In recent times, many more options are available for smaller venues who wish to sell tickets online or through their own box offers without using the services of a major ticket service organisation such as Ticketmaster. And in most cases the costs can be considerably lower as well as offering additional benefits to the organization.
But many venue operators possibly still believe that the cost of such systems would be beyond their budgets or that the system would be too difficult to install and operate. However with the latest ticketing software systems that are available, this certainly need not be the case.
Let's just take a look at four particular concerns that many organisations may have.
Upfront costs and ongoing costs
Broadly speaking there are two types of ticketing systems that are available. Firstly, it is possible to purchase software outright (although as with most software, this is effectively a licence to use the software). In this case, it would normally be a one off purchase but the software costs can typically exceed several thousand dollars depending on the complexity of the particular software that is chosen. Also there may be some ongoing maintenance charges or additional charges if updates to the program are made.
The second alternative is the fully hosted system where the main ticketing and payment processing is handled via the organisation offering the ticketing software. In this case the venue operator does not have the cost of purchasing the software but generally pays a commission based on the value of all tickets sold through the system, which may either be a fixed dollar amount per ticket or a percentage of the ticket price. For smaller organisations this can be a more appropriate option, since generally speaking there are no upfront charges, maintenance contracts or other monthly fees apart from the charge per ticket. Charges can typically vary from about $.50 per ticket or 2% of the ticket price, although there may be additional charges if credit card processing or mail out of tickets is to be included as well.
Payment and Credit card processing
With online purchases, the payment transaction is quite a complex process and is handled by a combination of payment gateway and Internet merchant account. Unless a venue operator is already selling products online, it is unlikely that they will have a payment gateway established. However there are many such gateway providers that can be considered who normally charge a small transaction fee or perhaps a percentage of the transaction value. You also need to ensure that your merchant account can connect directly to the payment gateway.
Another somewhat simpler alternative is to use organisations such as PayPal where the complete gateway/merchant account step is handled by the organisation and all money is deposited direct to your bank account.
You can of course sell tickets online without the need to set up special payment processing procedures. In this case, you would set your ticketing system to issue a voucher number rather than an actual ticket, and the ticket purchasor would then take the voucher to your venue and exchange it for an actual ticket on payment of the full ticket price.
Printing of tickets
Whilst the most convenient way of printing tickets is to use a specialist thermal ticket printer such as those produced by Boca Systems, these can be quite expensive (typically over $1000). Thus it may be hard to justify the cost of such printers for organizations who do not print a particularly large number of tickets per year.
However many box office ticketing systems will allow you to print tickets with a standard LaserJet or ink jet printer. In this case, the tickets would normally be printed on a pre-perforated sheet of letter-size paper with four or five tickets per page. Irrespective of the type of printer that is chosen, most box office ticketing systems will allow you to customise your ticket layout to include images logos, extra text etc.
Website set up
There are basically two ways in which your website ticket selling operation can be set up on a website. Both options generally involve the creation of a template page, in which is inserted a few lines of code. The code is used to handle the entire seat selection and payment processing through the main program. With some systems, this code may be inserted on a template page on your own website, or in other cases a template is made with the same look and feel as your existing website, but the page is hosted on a different website. In the second case, the ticket purchasor would not normally be aware that they had been directed away from your website for the ticket purchase phase.
As well as these four main considerations, every organisation considering selling their tickets online will have special requirements or features which they would like to see implemented. And every supplier of box office ticketing systems of course has slightly different configurations and lists of features. But for the most small or medium-sized organizations, it should be possible to find a box office ticketing system that provides significantly greater value compared with using the services of a ticketing service organization, and the requirements for setting up and operating such systems certainly should not provide any deterrent to implementing such a system.
Disclaimer: All information on this site is provided for informational purposes only! By no means is any
information presented herein intended to substitute for the advice provided to you by any health care or other professional
or organization.
