SA’s ticketing industry is about to get a kick up the backside because of a new technology that will allow artists, venues and other entertainment suppliers to sell tickets directly to fans and punters via their Facebook pages and websites.
The new technology was launched in SA recently by Tixsa, a new entrant in the local ticketing agency market that has licensed the technology from ticketing company TicketBiscuit in the US. Carel Hoffman of Ticketbreak, another new entrant in the market, confirmed to the Mail & Guardian that his ticketing company would also be rolling out social-networking ticketing in the near future.
HOW IT WORKS
Tixsa MD – Michael Canfield believes Tixsa’s new model holds the future of ticketing. “We put software on a client’s website that allows it to sell tickets straight from its website or Facebook page. It captures all the data from the customers and gives the customer the tools to mine that data to build better relationships with those customers. “Laurie Levine is having her launch this Thursday and you can go here and you can buy tickets directly from her page,” said Canfield, as he loaded the Johannesburg singer-songwriter’s Facebook page.
Levine is the first SA artist to sign up for the Tixsa Facebook application.
“It’s great. It makes selling tickets a lot easier,” she said. “With Tixsa you can also build an e-mail database, which is very useful.”
Canfield said the system also offers artists great opportunities to sell merchandise. Different price categories can be used, so a fan can buy just a ticket, or a ticket and a copy of the new album, or a ticket and the new album and a t-shirt.
Garrick Bassil, owner of Johannesburg venue Tanz Café, is also smitten with Tixsa. He said pre-sales were important to live music venues and Tixsa allowed these to happen easily. “It’s very affordable. In fact, it was the most competitive price-wise of all the offerings we investigated.”
“We launched a year ago and we have gone from having no clients to being the biggest online ticketing business in SA. We have just signed Emperors Palace as a client — in fact, the whole Peermont group is moving over to us.”
Other significant clients include the Bassline, Tanz Café, University of Potchefstroom, Kalk Bay Theatre, SA Fashion Week, The Bioscope, Pop Art, Steak & Ale and Synergy Events, said Tixsa MD Michael Canfield.
“We are sharing inventory with Computicket and one of the reasons is the whole Competition Tribunal hearing that they’re going through,” said Canfield. “Tori Amos is coming and we had half the inventory and Computicket had half the inventory. We sold out our inventory before Computicket had even sold any — with no crashing of servers — and when Computicket went online the first thing that happened was its server crashed.”
For more information Contact Tixsa:
WEBSITE www.tixsa.co.za
EMAIL: info@tixsa.co.za
PHONE: 08614 tixsa
