TPC's mission to democratise industry knowledge. Whether you're a seasoned professional or new to the field, this interview promises valuable insights into prioritising strategies, embracing innovation, and fostering a culture of continuous learning in the ever-evolving world of ticketing.
Prepare to be inspired, informed, and perhaps a little nostalgic as we explore the past, present, and future of ticketing with one of the industry's most passionate advocates.
[Transcript]
Matt: Hello, everyone. Welcome to an episode of Culture Talk where we share insights and learnings from leaders in art and culture. Today, we have Andrew Thomas with us, founder of Ticketing Professionals Conference, who has a long and varied career in the world of Ticketed events. TPC's defining mantra is to enable professional development and knowledge sharing through accessible conferences, and this often means ticket prices are extremely reasonable rates. In light of
TPC's mission, Andrew will be sharing some of his thoughts and learnings in the industry with us today. So hi Andrew, thanks for your time today. How are you doing?
Andrew: Good. Thanks a lot, Matt. Thank you for having me on.
Matt: Good, good. You've got a couple more events coming up this year. So I gathered, uh, keeping you busy. Um, so we'll go on to some of those later. But first, um, I'd like to chat to you about, uh, where this all started for you. I mean, you have a long career that dates back to your time at Bristol City Football Club. Um, a city in the UK in the late 90s. Uh, selling tickets was very different back then, I gather. So can you tell us a little, a little about your experiences at Bristol City FC and how ticketing has changed since then?
Andrew: Yeah, it's it's, um, I took the job in, in, uh, the 90s.
It was actually an IT job with a secondary responsibility to look after tickets. It was IT first and then tickets. And then the day I joined, we went on an amazing winning run, and we ended up finishing second in the league and getting promoted. But suddenly ticketing took over way, way more than IT. But it was very different then. It was very much a day of match activity.
Um, you did sell tickets, some tickets before the day of the match, you know, especially for a big match. But really it involved getting kind of ten cash tills ready on the day, pulling up shutters, uh, loading printers with making sure printers were loaded with paper. Um, so it was, it was, it was a different world different. It was it was literally like, uh, like almost like a food truck kind of operation. You kind of, you know, you put up or you, you pull up, you put up and you start serving your, your overpriced hot dogs.
But, um, uh, it was an interesting time because also, I joked sometimes we did have a website, but I kind of joked to people that when we started back then, we didn't have a website. We did. It was like really super, super basic. But the ticket side of things was, um, you know, tickets are on sale now for these games. Ring this phone number, uh, or come down between nine, nine, 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.. Um, so it was really it was like, really, really different. And, um, I always tell this story to, to to someone at a conference a couple of years ago and they said, when I use the phrase we didn't have, um, a website, they said, oh, was it kind of like an uber cool venue. And it only had Instagram. And I said, no. It was like, because the internet hadn't been invented. I mean, the internet had been invented, but it really wasn't a thing that that, you know, websites would play such, such a pivotal role, um, in ticketing and, and we sold I'd left by the time I did it.
They sold their first ticket online about 2 or 3 years after I left in, in like it was 2003, 2004 before they sold their first ticket, I think, um, online. Uh, and again, it was it was a challenge because it was these pieces of paper that you sent somebody in an envelope with a stamp. So even if someone did buy over the phone with a credit card or which you wrote your full credit card number down, we went to machine, punched it in, got a receipt, clipped it to it, gave it to someone else to print the tickets out. Um, we then had to put it in envelopes sent to you. And if and if it was to close the game, we end up with these shoeboxes full of envelopes to hand out, which led to even bigger queues. So it was actually faster not to buy in advance. It was faster to sell by the day, which leads to more queues. So it was really, you know, it was queue management as well. It was, you know, it was managing large amounts of people who couldn't organise their lives or we couldn't sell them a ticket fast enough.
So, um, it's a world, a world of difference. And sometimes when I speak to people now and they, they say, well, how did you do print at home tickets? Well, we didn't even sell them online, let alone print them at home or do anything else with them.
So, you know, back then, if you didn't buy soon enough, you know, you we couldn't post tickets out to you because we wouldn't get them in, in the post. So we put the tickets in an envelope. We put the envelope in a box and you have to queue up to get your envelope out of the right box. So you end up with more queues. So it got to a point where you, you don't want to secure the money in advance. You want people to turn up on the day, then it rains. They don't turn up because it's too rainy. So, um, you know, the technology side of things enables us to do things way more efficiently. Um, some things, some, some parts of that are still the same. So the level of service you give, the planning, you know, some some kind of revenue, some of the revenue techniques. Um, and of course, all this was at the start of the CRM kind of evolution of sports and ticketing as well.
So very, very different times in lots of ways. Um, many of the things that we did back then still true today, you just use a different tool to do it.
Matt: Yeah. Sounds really full on, like, um, you know, digital marketing teams currently talk a lot about how busy their presale and on sales periods. I'm sure they probably pale in comparison to when the shutters open for a football game.
Andrew: Well, it's I mean, I mean, when I started and Arsenal Football Club, they're one of the biggest clubs in London uh, and very huge in the Premier League. Um, they, they had a scheme called TRS ticket registration scheme before again before online um, to handle on sales because they had people sleeping on the streets around the streets of, you know, north London queuing for tickets.
I've queued for tickets through the night. I've been selling tickets to people queuing through the night. It was a horrible, horrible experience. But that's what I mean. You used to see it with the kind of Christmas sales and or holiday sales. I mean, now it's now Cyber Friday and it's now, you know, you release all this, these great offers online. But it was it was a it was a terrible, terrible customer experience to, to to. And that's the way you, you fought to get a ticket was to camp out in the middle of December
Yeah. Um, so yeah, it's a lot, a lot's changed.
Matt: You talked a little bit about printed tickets as well. And, you know, I think it's not just me, but for a lot of people, I think that's quite, almost sounds romantic when we don't really get that many printed tickets anymore. Certainly people miss having printed tickets as a souvenir. I mean, how has digital technology, um, evolved, uh, solved many of those ticketing challenges you saw in the early days of your career? And what new challenges has digital technology brought?
Andrew: I think, well, first and foremost, it's the the big problem is it's actually solves is queuing and, you know, this distribution and and the key was, you know, you're going to give me £10, $10 and I'm going to give you a piece of paper. Now, buying online was great because you could have multiple key people give you £10 at the same time, which you couldn't do with two brick windows.
Um, but you couldn't get the tickets out to people. So I think it was that it's the last piece of the cycle which actually allows you to fulfil those tickets quickly. It allows you to fill them in, fulfil them, um, instantly. And so, you know, by buying tickets, as we've all probably done on the way up to a train journey or the way up to a sports stadium or a theatre, and you hit buy and suddenly it's there and you add it to a wallet, or you do whatever with it. So, you know, it's obviously allowed us to sell faster and to remove any kind of physical contact as well. Um, and that was even before Covid days.
The big thing, though, is I think distribution is the fact when I followed football teams, not even when I worked with them, um, and I order a ticket, I've got to do it at least five days before to allow for the mail. And then I'm going to set off a day before to go to a game or go and see a show somewhere. So really, I think it was that missing piece in the online journey, because the online journey just used to be just replacing ringing somebody up. You could do it 24 hours a day. You could do it in your pyjamas at 3:00 in the morning. Um, it was a bit more secure credit card wise, but you still had to either get it posted to you or you know, pick it up.
I mean, again, we had the early days, the print at home ticket, the piece of A4 or letter sized paper with with a barcode on it. Um, but as we saw as stuff progressed in the noughties and then into tens that, you know, people didn't really have printers at home, um, and you lose them and you can photocopy them and you can do so many more things with them. I mean, the latest level of, um, of of even the most basic stuff in Apple Passbook. I went to see, um, I live in Florida. I went to see a soccer game on on Saturday night. I had a non-shareable ticket or actually sorry, my wife bought two tickets, a couple of tickets. She then shared it with me through the data capture method, which allows Ticketmaster to know who I am and it's locked to my phone. So again, it's kind of it's solved some of those in some critical markets, you know, locking the phone to the ticket to a person, knowing your audience.
Undoubtedly, e-tickets have given us just just massive advantages, the advantages we couldn't have thought about years and years ago. Um, and I myself. And there's no doubt people listening to this will look back and think, how did we ever do it before? Or try and imagine a world where you remove that and, you know, we're recording this in towards the end of July, and you think back to that, the big, uh, CrowdStrike outage, you know, last last Friday when there was this great story about someone handwriting a boarding pass for an airline, how it used to be done 20 years ago. So, you know, but it was a shock and all that. People are having to handwrite baggage tags, as we used to do 20 years ago. So I think, you know, um, we just we we don't know how lucky we are.
Matt: Yeah, certainly, in kind of all walks of life and business, I mean, technology has solved so many, um, challenges and streamlined so
many processes, saved all kinds of, like, um, time and workload. Um, but undoubtedly it also brings new challenges as well. In your experiences, what challenges are venues facing when it comes to digital technology?
Andrew: Well, it used to be the technology itself was the challenge because, uh, and also our perceptions of technology and who uses it and, and the most common one I kind of heard was going towards like a digital ticket or an app or going to something or even a website was, well, you know our audience is elderly and, and how are they ever going to use it?
And, you know, especially again back in the, the noughties and the early tens, that's all we heard was when we're going to do this, now this, these tickets are for sale, but they're only available online or, you know, you have to do a renewal online or pushing everything kind of online. And we and it was that and so many, so many entertainment businesses or cultural businesses have a um a demographic they think is so special. When you look at the whatever you use for analytics, kind of Google Analytics or anything else is you see the usage of the website and they're using iPhones and smartphones and tablets.
So, you know, people use this stuff. I think the challenge has been overcomplicating it. Um, I won't name the vendor be rude, but I was at an event last year where someone shared a ticket with me and I was walking across. We’re walking towards this event, and they shared a ticket with me and I had to claim the ticket. Um, it was in the UK and I had to fill out. Must be 20 questions to claim the ticket. You know my name, my address, my date of birth, you know, favourite sandwich? Literally. It was kind of like this.
You know, some marketers thought it was a great idea to do this because all the data you’ll have. I only got hit by two cars, two, two lane traffic. Um, to claim the ticket when, you know, I think I got some marketing information from that organisation. Quite large organisation. But but it was just. You've overcomplicated it.
You know, I think for a lot of, you know, a lot of events you can share a ticket. And going back to it now, if we if we were going into something now with paper tickets, I go here, Matt, here you go. And then you give your ticket. I'd give my ticket. They'd rip it and or stub it and give it back to us. So, um, overcomplicating it definitely.
I think the technology's got better. Certainly. Um, you know, when we first started using these things, um, the screens got a lot more scratched that they weren't as bright, so they weren't great at being read for barcodes. The fact now we're not using barcodes, we're using NFC technology. So it's even again, it's touchless. Um, people had to like, sit there and flick through and trying to find their ticket. That was hard. But we kind of got wallets. And NFC allows it not even to need to find the ticket. It finds it for you in your phone. So I think a lot of those things have certainly made it easier.
And the fact that it's the same as everywhere, you know, getting on a flight is now going is the same as going to a theatre. You walk through a metal detector, you show them a picture on your phone and they let you through, and then you sit in your pre-arranged seat. Um, so I think I think it's because it's become the norm.
And again, trains, planes, you know, parking, whatever it's going to be, it just becomes so much easier. And it's the standard way we expect to transact, which means actually, if you're not doing this, people, patrons now have a negative start to have a negative view of your organisation.
Because why can't I pay with Apple Pay? Why can't I put it in a wallet? Why can't I do this? I can do it everywhere else. And actually, I was speaking to somebody, um, on Broadway a couple of weeks ago about, um, last I went to a show there and I said I was flying there from from somewhere else, and I was trying to see a show.
I actually wouldn't pick a show that wouldn't send me a digital ticket because I can't print it out. I guess my hotel would print it out for me. Um, but actually they start to become some of these things start to become deciding factors. Do you offer ticket insurance? Do you offer Apple Pay? Can I upgrade my seat? You know, there are all these things now that people will start to use as distinguishing factors between venues.
Matt: Yeah, you mentioned lots of different technologies that, um, you know, we kind of expect from venues now. And you talked about a little bit about the danger of overcomplicating things as well. I mean, there are so many different competing initiatives and technologies now. For example, I think we're seeing dynamic pricing coming into the sector and becoming more prevalent. Um, there are new ideas coming to the fore about combating ticket touts and resellers. What does the future of ticketing look like to you?
Andrew: Well, it depends what you're selling. Uh, I'd say because I don't. And any vendors watching this. Forgive me for what I'm about to say, but I think any vendor who's selling something will say that this is the next big thing we need to solve. And there are some around pricing, around ticket resale, about ticket insurance, about, you know, it goes it does kind of go on and on a little bit. Um, I think the future of ticketing actually is not so much based around technology. I think technology will help solve the problem. I think the future is actually around some kind of service issues.
And going back when people who've heard me speak before, the way I speak about some of the things we should steal from the airlines, it's crazy that if you and I are flying tomorrow somewhere and we want to have a friend join us. We can. They can buy a ticket and then we can move our seats and she can move her seat, and then we can all sit together. Why can't we do that in the theatre? You know, if we decide that we can't go tonight because you've got, you know, you're feeling a bit under the weather or you've got work on, we can pay a pay a little bit of a fee, but we can change our tickets till tomorrow or fly a little bit earlier to get you home earlier. You can't do that in the theatre.
And the people who are screaming at their screens or, you know, now saying, oh, it's because of the producers, whatever. Um, but we kind of expect the ability to be able to change our plans, life makes things change. And when we're inflexible, um, I think that makes us prone to having upset customers. Um, and I can see, especially in performing arts, I can see some of the arguments people might have, like, if I don't make my flight today, if I just don't turn up on my flight today and then say to Delta tomorrow, oh, can I have a refund or can I change it till next Tuesday? They're going to say no. If I get in contact with Delta today and say, can I change my flight? They're going to say it's at least $75 or whatever it's going to be, but they'll allow me to do it because one, they're making money. Secondly, I enjoy it. I enjoy Delta's kind of like same day change policy. It's fantastic. It makes me fly Delta more.
So again, I think going back to it, it makes it a distinguishing difference, you know, am I going to choose to go to the theatre A or theatre B? Because probably because of their artistic output. But when I have a choice today, maybe I'll go to theatre C over D because he's got nicer beers and wines or nicer restaurant, nicer seats. Or maybe it's because, you know, when I make plans for six months time, they're more flexible. Um, so I think, I think a lot of people need to do across the whole industry, some hard thinking about service, about how we can bring ourselves up to the service we expect from Waitrose or Target or a supermarket or, you know, dare I say it, Amazon. You know what we kind of expect. Um, and maybe as part of that as well, um, to solve some of those problems.
Matt: Yeah. Certainly I think, um, customer experience has been a big buzzword in business, especially in the retail world. Um, and yeah, I think we started seeing some venues kind of offering a bit more of a full package. We've seen some venues in, um, Europe, for example, um, partner with local restaurants and kind of build up a
bigger experience for the day for patrons, which I think does make a lot of sense. I think especially when people are travelling a long way, then they're probably expecting a bit more than just going to see their favourite show, for example.
Andrew: Yeah, but I just, I'm sorry. I want to flick that back to you. You use the phrase buzzword there about customer experience, and we can't think of customers. And I know it's not how you think about it, but we can't think of customer experience as a buzzword, as something we can. Yeah, we really must improve customer experience in the next year. We, you know, you either want to do it or you don't. You can't just say customer or you know and UX is obviously user experience is the same thing. You know, you have to actually, really, really want to do it. And I think too many people think about it as, as a little bit of technology or a little bit of something here and there is customer experience, but I think it's it could be, it could be quite a long way from it.
Matt: Yeah, that makes sense.
We've covered a lot of different ideas, strategies and technologies in the ticketing world so far. And you have extensive experience in a previous role as COO and as a technology consultant to arts and entertainment venues. How, you know, if you were advising venues, how should venues approach and prioritise all these competing ideas and strategies?
Andrew: We all like to make lists, and I think, you know, I'm no different to maybe people watching this, maybe yourself. You know, you make a list of things you want to do. And then if you're anything like me, as I did on my list this morning, which is just just here by my side, is I went through and did the three easiest things first, because it's great because it makes you feel like you're doing stuff.
There are some big ticket items on that list which, you know, you kind of need to split up and say, well, you know that it's not due for six months. It involves a huge number of stakeholders. It involves, you know, getting budget approval. It involves just huge amounts of work. I'll just bump it till next week. And of course, all these bumps, it may not be due for six months, but also it doesn't. It's not just when it's due, it's how long it takes to deliver.
When do we need it by? Um, so actually I think, I think it has to come back to not actually the task. And I think when we think about task and improvements, we can kind of get, we can lose our way a little bit. Um, and I think it has to be aligned to the organisational goals and what we want to do. And just going back to you know, the last customer experience, if by the start of our 25, 26 season, we want to do this, which is have a seamless customer experience, what does that mean?
What things do we need to deliver, to build, to install, to buy, to find, um, to train on in order to do those things. And I think working it back that way and, and certainly, you know, I'm talking to some organisations at the moment who want to make a change in their core technology platform.
And you know, they often ask, when can we do it by how quickly can we get it done? And you say, well, when does it need to be done by? And they say, oh, well, our contract runs out in, you know, September this year or even sometimes September next year. And I go, you've left it too late to do this properly. You've left it too late, you know. And actually what you need to do is kind of work it backwards. So I think if you, and I'm a big fan of reverse timelining, so I want to make a change next summer. So when I launch my new season and my, you know, in September of 2025, we have this new thing in place, website, ticketing system, whatever. Right? So then reverse it backwards. What are the steps I need to do by when to get those done? And those tasks become the ones you can't negotiate with. They're ring fenced.
Because, you know, we've all said that. You know, the rocks into you know, putting big rocks into a glass, then pouring the sand. If you pour the sand in first, you can't get the rocks in. So I think it's getting those rocks in first of the stuff we must do as an organisation. Then we can look at where the quick wins. Oh, we're going to rejig our ticket format to make it slightly easier to read. It does only take five minutes to do, but you know, what are you not doing when you're doing that? You can do that next Tuesday when you've done these rocks, done these really big, important things.
So I think to answer your question, it's about looking at that organisational level rather than the departmental level of where we actually need to be and what we need to do. And when does it need to get done by. Because especially the more we kind of bring the organisation in, we can get more executive sponsorship, which means we get, you know, much more budget buy-in. You know, we get our leadership bought into this project as well, rather than just us doing it in isolation.
Matt: I don’t think I've ever had the rocks and sand in a glass analogy. I really like it, actually. It fits really well. Um, yeah, I think that's a really great piece to take away. Kind of in line with the learnings of that, TPC has become a valuable advocate for knowledge sharing and professional development. Of course, we all know how expensive ticketing prices are for conferences, but what, um, what else motivated you to make TPC so accessible? And what are your ambitions when it comes to facilitating professional development and really why does it matter so much to you as well?
Andrew: Going back to the your first question, and when we started talking a little while ago about the 90s, my training involved ticket wise, press this button and it makes it print tickets, press this button, it stops it printing tickets. Pretty much. That was it. That's all we got trained on.
Yeah. And the rest of it you kind of made up and occasionally you went to other venues and you saw what someone did or you talked to someone and go, oh, we weave our people anti-clockwise because it makes them less dizzy or, you know, some other scheme you kind of came up with.
So there wasn't really anywhere to learn. And, even when I made the transition to performing arts in the noughties, there still wasn't anywhere to learn. There was kind of but that just doesn't really cut it. Or it was a technology conference where they teach you the buttons to press, not why it's a good idea to press the buttons.
And so we were in a gang of us and I started going to conferences in the US because they had learning down a bit better and they invest in this stuff. And I learned stuff, and I took it from the US back to the UK and implemented it. And so really we wanted to have something like that. There was a lot of us at the time in the mid-2010s saying, you know, we need to have this conference. And the one thing it was during, you know, it's still a very hard time for the arts where, you know, there is not £1,000 for a venue to go and learn this stuff.
So we have to design this to be sustainable financially and accessible financially. And it has to be, you know, we use this word accessibility. But we talk about accessibility for buildings being a ramp or from a website having a screen reader. But you know, an event has to have lots of things about accessibility, but it has to be financially accessible, because if you can't afford to go, it doesn't matter if there's a ramp or a screen reader or BSL interpreters, it's just not going to work.
And so we also got into this mindset that whereas we'd all been in the business a long time, take it back to me in the 90s of, I knew nothing about ticketing and was now running it for this organisation. It still happens today. So we needed to have this time where people could come in and learn the basics. But by the same token, people who've been in a long time, like me and many others, we could learn new ways of doing things because we never learned about.
I was on a call the other day about selling tickets on TikTok. Don't quite know what TikTok is. Apparently you can sell tickets on it. Apparently it's a big thing. Um, but again, if I'm a rights holder, why wouldn't I be selling my tickets for my concert or my comedy show or my sporting event on TikTok. So I think, you know, we had this idea that we had to have a constant flow of people with new ideas. And a lot of them do come from tech vendors. You know, Jenny X has created a TikTok plugin for a ticketing ticketing system. Great. So Jenny X is going to talk about it. But, you know, talk from starting from the real basics of what TikTok is, why it's important, what its demographics are, what its numbers are. So we need to have those people.
You had Martin on from Nimbus a couple of weeks ago. You know, the access card market, he’s spoken extensively at many TPC events about the access card because it was a horrible way to be a disabled person and buy a ticket and have to explain to somebody, you need an aisle seat because you need to be near a bathroom or because you need a, you know, all these kind of adjustments. And it's really been a fantastic thing that the access card. But who better to talk about it than Martin who's lived it, experienced it, and created it?
So by using a lot of, you know, vendor contacts who were experts in their subject field, it just allowed us to build a platform of continuous learning, not just now, at once a year, but multiple times a year.
Matt: Yeah, we love speaking to, you know, as we say domain experts and people with domain authority to speak about, um, you know, what they develop, I think it’s a great way for anyone to learn in ticketing or any other kind of industry. In light of that, you know, carrying on with TPC and the learnings at the events we got, you've got three events coming in, I think the next 12 months we've got TPC 2025 now has a venue secured in Manchester. There's also going to be TPC 2024 and a half in London later this year. And then for the first time, which is very exciting. TPC is coming to the US at the Queens Theatre in New York. How can people get more information about these conferences and ultimately buy tickets and learn?
Andrew: Well, the good news is, I'm not pulling up shutters and selling tickets out of shoeboxes. We do have a website. We have websites, uh, ticketing professionals.co.uk for our UK events and ticketing professionals.org for our our US events is the place where you'll find, you know, testimonials, who's coming, what's on, what we're planning for a programme. And all the logistic details. But also there's a point on that which is, which is why we're doing some of those. I mean, TPC 25 is our annual event that runs obviously every year.
So both of the one day events we got running later this year TPC um, in 24.5 in London and TPC NYC at Queens Theater in Flushing. They're designed so you can get in and out in one day. So, you know, they don't start till 1030, 11:00. You know, um, you can come into it, grab a bit a bit of bite to eat on your way there or have a bite with us. Um, run through the afternoon and get the train home. Um, so they're really designed for, again, especially if we find it for venues sometimes who's haven't got great training budgets and can't get that away time. Maybe because of family commitments or other job commitments.
So really, we're doing all we can before we put, again, more stuff online, of just giving people the best way to access learning and for some people, it's two, two and a half days on sites focused, some people it's that three quarter day model and some people is consuming content like this or other ways of looking at learning and building their knowledge.
Matt: That's great. I mean, it's great hearing about, um, how much attention you focus on the accessibility of it. I mean, we love the work that you do. We know we’re an industry that is often a little neglected at times, especially by governments. And we'd love to give back to it and help everyone learn and lift everyone up together. So it's been great talking to you and hearing your insights and learnings over the years. And of course, we'll be at TPC New York later this year. So if we don't chat before then, we'll see you in the Big Apple
Andrew: Thanks a lot, Matt.
Matt: Brilliant. Thank you. Bye.
