“In 2008, we were one of the first ticketing companies to offer seamless Facebook integration, and now we’re setting the pace again,” said TicketBiscuit Chief Marketing Officer Eric Housh. “Using Facebook for live event promotion is a necessity now. If you’re not doing it well, you’re not as successful as you could be,” he continues, “Our new app has taken it a step further, transforming a client’s Facebook Fan Page from a marketing channel into an actual sales channel .”

Housh says that the TicketBiscuit Facebook app is unique in that it links in real time to the client’s TicketBiscuit account, meaning that ticket sales can be taking place simultaneously on Facebook, on the client’s website, via the TicketBiscuit-provided mobile optimized smartphone interface, and via TicketBiscuit’s web-based box office point-of-sale software, with all inventory managed centrally in real time.  The look and feel of the ticketing interface matches the clean look of Facebook. And in keeping with TicketBiscuit’s core philosophy, the client’s brand stays out in front. “It takes the concept of white-labeling to a whole new level: now you can have a white-label ticketing solution seamlessly integrated into your Facebook Fan Page along with your other web properties.”

Though TicketBiscuit just publicly announced Fan Page Ticketing today, it has been in testing for a couple of months. Several clients, including the Re:Generation Festival, Yarmony Grass Festival, and Comedy Zone Charlotte are already using the app with great success. The TicketBiscuit Fan Page Ticketing App can be added to any Facebook Fan Page with a couple of clicks. Housh says the only requirements are that you be an Admin of the Page and that you have a TicketBiscuit account.

Another thing that is staying consistent is The Theatre’s longstanding agreement with TicketBiscuit to provide ticketing services. Greene and CEO Jeff Gale inked a long term, exclusive deal earlier in the spring.  “Those guys have stuck with us, helped us out, and they’re a great team,” Greene said, “Plus, they still have the best technology and service in the business, hands down.”

Todd Coder, TicketBiscuit’s Director of Music Business Development, said “Having an icon like the Georgia Theatre as a part of the TicketBiscuit family is something we’re very proud of. We’re excited about their reopening, and are sure they’re about to write a few more chapters of music history there.”

Gale and Coder, who toured The Theatre earlier in the year, were impressed with the new space. “Wil is building a world-class showroom in Athens. The new Theatre is absolutely phenomenal,” Gale said.

The Georgia Theatre is scheduled to open with local acts in June and July, and have a series of Official Grand Opening performances in August. For more information, visit www.georgiatheatre.com.

About TicketBiscuit: TicketBiscuit, founded in 2001, provides proprietary software that powers the online ticket sales of over 500 clients in 1500 venues across the United States and Canada. TicketBiscuit’s complete suite of services and solutions empowers clients to sell tickets online through their own websites and social media properties, via call center, and via the TicketBiscuit web-based box office interface.  For more information on TicketBiscuit, please visit http://www.ticketbiscuit.com .

Back before Google, Facebook, Songkick, Eventful, and the other myriad services and websites that help fans find events, Ticketmaster arguably provided a valuable service in aggregating events on one website. But now, that “service” does more to hijack event owners’ website traffic than it does to provide exposure for those events.

I often hear Ticketmaster clients claim that “people just know to go to Ticketmaster.” I disagree. They know to go to Google; they know to go to Facebook; and they subscribe to services like Songkick which notify them of events they’re interested in. This new paradigm frees event owners from having to get the word out about their events (let your customers do that for you) and lets them instead focus on building brand loyalty and establishing direct communication with customers.

The live entertainment biz is changing – for the better if you ask me. As the combined Ticketmaster and LiveNation struggle to maintain their outdated business model, event owners would do well to sidestep the “middle man.” Those who do not may find their life rafts getting pulled under by that massive sinking ship to which they are tethered.

Already built in to all TicketBiscuit accounts, this powerful little bugger lets you schedule pre-written, post-dated tweets about your events that will go out automatically – from your own Twitter account – at pre-defined times relative to your events.

TicketBiscuit's Twitter App Makes it easy to tweet consistently about your events.

Your auto-tweets are fully under your control. Customize any part of the tweet, and insert event-specific details by using the handy drop down menus. Some of the details you can include:

• Event title, name, and date
• Links to buy tickets and to event details pages
• Ticket price ranges
• On-sale dates and times
• Venue city, state, and name

Scheduling your auto-tweets is a breeze as well: choose to publish the tweet when the event is announced, when the tickets go on sale, on the date of the event, or at any date or time prior to any of these.

You can schedule as many tweets as you like!

The TicketBiscuit Twitter App is just another example of how we never stop innovating to help you sell more tickets. For more information give us a call or send us an email.

How does it work?

The concept is pretty simple actually – website owners, bloggers, and publishers link to our events from their website or blog, and we pay them commissions on referred ticket sales.

How did we do it?

First, we took our massively cool legion of clients and their ever-expanding multitude of awesome events.

Next, we built an easy, intuitive way for web publishers, bloggers, and site owners to tap into those events.

And finally,we topped it off with a generous commission structure. One that even pays commissions for presale tickets or ticket purchases made within 24 hours of when tickets first go on sale to the public (unlike that other, less awesome ticket affiliate program). 

Where can I learn more?

Check out our affiliate program page to learn more, sign up now, or email affiliate (at) ticketbiscuit.com.

Tixsa launched just last month, and is already making waves with acquisitions of high profile clients like the Voortrekker Monument, Café Barcelona, and the Alexander Theater.

The South African ticketing landscape is currently dominated by Computicket, but Tixsa Managing Director Michael Canfield says there’s ample opportunity. “The venues and promoters here frankly didn’t have a solid, reliable, inexpensive alternative to Computicket in the past. With Tixsa, now they do. The value to the venues and promoters is that Tixsa will empower them to sell tickets online through their own websites and mobile optimized sites instead of sending all of their customers to the ’800 pound gorilla’ – they can cultivate true relationships with their customers, sell more tickets, and make more money.”

Tixsa is using the “800 Pound Gorilla” analogy in a series of hilarious commercials. Check out the first one below:

TicketBiscuit CEO Jeff Gale says the relationship between the two companies began as a simple email conversation with fortunate timing. “Tixsa contacted us just as we were compiling our international growth strategy,” he recalls. “South Africa was getting a lot of attention due to the 2010 World Cup, and the Tixsa team was ready to take advantage of that momentum. It has been a great learning experience for us, going from initial contact to product launch in just under three months.”

Canfield says that Tixsa evaluated several US ticketing companies before pursuing TicketBiscuit as a partner. “We knew that in order to gain a foothold here, we absolutely had to choose a company that had a proven software solution, was innovative and flexible, and had best-in-class reviews from its client install base. TicketBiscuit is all of those things and more; of all the companies we looked at, they stood alone.”

(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.

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  .
###

According to this article by Al Branch over at Ticket News, Ticketmaster is advancing bills in Florida and Minnesota that would effectively give them greater control over concert presales. You can read the full text of the article here. Now, just the fact that Ticketmaster is lobbying in support of legislation on the ticketing industry should be enough to scare you into action, but if not…

I visited the websites for both the Minnesota and Florida Legislature to get the text of the actual bills- you can view them by visiting the links below:

Minnesota HF 819: Internet Sale of Event Tickets

And

Florida CS/ HB 1287: Resale of Tickets (summary and full text)

Interestingly enough – there are two other bills making their way through Florida as well – SB 1962 (summary and full text) and SB 2074 (summary and full text).

For those of you uninterested in navigating the legalese, I will simplify the gist of the legislation:

Ticketmaster is making a power grab to limit ticket presales and re-sells unless authorized by the primary ticket seller – in many cases, Ticketmaster. So Ticketmaster, in the midst of trying to establish a monopoly on the national scale, is now simultaneously looking to eliminate competition in the presale space and eliminate the reseller market altogether.

For those of you who aren’t savvy in this space, “presales” are tickets that go on sale before they are made available to the general public, often going on sale to, for example, fan clubs. They have been an established component of the concert industry for decades, but now Ticketmaster wants them stopped. Check this language in Florida HB 1287: “requiring that a person or entity that offers to sell or resell over the internet tickets to specified public entertainment or amusement events of any kind may not offer tickets for sale until such tickets have first been offered for sale via an event-provider –authorized outlet or offering.” The Minnesota bill has a similar anti-presale tilt: “The initial seller shall not divert tickets from the initial sale to be sold in any other manner.”

In other words, if Ticketmaster doesn’t feel like allowing a presale in Florida, it won’t happen. In Minnesota, it will be ILLEGAL to have presales.

There is also language in these bills that prevents or limits tickets from entering the secondary market. While in theory (and to the average state legislator) this sounds great, it sets a dangerous precedent. Some of you may recall many moons ago when I blogged about the Seven Principles of the Ticketing Industry. Principle four is what we see in action here- “Where there are nuisances, there are regulators.” It is dastardly (and again, should cause concern) that the very same company causing all of the nuisances is the one driving regulators to action. Of course, the well paid Ticketmaster lobbyists are keeping the true grim future scenario out of the minds of the regulators deciding the fate of the issue, as seen in Florida, where the bill has passed unanimously through two committees so far. If successful, Ticketmaster will both outlaw presales and resells, gaining a pretty tight death grip on the large entertainment venues of Florida and Minnesota.

So, if you live in Florida and occasionally buy tickets to live events, read HB 1287
(it won’t take long) and get in touch with the members of the General Government Policy Council Pronto. They are listed here: http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Committees/committeesdetail.aspx?CommitteeId=2469 . At least contact Representative Troutman and let him know that this legislation deserves further scrutiny and revision. Ditto for you Minnesotans: http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/members/hmem.asp

The answer to scalping is NOT to limit presales or introduce harmful regulation into this industry. The bottom line is this: scalping takes place because the face value of some tickets is significantly lower than the market value. Until all parties involved can agree on how to make these two values close enough at onsale to discourage scalpers, the practice will continue.

In related news: The Grateful Dead may have introduced a solution to this problem. What do you think?