Venues Today – February 15, 2012 by Dave Brooks
REPORTING FROM NEWPORT BEACH, CALIF. — PACnet wrapped Friday with one of its most successful runs to date, attracting over 600 attendees to the Marriott Newport Beach (Calif.) Resort & Spa, Feb. 13-15. The user conference, hosted by ticketing company Paciolan, brings together software clients, Paciolan staff members and solutions providers from the company’s growing network of service providers for a three-day confab of ideas and success stories.
“Our goal is to provide you information that grows your professional life and adds value to your organization,” said Paciolan founder Jane Kleinberger, who asked attendees to take home several lessons from the conference and share any positive feedback with other attendees.
Kleinberger and the rest of the Paciolan crew have plenty to be excited about. A recent survey of PACnet attendees powered by Turnkey Intelligence found that over 85 percent of attendees expect total ticket sales to rise in 2012.
“Of course, that’s got to happen without additional budget or staff at your organization,” said CEO Dave Butler, forecasting that many companies will be challenged to tackle growth on a limited budget.
The conference came on the heels of a number of new client announcements for Paciolan, which has been on a tear since being sold to Comcast-Spectacor in January 2010 — part of a deal brokered by the U.S. Department of Justice during the Ticketmaster and Live Nation merger. Butler said Paciolan has signed 28 new clients in the past 18 months.
On Monday, Paciolan announced its newest client — the Fox Theater in Atlanta, one of the top-grossing performing arts facilities in the United States. According to the Venues Today 2011 Year-End Top Stops report, the Fox Theater was ranked second in its size category, grossing $29.2 million for 233 performances.
Also announced at PACnet was a new high-profile ticketing contract for the Pacific Northwest. Jack Lucas from TicketsWest and Fred Maglione from New Era Tickets have been friendly rivals (and close friends) since they first met in 1987.
Both have large organizational footprints in the Pacific Northwest, but when the contract for the Portland (Ore.) Performing Arts Center went out to bid, Lucas and Maglione thought they would have a better chance of winning the contract from the facility’s current provider, Ticketmaster, if they teamed up together, rather than going after the deal independently.
The plan worked. On Monday, Paciolan CEO Dave Butler announced that the performing arts center was switching to a Paciolan-powered platform (the same system utilized by TicketsWest and New Era Tickets).
TicketsWest will provide the retail outlet support for the venture, while New Era will assist with marketing and analytics. Both companies will be instrumental in assisting with the overall branding of the venue’s new ticketing company.
“Within the industry, I would challenge anyone to show me any other type of joint venture quite like this,” Lucas said. “You’ve got to trust who you’re working with, and Fred and I have a long relationship built on mutual trust and respect.”
Looking back, Maglione said he has no doubt that the partnership between the two entities was crucial in sealing the deal.
“The act of coming together to present this proposal to the organization was as important as the actual fulfillment of the contract,” Maglione said. “The assets of each organization combined created a proposal that none of the other agencies, not even the incumbent, could match.”
Beyond new partnerships, PACnet was filled with success stories from clients working within the Paciolan system. The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor created a fan-gated Facebook promotion, exclusively selling single tickets on the social media site. Matt Kautz, Paciolan’s Director of Social Media, noted that the promotion generated $34,000 in direct sales.
Since then, the school “hired a chief technology officer. Instead of someone going around to fix computers, we’ve got someone to focus on digital strategy to help us develop a true driveway-to-driveway experience,” said Hunter Lochman, chief Marketing officer for the University of Michigan.
Another promotion on the Florida State home page captured the email addresses of over 10,000 visitors to the university’s website.
“That was instrumental in assisting the university with its efforts to generate outbound sales leads,” Kautz said.
The Long Center for the Performing Arts in Austin, Texas, took home the Rookie of the Year award. Within the last year, the venue created a regional ticketing arm with 10 different venues.
“They have implemented almost every tool in the Paciolan toolbox,” Paciolan’s Kathy Burns said.
Montana State University, along with TicketsWest, was honored with the Innovator of the Year award. The university partnered with TicketsWest to encourage students to reserve their free tickets to football games in advance by loading their student cards, creating an entirely paperless system. This guaranteed students a seat at the game; however, students who didn’t reserve seats could still show up at the stadium and, if seats were still available, attend the game.
Paciolan’s Kim Damron presented the Star of the Year award, which she said was very hard to narrow down with 11 nominations. The award eventually went to University of Michigan for creating a new ticket-interest program, putting together a package structure and doubling orders for basketball and hockey. All 13 of the University of Michigan representatives attending PACnet came on stage to accept the award.
Interviewed for this article: Jane Kleinberger, Dave Butler, Kim Damron, Matt Kautz and Kathy Burns, (949) 823-1636; Jack Lucas, (509) 459 6100; Fred Maglione, (484) 875-7301; Hunter Lochman, (734) 763-4423
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