News

Making a splash

Some companies are testing the waters with ATMs and ATM-like terminals that provide both cash and tickets. Convenient for consumers and a money saver for entertainment venues, automated ticketing may be the wave of the future.

March 31, 2002

At the National Aquariumin Baltimore, standing in line for tickets has become the norm rather than the exception for 157 days out of the year. During peak times at Maryland's most popular tourist attraction, visitors wait up to 30 minutes at the box office for tickets.

With an eye toward eliminating such waits, Aquarium executives will plunge into something new this summer. It will become the first venue to put into practice a technology developed by two California companies that allows customers to buy tickets and withdraw cash at attendant-free Automated Ticket and Teller Machines (ATTMs).

Value Automated Systems Inc.(VAST) of San Diego and Paciolanof Irvine will install two ATTMs at the Aquarium's main entrance in time for the busy summer season. Eventually, the Aquarium expects to have six ATTM machines to supplement on-site ticket sales.

"At times, we have more people who want to visit the Aquarium than we can take care of," said Chuck Spliedt, National Aquarium director of admissions. "We were looking for other sources to service our customers, instead of just adding additional windows."

For will-call purchases, visitors have the option to order tickets online, come to the Aquarium, swipe a credit card through the ATTM and pick up real tickets. Customers can still pick up advance tickets at the traditional will-call window.

"It should help us better serve our customers in reducing the wait time to buy a ticket," Spliedt said. "We are also looking for the ATTM to help us expand our will-call operations."

Spliedt thinks the ATTMs will be popular with customers because of their convenience. He added that the extended times for ticket sales will give visitors a bigger window of opportunity to buy tickets. More than 1.6 million people purchase tickets to the Aquarium each year.

The technology

VAST developed the ATTMs using software from Paciolan, a privately held ticketing solutions firm. The technology allows real-time, around-the-clock access to the best available tickets through the ATTMs. Patrons are assured the same ticket availability as when tickets are bought at the box office. Customers will also be able to withdraw cash from the ATTMs, money which they could spend at the venue's gift shop or concession stands.

The ATTMs accept affinity cards, credit and debit cards and cash. The device can make change to the nickel. Besides processing Internet will-call transactions, the machines can dispense marketing materials and gift certificates. The ATTMs have Customer Relationship Management (CRM) capabilities, allowing businesses to collect demographic information.

Jane Kleinberger, Paciolan chief executive officer who has been with Paciolan since 1981, a year after the company was founded, said one of the key benefits is that the ticket from the ATTM machine looks almost identical to tickets at the actual event.

Executives from VAST, a privately held company with about 40 employees, claim the devices should eliminate about 300 man-hours or more per month. The ATTMs are also able to serve customers in seven different languages, audio messages and video displays. Weatherproof installations allow tickets sales 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Making money

At Major League Baseball parks, Mitchell said those venues have seen a 40 percent increase in transactions from the added functionality of Internet will-call, advance ticket purchases and same day buys.

Kleinberger said the arrangement with VAST allows venues to install ATTMs at remote, retail locations.

"Maybe I'm online and decide that, `Gee, I'm going to be going to the grocery store in three days. When I go to the grocery store, I notice they have one of the ATTM machines there. I could pick up my tickets then.'" Kleinberger explained. "If I'd rather not have to walk around with the physical tickets until we get closer to the event, I'll pick them up when I get there. Then I can go ahead and retrieve them closer to event time."

A venue that depends on a third-party ticket distributor, such as TicketMaster, could eliminate that expense by selling tickets through the ATTMs in retail locations. This could result in a reduction of ticket sales service fees to the consumer.

"The fact that these machines are dual-purpose ATMs and ticketing machines ensures that there's a profitable business model that also provides a solution for ticketing on the retail side," Kleinberger said.

As part of the business agreement with VAST, Paciolan plans to installATTMs at other client locations, such as sporting events and entertainment venues. The ATTMs will be placed in high traffic areas at these places of live entertainment. Paciolan has more than 200 contracts with venues that sell more than 85 million tickets annually.

Paciolan customers include professional franchises (St. Louis Rams, San Diego Padres, Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies), universities (Florida State University, University of Notre Dame, Ohio State University and University of Nebraska) and special attractions (American Museum of Natural History, San Francisco Ballet, Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Graceland Mansion Tours).

Kleinberger said some venues are considering placing ATTMs at nearby retail locations where people gather before events.

In the early days

The VAST-Paciolan ATTMs aren't the first attempt at selling tickets directly from an ATM machine.

About six years ago, Plano, Texas-based Electronic Data Systems(EDS), a technology services provider, tried an ATM ticketing pilot with a regional TicketMaster franchisee in the Washington, DC area. Customers could order event tickets over the telephone through TicketMaster and pick them up at 50 Giant Food store locations.

The separate ticketing device shared operating costs with the ATM. Don Jarecki, vice president of network development at CashPoint, an ATM advertising firm, who was employed with EDS at the time, said the ticketing device was originally in place to sell airline tickets. However, airline ticketing at these machines never came to fruition with the advent of electronic airline ticketing.

"The pilot of allowing customers to pick up their TicketMaster tickets was working extremely well with no advertising and promotion other than the TicketMaster agent giving the customer the option of doing it," said Jarecki, who worked with the TicketMaster franchisee and Giant Food on the project. "Within the framework, we would get a per pick-up revenue stream. It was highly successful, even beyond what we thought it would do in the first few weeks of its implementation."

The plan was to generate additional revenue through advertising at the machine and ads printed on tickets. In addition to EDS, TicketMaster and Giant Food would have shared in the revenue from ticket sales as well.

But, according to Jarecki, TicketMaster corporate viewed the franchisee's involvement in the pilot as a contract infringement. Therefore, the project came to an end 90 days after it began.

Getting off the ground

Another business attempted to begin a pilot aimed at marketing event tickets in San Francisco.

After two spoiled attempts, Jerry Frazee, president and chief executive officer of ATM Tix Inc., is confident the third time will be a charm in his efforts to build a business combining ATM and ticket sales.

"We originally were going to work with Advantix, before they became Tickets.com, and Bank of America in the San Francisco Bay area," said Frazee, whose company is based in Incline Village, Nev. "We were supposed to launch in third quarter of 1998. Just two months shy of our completion, that's when Bank of America and Nations Bank merged. So, they put all ATM projects on hold for two years."

A year later, ATM Tix and Bank of America met again, this time in Las Vegas. At the time, Bank of America ran a Las Vegas ATM platform under the name of Casino Cash, separately from the bank ATMs under hold.

This time, ATM Tix was to launch a new service in Las Vegas to distribute live entertainment event tickets through off-premise convenience store and casino locations. Diebold Inc., an ATM manufacturer based in North Canton, Ohio, had built the equipment and deployed 18 of these machines in the field.

Two weeks from this launch, Bank of America sold its Casino Cash ATM network, putting a halt to that project.

Today, ATM Tix is working with other companies, including ATM manufacturers Diebold and Wincor Nixdorf, to launch entertainment and event ticketing primarily at off-premise locations and some bank ATMsin Hawaii, Chicago or Alaska. In this pilot, 153 ticketing ATMs would be deployed in Hawaii, 50 in Alaska and up to 125 in the Chicago area. In the future, Frazee plans to offer tickets for market-specific venues such as transit passes and school lunch tickets on secure stock.

Frazee said new improvements to the ATM Tix machines include wireless/web application protocol (WAP) capabilities, which allow web access and purchase from a wireless phone. ATM Tix has also worked on Point of Sale (POS), Bluetooth technology and Smart Card fulfillment technologies.

And more

Other businesses are also experimenting with ATM ticketing. This spring, Firstar Bank equipped its ATMs in the St. Louis area to sell ticket vouchers for the Firstar St. Louis Jazz Festival scheduled June 22-23.

More than 200 tickets have already been sold at about 160 Firstar ATMs -- pretty impressive, considering that promotion for the festival hasn't yet kicked into high gear and that most tickets for outdoor events, such as the Jazz Festival, are sold within two weeks of the event.

Mary Novak, the bank's corporate sponsorship manager, said that an on-screen icon for "Jazz Festival" appears when a cardholder inserts his or her card and enters a PIN. After touching the icon and following directions that appear onscreen, the customer receives a voucher which can be redeemed at the Jazz Festival for a wristband good for admission to the event.

The cost is deducted at the time of purchase from the customer's account. The service is open to both Firstar customers and non-customers.

The process is pretty uncomplicated, Novak said, because there is no reserved seating for the event. She said that Firstar is "chomping at the bit" to try similar ATM promotions in the future.