By Talmadge Harper
The core idea behind new Irish ticketing company Ticket Text is the ability to deliver tickets via your cell phone. Fans order tickets to their favorite shows and the tickets are SMS texted to their mobile phones.
Each “digital ticket” has a bar code that can be scanned from the cell phone at the concert venue. Once the bar code is scanned, the ticket becomes invalidated, preventing further use from other people. The Ticket Text concept, which is being utilized by other companies, also, takes e-tickets and brings it to the next level, in part by giving fans the ability to forward tickets to their friends and order multiple tickets. There are no handling, postage or packaging fees with Ticket Text service, which translates into lower costs. . .
Ticket Text is the brainchild of CEO Mark McLaughlin, who began his career with the investment giant Goldman Sachs in technology equity research. McLaughlin believes the company’s strength will be its ability to generate additional revenue.
“The core idea behind Ticket Text is that the ticket purchase is a basis for selling other goods and services,” McLaughlin said. Customers can be sent SMS coupons to promote events or products. The Ticket Text website also acts as a social networking forum for fans to discuss their favorite artists and concerts.
Ticket test has already formed a partnership with Ryanair.com where Ticket Text is Ryanair’s exclusive provider for event tickets. Ryanair.com already provides tickets for flights and hotel accommodations to millions of people.
“We have an exclusive deal with Ryanair.com to sell tickets via their website to their 53 million customers”, McLaughlin said. “We will be doing location specific ticketing for their customers that correlates to the relevant Ryanair.com destination.” In other words, fans flying to New York may receive SMS coupons to the latest Broadway show.
