http://altpress.com/features/coverstory_antitrust.htm

“This is a campaign that we came up with as soon as we heard about the proposed merger,” says Ticket Biscuit CEO Jeff Gale. “We pretty quickly concluded that that was going to be no good for anyone but Live Nation and Ticketmaster. We wanted to do what we could to preserve the independent spirit of the American music community, venues, artists and promoters outside of that umbrella. It was a portion of our projected revenue that we set aside to help further that effort by being able to make very attractive ticketing deals with venues that want to remain or become independent of that conglomeration, or artists or promoters that want to do the same thing.”

The approval of the merger looks likely at this point. If you are a venue operator or promoter looking for ticketing alternatives, check out our Online Ticketing and Box Office Software systems. If you’d like to learn more about how your organization can benefit from the Music Liberation Fund, call us at 1-866-757-8330.

What really excites me about this news is that this is, I feel, an example of how the industry will eventually displace Ticketmaster’s stronghold:  smaller, more innovative (and hungrier) companies uniting to deliver compelling value via integrated solutions.

As for EventBooking.com, our strengths are 100% complimentary. No one does venue management and booking better than they do, and no one does ticketing better than we do. What is ultra cool is the way this partnership came about – the EventBooking CEO actually bought a ticket to a TicketBiscuit powered event, and was so impressed with the experience that he contacted us and made it happen.

The full release is below, just in case you’re interested. Can I get a “hell yeah”?

October 15, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

EVENTBOOKING.COM ADDS TICKETING THROUGH PARTNERSHIP WITH TICKETBISCUIT

EventBooking.com signed a partnership contract with TicketBiscuit this month that will add a robust ticketing capability to EventBooking’s industry-leading event management and booking software solution.

TicketBiscuit serves more than 250 clients in 400+ venues across the United States with a web-based solution that lets the venue control the fees and own the ticketing process. CEO Jeff Gale says TicketBiscuit’s mission is to provide “the most flexible, powerful, and user-friendly ticketing solution on the planet.”

The software integration of EventBooking.com and TicketBiscuit allows participating venues to track real-time ticket sales while logged in to their booking calendar.

President and CEO of EventBooking.com John Platillero said that offering clients an integrated solution is part of the EventBooking.com strategy.

“EventBooking.com wants to offer a ‘dashboard’ of information from all different areas of the venue. Integrating a ticketing solution makes sense so that in real-time, from the calendar itself, a venue can know how ticket sales are doing for each show.”

Platillero added that the ticketing software from TicketBiscuit can be private-labeled “however the venue wants to brand their ticketing system,” giving more control to the venue.

Both EventBooking.com and TicketBiscuit are excited about the value that the partnership can bring to one another’s clients.

EventBooking.com’s booking software scales from one-stage clubs to entire city entertainment districts using a single booking account. EventBooking.com’s flexible new program accommodates the different booking styles of single-stage arenas and multiplex convention centers.

TicketBiscuit‘s full-service ticketing solution combines box office software with a comprehensive package of ticket sales and marketing services. Since their inception in 2001, the company has pioneered several innovations in ticketing, including client-controlled fees, client-branded call centers, full website integration, mobile ticketing, and social media marketing.

“TicketBiscuit itself is a company that has proven technology and is excited about working with us to develop an integrated solution for their clients and ours,” Platillero said.

The partnership between EventBooking.com and TicketBiscuit began with a good experience. Platillero purchased tickets online for a benefit dinner at a local comedy club in Knoxville using TicketBiscuit. The ticket purchase went smoothly, and after reading about the company at http://www.TicketBiscuit.com Platillero contacted them as a potential partner.

(OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE) BattlePass.com today announced the launch of a new affiliate marketing program that pays website publishers for referring ticket-buying visitors to the BattlePass.com website. Under the program, affiliates will be paid 35% of all net revenues collected by BattlePass.com for events ticketed through the BattlePass web site.

The program, the first of its kind for combat sports and MMA events, is also one of the first affiliate marketing programs to make real time RSS feeds available to website owners. By signing up with the affiliate program and implementing the BattlePass FightFeed®code, website owners can benefit from valuable, dynamic, and accurate content – the most comprehensive list of MMA fights and combat events on the internet – and make money for click-throughs that result in ticket sales. Publishers may also choose to carry provided graphic banners or text links to refer traffic to the BattlePass.com web site.

Signing up for the BattlePass affiliate program is free.

“The BattlePass affiliate program is going to be a win for everyone,” CEO Jeff Gale commented, “Website owners now have an easy way to monetize their sites and add a great section of relevant and updated MMA and combat events from the BattlePass FightFeed. MMA fans get better awareness of fights and events in their area.  And promoters can now instantly list their fights on BattlePass.com and have them spread across the BattlePass network of affiliates, exponentially increasing the exposure and credibility of their events.”

For details on the BattlePass Affiliate Program and instructions on how to sign up, please visit http://www.battlepass.com/battlepass/affiliate.aspx

About BattlePass.com: BattlePass.com carries the most extensive list of combat and MMA events and ticket information on the web today. Promoters can list their fights on BattlePass.com and the BattlePass affiliate network for free.  Additionally, promoters can get free ticketing and event marketing by signing up with BattlePass Pro, the only ticketing system custom built for MMA and combat events.

RSS Feeds are now active on all accounts!

This week we activated RSS feeds for all client accounts. You can access the RSS feed for your account by customizing the following address:

http://www.ticketbiscuit.com/eventlist.rss?ack=ACCOUNTKEY where ACCOUNTKEY is the part of your TicketBiscuit URL immediately following www.ticketbiscuit.com. The TicketBiscuit URL can be found in the backend under Account > Account Details at the bottom right of the page. 

For instance, if the ticketbiscuit URL is www.ticketbiscuit.com/workplay, the correctly formed RSS address is http://www.ticketbiscuit.com/eventlist.rss?ack=workplay

For those of you who are new to RSS, it’s basically a simple way for your ticket buyers to subscribe to your upcoming shows as they are activated in the system – they can be automatically notified whenever you put tickets on sale. Learn more about RSS by watching this video, it does a pretty good job explaining the benefits.

Some tips:

• Put an RSS icon in the header of your website and link it to your RSS feed. Savvy web surfers will know what to do. You can find some RSS icons here.
• Publicize the availability and address of your RSS feed via your newsletter.
• Use services like rss2twitter , twitterfeed, and ping.fm to automatically update your twitter or myspace pages with your new events.
• Sign up for a feedburner account at www.feedburner.com and import your RSS feed into it. Then, you can get detailed statistics on how many people are reading your feed.

For help or questions about RSS, contact our support team.

Oh, and we’re offering free hard tickets to all promoters who sign up with BattlePass Pro this year, so if you’re in the market for a ticketing solution, check it out.

Because the TicketBiscuit core audience differs somewhat from the BattlePass core audience, we’ve decided to give BattlePass it’s very own blog. Starting now, we’ll carry all BattlePass-related news on http://buzz.battlepass.com. Not only will we feature product news and updates, but we’ll also feature in depth reviews and previews of fights that we ticket. It should be a very cool platform to expand the audience and awareness of our promoter clients,  so be sure to check it out.

Buzz.battlepass.com will carry all BattlePass related news from now on. Check it out!

TicketBiscuit CEO Jeff Gale commented,”Wil [Greene] has been a great client, and we have enjoyed the privilege of working with the Georgia Theatre. The Music Liberation Fund exists to preserve independent venues like this, and we’re happy to help; we look forward to the day when the doors reopen.”

In addition to the benefit show on the 23rd, TicketBiscuit will donate ticket fee proceeds from the Perpetual Groove show on June 20 at the Classic Center, the upcoming  Very Disco  and Jenny Lewis shows on June 25 and July 1 at the 40 Watt, and The AthFest Shows at the Morton Theatre June 26 and 27.

 More Information on these upcoming shows can be found at http://www.georgiatheatre.com.
For More Information on TicketBiscuit, visit www.ticketbiscuit.com or www.musicliberationfund.org  .
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For those in Athens, you should make it out to the Melting Point tonight for the Benefit Concert- all proceeds will benefit the staff of the Georgia Theatre.

From the Melting Point Athens website:

“We were saddened to hear the loss of the Georgia Theatre in a fire Friday, the loss of this Athens landmark is enormous. But the musical community is a family at heart, and we want to help our own. In that vein, The Melting Point is hosting a benefit for the Georgia Theatre staff the only way we know how, with a live show featuring three of the South’s rising musical stars!

Doors 6 p.m. $10 Cover- All proceeds benefit the staff of the Georgia Theatre
The New Familiars will hit the outdoor stage at 7 p.m. Dead Confederate will hit the main stage at 9:30 p.m. followed by at The Whigs at approximately 10:45.

For those of you NOT in the Athens area but wanting to contribute to the cause, pick up one of the previously unreleased Georgia Theatre T Shirts from Old Guard Graphics:

http://www.oldguardgraphics.com/fulfillment.html

You can check out the full release here. The next two IMMAE events are in Hawaii June 26-28 and Los Angeles August 28-30. IMMAE plans to have other regional events across the US in the upcoming year. For more info on IMMAE, visit www.immae.tv.

May 28, 2009 – LOS ANGELES, CA, – The Jon Lovitz Comedy Club opens its doors this weekend, and Co-Owner Frank Kelley isn’t shy about his aspirations – he wants to have the top club in Los Angeles. The idea, according to Kelley and Lovitz, is to offer an alternative to the dimly lit showroom and common black-box stage – “the club will be bright and tropical,” according to their website.

But building a unique club with marquee talent is only part of the equation when the pockets of Americans are feeling the pinch, and most are making cuts to their discretionary expenses like live entertainment. Clubs like Lovitz’s may be competing with literally hundreds of other entertainment events on any given night. To get and keep the attention of potential ticket buyers, Comedy Club owners like Lovitz and Kelley are increasingly turning to Social Media. From Twitter to Facebook and YouTube, the comedy industry is realizing that the online space is a fertile environment for nurturing their fan base.

TicketBiscuit , a ticketing system provider headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, offers several features that help comedy clubs promote their events via popular social networks. Lovitz and Kelley became TicketBiscuit clients earlier this year.”When Jon and I decided to open our own club, I knew what I needed my ticketing system to do to help run the business. TicketBiscuit is perfect for us.” One of the most popular features of TicketBiscuit is the ability of the system to instantly post event details to a client’s Facebook Page and keep them updated. Another feature, Promotozoa, enables web visitors and ticket buyers to share event information quickly across over 30 popular social networks and web sites.

TicketBiscuit CEO Jeff Gale says that the company will continue to find ways to make its ticketing system help clients sell more tickets and foster online fan interaction. “Businesses are beginning to learn more and more about the importance of social networks and how to build community – our system makes that process much easier.”

Another Los Angeles club, the World Famous Comedy Store, recently became a TicketBiscuit client as well. Marketing Director Alf LaMont says of the relationship: “TicketBiscuit blew us away. The marketing tools they provide really help us sell more tickets. From Facebook integration, to the automatic website updates, to the built- in email blast engine, to the mobile phone ticketing– TicketBiscuit was the obvious choice for us.”

About TicketBiscuit: TicketBiscuit, founded in 2001, provides proprietary, web-based ticketing systems and box office software to over 400 venues and 200 clients nationwide, including over 20 of the nation’s top comedy clubs. Learn more at www.ticketbiscuit.com.

(Atlanta, GA, March 20, 2009) – One month after his 23rd birthday, Kyle Maynard will fulfill what has been a lifelong dream. He will compete in his first Amateur Mixed Martial Arts match. The match will take place on Saturday, April 25 in Auburn, AL at The Auburn Covered Arena in an event titled “Auburn Fight Night.”

Auburn Fight Night tickets and more information can be found at www.BattlePass.com. 

Kyle Maynard went 35-16 his Senior year wrestling in Georgia

Maynard, a congenital amputee with no elbows or knees, burst onto the national scene when he graduated from Collins Hill High School in Suwanee, GA with a wrestling record of 35-16 in his senior season and a 3.7 GPA. He is the recipient of a 2004 ESPN Espy Award for Best Athlete With A Disability and has been featured on many radio interviews, talk shows and television programs including The Oprah Winfrey Show and Larry King Live. 

Currently he works as a speaker for the Washington Speaker’s Bureau, specializing in motivational speeches. He is also the author of the memoir No Excuses: The True Story of a Congenital Amputee Who Became a Champion in Wrestling and in Life.

In 2004, at the age of 18 while a student at The University of Georgia and a member of its club wrestling team, Maynard told a USA Today reporter “I’d love to fight in that” when pointing to a Randy Couture UFC poster hanging in his dorm room. The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), is often times referred to as the pinnacle of Mixed Martial Arts fighting. 

Maynard will get his first opportunity to fight in the sport of Mixed Martial Arts on Saturday, April 25 in Auburn, AL. He will become the first congenital amputee to compete in a Mixed Martial Arts match. 

Maynard was originally hoping to fight in his hometown of Duluth, GA nearly two years ago. The fight did not occur due to the Georgia Athletic & Entertainment Commission denying Maynard a license to fight. The state of Alabama has no Athletic Commission that governs the sport of Mixed Martial Arts. 

“I’ve been promoting fights since 2002, nearly 50 events combined, and I’ve never seen someone with the drive that Kyle possesses,” said promoter David Oblas. “I’ve seen Kyle overcome every obstacle put in front of him and on Saturday, April 25 he will overcome yet another. This is something that Kyle has wanted to do for years now and something that I’m happy to help him achieve.”

Kyle Maynard added, “The first question that I receive from everyone is do I fear for my safety while fighting in the cage? Absolutely not. Despite my lack of limbs I can protect myself just as much as the average fighter. I have been preparing for this fight for years and I cannot wait for Saturday, April 25 to arrive. There is no challenge and no goal that I have worked as hard for as this one. I would like to thank all of my family, friends and training partners for their support as I enter the last 30 days of my training camp.”

For additional information and for ticket information regarding Auburn Fight Night please visit www.BattlePass.com. The Auburn Covered Arena will be configured to fit 7,000 people for this historic fight. Tickets are on sale for $20 in advance and $25 the day of the fights for General Admission. VIP tables of eight are available for $400. Auburn Fight Night will consist of both professional and amateur Mixed Martial Arts fights with several Auburn residents fighting on the card. 

CONTACT: 

David Oblas
Undisputed Productions, LLC
404-579-9404
dave@UndisputedProductions.com 

Promoter Website: www.UndisputedProductions.com 

Event Website: www.BattlePass.com 

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