As part of the final day’s activities at Ticket Summit, running from January 13-15 at the Waldorf=Astoria in New York City, attendees of the panel “How to Price your Tickets” can review their pricing strategies and hear from industry professionals about dynamic pricing’s potential benefits to their business.
Barry Kahn, founder and CEO of Qcue, will be one of the speakers at Friday’s panel. Qcue offers a dynamic pricing model to sports teams, promoters and venues in order to optimize ticket revenue in response to fluctuations in market and environmental conditions. An economist, Kahn guides company strategy and product direction for Qcue as well as overseeing business and partner development.
Also presenting at the pricing panel is Harry Sandler, Director of Strategic Ticketing at Digonex Technologies. Sandler has over 40 years of experience in all areas of the ticketing world, working with various sectors of the industry. Over the past five years, Sandler has developed unique pricing platforms in his work on strategic pricing for the music industry. In 2008, Sandler joined Digonex, a software developer specializing in the area of demand-driven pricing systems. Just two months ago, Digonex launched its Sports & Entertainment Analytical System (SEATS), a direct competitor to Qcue’s dynamic pricing system.
Speaking at Ticket Summit for his second time, Barry Kahn plans to share his perspective on how dynamic pricing can assist brokers in maximizing profit, especially in regards to the management of season tickets: “My focus will be on dynamic pricing, but more specifically, I’ll spend a lot of the time discussing how dynamic pricing by teams and promoters impacts season ticket holders. The audience at Ticket Summit is primarily brokers who hold season tickets, so I think the real interest here is going to be how dynamic pricing is going to effect resale value and how brokers have the opportunity to change some of their purchasing patterns to take advantage of dynamic pricing and make their season tickets a much more valuable commodity.”
Kahn expects that the gradual merging of the primary and secondary markets will ultimately have a big impact on traditional pricing methods.
“I think in 3-5 years on the outside, secondary market Web sites like StubHub and TicketsNow will start to look a lot more like Orbitz and Kayak, with primary and secondary market tickets being sold side-by-side (openly),” he said. “What that means is these Web sites become a different sales channel, not a different marketplace, and that is going to change the way that primary and secondary market sellers have to price their tickets.”
“How to Price your Tickets” will be held on Friday, January 15, from 10 to 11 AM in the Waldorf=Astoria’s Palm Room South.
