6 ticketing industry trends to watch in 2020

The online ticketing industry is changing rapidly, and the pace is only increasing. Anyone working in event ticketing needs to stay close to market shifts and adapt early. Here are six developments expected to shape online ticketing in 2020.

1. Paper tickets are on their way out

Paper tickets are a holdover from an earlier era, when customers had to buy from the box office or at the gate. Some people still feel more secure with a printed ticket, but even many of those buyers are starting to accept that digital tickets are the long-term direction for the entertainment and events industry.

It's simply more convenient to carry tickets on a smartphone, for both the customer and the organiser. If you organise an event through Fienta, you can see who has signed up as soon as they do, and you can validate attendance using the ticket scanning app on your phone or tablet. Mobile ticketing works better for everyone.

Why do extra work logging paper tickets when the information is already organised and purchaser data is stored in the cloud with a digital sale? Today, QR codes dominate for a reason: they offer convenience and peace of mind to both sellers and buyers.

2. Upselling to become increasingly important

At Fienta, we believe the purchase flow should be simple and painless, but that does not mean organisers should miss opportunities to sell more. There is a right way to do that, which, as we have mentioned, many sites do not seem to understand.

Upselling is like asking someone who planned to buy a tea whether they would also like a large spiced chai latte with whipped cream. It's about offering something they are already likely to value, but in a more compelling form.

What this does not mean is filling a ticketing site with unrelated advertising for events different from the one users came to buy tickets for. Instead, it means giving them more ways to enjoy the event they already chose. If someone is going to a concert, there is a good chance they are a fan of the artist. Why not offer backstage access for an extra charge, or the chance to meet the artist for a Q&A or selfie session after the show?

There are also smaller add-ons that can make a real difference to an attendee's night and are well within an organiser's control. Events are increasingly judged as complete experiences, and people choose them instead of many other options. Rather than sending ticket holders to queue at a burger stand, why not offer quality food from a curated menu delivered to their seat? Or let them choose a preferred seat for an extra charge, as even budget airlines do?

There are many ways to upsell effectively. People who have already had a frictionless buying experience are more likely to say yes to relevant extras. If you're organising an event with Fienta, you have the opportunity to offer those options in a way your audience is more likely to appreciate.

3. Machine learning teaches us how to do ticketing better

Machine learning can be a major advantage for marketers because it helps them optimise both their product and the way they market it to appeal to a wider audience. In the online ticketing industry, it can improve the user experience and make people more likely to return in the future.

It can do this by learning from how users interact with a site, where they run into problems during the purchase process, and even what price people are willing to pay for a certain kind of event ticket. While the market still determines what organisers can charge and what buyers expect, it is also increasingly shaped by metrics and big data.

The more useful information machine learning can work with, the better event experiences and ticketing sites can become. That makes it important to use relevant data well if you want organisers and ticket buyers to keep coming back.

4. The advantages of the blockchain will be fully realised

Blockchain gained negative connotations for many people in 2017, partly because startups used it as a catch-all term and investors often backed anything associated with it. Many of those businesses lost momentum in the years that followed. By 2019, anyone claiming to use blockchain needed to show that it served a real purpose.

Even so, blockchain remained something that could, in principle, be very useful for ticketing sites and the events industry more broadly. As other articles, blockchain could become an important part of online business within a number of years.

For ticketing and event organisation, the main appeal of blockchain is efficiency. Without a centralised server or intermediary for transactions, payments could be processed faster and with lower fees, making events more cost-effective for both organisers and ticket buyers.

Traditional ticketing sites often make much of their money through heavy transaction and handling fees charged to organisers through a cut of the ticket price. Blockchain could help make excessive fees a thing of the past, improving value for all parties.

5. Facial recognition will not be widely adopted yet

Although mobile devices increasingly include face unlock features, facial recognition in the events industry has drawn significant attention to privacy concerns. For that reason, we believed it was unlikely to see widespread adoption among ticketing and event sites in the near term.

Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine is one of the music artists who has refused to play at any festival that uses facial recognition technology. Campaigners warned that the technology could be used to add faces and names to police databases or to pursue people for drug- and alcohol-related offences.

Even if facial recognition on ticketing sites would more likely be used to confirm that the buyer is also the attendee, the technology still carried too much reputational baggage to be widely adopted across the industry, at least in the near future.

6. Users increasingly expect chatbots

Chatbots are tools that use some form of artificial intelligence to hold a digital conversation with a user. Familiar examples include Amazon Echo devices with Alexa and Google Home speakers, both of which answer user questions by drawing on online resources.

Alongside the growth of home 'Internet of Things' devices, chatbots for websites have also developed quickly. Visit the homepage of many multinational companies and you'll see a small pop-up in the bottom-right corner asking whether customer support can help.

For sites that cannot afford a full customer support team, it's still possible to add a Facebook Messenger chatbot anywhere the back-end code can be changed. It's a small touch, but it brings customer support closer to the front of a company's presentation instead of leaving it as an afterthought.

How does this relate to event ticketing? Most users will not need help buying tickets, but some will have questions. A ticketing site should aim to avoid losing customers because of confusion or because they cannot find the event they want.

A user might have a question about card payments or about buying tickets for multiple events. Whatever the case, chatbots can help create a more trustworthy and proactive customer experience around a ticketing site, and they are worth considering in future updates.