Q&A with Dave Butler, CEO of Paciolan
REPORTING FROM ANAHEIM, CALIF. — The message at the recent National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics Conference was clear — the Pac is back. After its brief marriage with one-time rival Ticketmaster, software firm Paciolan is on the rebound, re-signing 10 large collegiate clients in less than 60 days including Louisiana State, Purdue, Texas, Army, Oklahoma and Northwestern. Now under the ownership of Comcast-Spectacor, President and CEO David Butler has said the company is planning to re-emerge as a ticketing tour-de-force with collegiate markets and performing arts centers on its radar. Venues Today caught up with Butler to discuss growth at the company.
How has the outlook changed for the company since relaunching the brand?
We announced the new course for the company at (our annual users meeting) PACnet. Many of our clients had confidence again that we’d be here long term. We’re seeing a lot of clients come to us and say that they want to extend their agreement. So we’ve been very fortunate and we’ve had 10 major renewals in the last 60 days and we’re doing a press release on each of them as they roll out. We think it’s a great compliment to the business; we feel lucky to have these clients that have so much confidence in us.
And you’re starting to market yourself differently?
Pac is back! Being a part of Ticketmaster was a great experience for us and they’re a great company. We also learned a lot. But being independent again has been a wonderful experience. We actually retained the rights to a number of products that we built as part of Ticketmaster. We also have the ability to list all of our clients’ events at Ticketmaster.com.
Was that a Department of Justice stipulation because of the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger?
No, that was a commercial deal with Ticketmaster. We, as Paciolan, actually pay an affiliate fee to them for the right for our clients to be able to list events. And for our clients who want to use that for reach, it’s available to them at no charge. For our clients who want to build their own brand and don’t want to have their events there, they don’t list them. And that’s really our whole model. We want to give our clients options and then they pick the ones they want to use. Good example — we’re doing a lot of social media campaigns right now that we’ve contracted with Facebook, and we’re doing five pilot sites with five of our clients, on our dollar, in order to test out what really works most effectively in the social media space.
Are you trying to get Facebook users to notify other users when they purchase tickets?
Yes. And we want them to invite them along. It’s viral marketing. You’ll see a posting saying, ‘Hey, this game sounds like a great time; who’s joining me at ASU this weekend?’ and they’ll get 20 of their friends to go to the ASU game because they focused on their Facebook page. Now how do we tap into that? We really think Facebook’s learning along with our clients.
Where’s software development for Paciolan?
We’re so fortunate in that regard. Our design team was working on the new platform that was the combination of Archtics and Paciolan. As part of the sale of the company, we got the rights to all of that product along with Ticketmaster, so we didn’t lose anything. Our development team was working on the new version of Paciolan all along. This month, we released version 6.9.3. It’s focused on cross selling more effectively. If I bought a ticket, what about parking, what about the program, how about merchandise? If I bought this event, what about other events I might be interested in? All of the work we were doing on our product is now coming into the hands of our clients and all the design work we did for the future will become our next release.
How diversified is your staff between product development and sales?
We have over 70 people working on our product right now to make sure we deliver the right things. That, in our business, is 45 percent of our employee base. So almost half of our employees work on making our product better every day.
What did you learn during your days at Ticketmaster?
I think we learned a lot of great things from Ticketmaster, like product development and technology. We learned about web merchandising and web marketing from Ticketmaster. I think they learned a lot from us about client focus, client satisfaction being the number one driver in a business’ success. So I think we both learned from each other. For the products we worked on together, we both had those rights as we left. So we basically split the work, each of us got a copy of it and we can take it our own direction from there.
How is Paciolan now positioned differently?
It was a venture-capital funded company, then it was owned by a huge corporation, now it’s owned by Comcast-Spectacor. What does that do to the company’s liquidity and leverage? Great question. Comcast-Spectacor owns a number of entrepreneurial businesses: Global Spectrum to manage buildings; Ovations for the food side. New Era Ticketing used our technology for its full-service model. And then there’s Front Row Marketing. We fit right into that. We’re their entrepreneurial technology company providing ticketing and fundraising and marketing to our clients and we’re a great match. When we were a venture company, we had a wonderful board. But their goal was to sell the company some day and get their investment back. At Comcast-Spectacor, the goal is to own us long-term and have us be a leader of the ticketing, fundraising, and marketing space, and that’s a perfect match for what we want. We were excited to be part of Ticketmaster, but we were thrilled to get our company back, and go back to serving our clients.
What happens to New Era Ticketing?
New Era offers a different product to the marketplace than Paciolan. We offer enablement or self-operation with your tickets, your way and the clients, in our case, want to have control of all of that. New Era realized there’s a segment that wants that control but doesn’t have the staff to do it, and wants a full-service marketing firm and ticketing technology firm. And in that case New Era provides their technology and provides staff to do those things that the client is not prepared to do. So I think we really have both ends of the spectrum, from self operation to full service, and then clients can define what part of that in the middle is best for them.
Are the two main growth segments going to continue to be universities and regional ticketing companies?
We’ve been very successful with universities and we’re very proud of that. We continue to see our clients adopt more of our products. Fundraising is an area right now that more and more universities are implementing. We’ve also been very successful growing our arena business. If I take the New Era example, they used our product at the Wachovia Center. We have a vast number of smaller buildings, which also use our products.
There’s no doubt that there are Department of Justice mandated firewalls in place, both inside and outside Ticketmaster, to create a level playing field. How does that affect Paciolan?
Well, from our perspective, we think that the Department of Justice did a great job ensuring that there would be competition within the marketplace. In the sale of Paciolan, they put in place a number of consent items that create a very level playing field. Example — Live Nation is not allowed to discriminate putting a show into a building based on what ticketing software they use. That’s great for our clients and for us because now we can go to a building and say “pick the right solution and we have a great relationship with Live Nation on content.” We’ve actually partnered with their touring acts to get them into buildings we service. Obviously, as an independent company, we’re going to compete with Live Nation and Ticketmaster in a number of venues and we feel it’s a very fair field of battle. And we think that some companies will pick Ticketmaster, because they prefer them, and some companies will pick us because they prefer us, and some of our other competitors will pick up clients as well.
Do you think Live Nation will adhere to this consent decree in the long term?
I do. I will tell you that first I think the consent decree was very well written to ensure competition, so I think the DOJ did a good job. Having worked for Irving Azoff and having been part of Ticketmaster, (I’ve seen) they’re honorable people and I trust them completely to do the right thing. I think they know we’re honorable people and we’ll do the right thing on our side, so I think it was a great solution for everybody.
Does the DOJ stick around?
Yes, they inspect. You’d have to ask them specifically, but what I understood through the process is that they’ll inspect the marketplace over time to ensure that everyone’s honoring those agreements. And, in this case, these are two world-class companies and I think you can be confident we will. I think Live Nation will and I’m sure that we will, so I think it really did create a good competitive environment. Now our job is to differentiate ourselves for our clients and our prospective clients so they see the value in our offer.
So 10 signings in 60 days? Were these guys just waiting for Paciolan to announce its independence?
I’m not so sure that they were as much as I think when we made the announcement that we’d be independent again, and we laid out our future for our clients, they were enthusiastic about where we’re going and said ‘we want to be part of that.’ There probably were some deferred decisions waiting to see how things would shake out, because the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger had been announced nine months earlier. I think all of that probably came into play, but we take it as a wonderful vote of confidence from our client base.
Social networking is going to be part of Paciolan’s long-term strategy. Are you, personally, on Facebook? Are you reconnecting with anyone you went to high school with?
Not from high school, but with 20- and 25-year old kids, I love knowing what’s going on in their lives through Facebook. I think that’s fascinating. They post pictures of what they’re doing and I get to connect with my kids when they’re no longer at home. But also, from a business perspective, I think there’s a huge opportunity to virally market events through your really enthusiastic fans through Facebook. So I’m on my Facebook page every day finding out what’s going on and, working with the Facebook people and we’re really excited about what we’re learning from them to help our clients use that for the under-30 element of their audience who doesn’t open e-mails. They go to Facebook, they virally communicate with each other, they text, but they don’t go to e-mail any more, and this is, I think, the next wave of how to communicate with them.
Interviewed for this story: Dave Butler, (866) 722-4652
Originally published in ‘Venues Today | July 2010′
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