Southend United Football Club claim to be the only Football Club to have a mobile ticketing facility offered to fans.....
"Southend United is currently the only Football Club offering the sale of match tickets by text message direct to your mobile phone." http://www.southendunited.co.uk/page/TicketNewsDetail/0,,10444~1976500,00.html
At Smart Stadia Ltd we believe that at least one Premiership Club, Everton FC, adopted the same technology in September 2008, and who also claim to be the first....
"
Txt2Ticket is the first service of its kind in football and offers fans the flexibility to choose a preferred seating area with no booking fees."
Then there was the Manchester United v's Portsmouth pre-season tournament meeting in July 2008 at the Abuja Stadium, Nigeria claiming....
"This match in Abuja Stadium Nigeria was the first football match in the world to offer mobile ticketing to fans."
We haven't even began our research in the Far East where mobile phones are regularly used for other methods of ticketing, or indeed elsewhere in Europe such as Spain where we understand this technology is very popular.
Regardless of whether Southend United's claim to be global leaders of this technology in the football world is accurate or not one thing is for certain, they are ambitious an ambitious organisation and back that ambition up with board level support and more importantly, action.
We have been very proud to have been associated, in a very small way, with Southend United's planning of new technology not only for Roots Hall but also in preparation for the mover to Fossetts Farm. During our short engagement with the Chief Executive, Geoffrey King, that not only was the club ambitious and embraced technology that they also recognised the need to blend different technologies to achieve greater revenue generation and cost savings.
Case Study - Southend United and Mobile Ticketing
The club first piloted the mobile ticketing in the 2006/7 season when the club issued some complimentary tickets that were valid in 2 dedicated gates. This pilot was SMS based and stand alone i.e. not electronically connected to the clubs ticketing system.
Then in April 2008 the pilot was made "Live" and extended to all gates except for visitors. Ticket delivery was automated with the inclusion of MMS and email2mobile as delivery methods.
A review was conducted in late 2008 with following results:-
• High take-up = mobile tickets per game = 9.2% of total matchday sales
• Customers from all age groups used the service
System Features
• Enables scheduled delivery of tickets (e.g. 24 hours before kick-off)
• Available to UK networks
• Full reporting of delivery status and usage
• of mobile tickets
• Multiple tickets per order
• Pre-match push
• Pre-match text
• Post match analysis / text
The Benefits
• Fast and easy delivery
• Controllable delivery
• No additional identifier required
• Clear readability compared to print-at-home
• Addressing non-regular supporters with special promotions
• Collecting new profile data, also of supporters who have not registered in CRM so far
• Enabling more interaction with the supporter on a very personal and responsive media
• Reduced line at Box Office on match day
• New sponsorship opportunities
• More direct interaction before the event
For more information about this post or to understand how your club can realise these and other benefits contact Smart Stadia Ltd or email Steve Beecroft
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