The National Speedway Stadium, home to Speedway Great Britain Premiership club the Belle Vue Aces, is a 6000-capacity stadium with an 1800-seat grandstand that overlooks a 347-metre, FIM-homologated shale racing circuit.

Opened in March 2016 as part of the multi-million-pound Belle Vue Sports Village and wider regeneration project of the east Manchester area, the National Speedway Stadium hosts all home fixtures for the Belle Vue Aces and Colts.

It also plays host to various high-profile national and international events, such as the British Final and Speedway of Nations, to rival other major international speedway venues.

The National Speedway Stadium has worked in partnership with Tickets.com since opening in 2016, with the primary focus of increasing its online ticket sales.

To do this, the stadium implemented ProVenue® to manage all aspects of ticketing, putting the user in complete control with the ability to purchase tickets online 24/7 whilst providing extensive data capture to help the venue analyse trends to enhance customer engagement.

Moving forward, Belle Vue Speedway is looking to grow their fan base and expand their reach to a broader visitor demographic, as CEO Adrian Smith explains: “We want to engage more with families and younger visitors whilst retaining our core audience, and our ticketing experience is central to this.”

In 2018, Belle Vue Speedway introduced MyProVenue™, a next-generation web application built to streamline processes, from buying tickets to managing account preferences, within a responsive framework that works across both desktop and mobile devices.

Combined with the features available in ProVenue®, Belle Vue has enhanced its visitors’ online ticket purchasing experience, whilst driving data, permissions and behaviours through the application.

“To attract a younger audience to watch the Aces, we had to improve our customer experience to make ticket purchasing more accessible, and we saw sales via mobile as a vital means to do this,” explains Adrian.

“Traditionally our audience tends to be older and this is reflected in their ticket purchasing behaviour, with the majority of tickets sold through the box office. The introduction of MyProVenue increases the number of sales channels available and will help us towards our aim of a 50/50 split of online ticket sales versus walk-ups.”

In addition to the benefits experienced through the new technology, Adrian and his team have also praised the ongoing support from Tickets.com: “We have a really strong and collaborative working relationship with Tickets.com.

“They share with us best practice and advice based on their extensive industry experience, whilst working closely with us to come up with solutions to operational challenges.”

In 2017, Tickets.com helped Belle Vue to implement a two-stage ticket sales process to solve issues the club was experiencing as a result of a high number of at-event walk-ups: “We added a ‘best available’ seating option for those turning up on the day to eradicate the queues that were forming as a result of the time taken for visitors to select their seats.

“This has also helped encourage more people to use the online sales channels as tickets bought pre-event still benefit from the ‘select a seat’ function, which has subsequently improved the logistical operation at the stadium,” says Adrian.

Tickets.com have also provided the team at the National Speedway Stadium with key operational support for third party events, including the Speedway of Nations on 5 June 2018: “This was a big event for us and Tickets.com managed all ticketing and fulfilment seamlessly.

“Our technical account manager also spent time onsite with our team and ensured tickets were compatible with our access control system, and we were really pleased with how well it went.”

Located in the heart of historic downtown Meridian and opened in 2006, the Mississippi State University (MSU) Riley Center offers cultural, artistic and educational experiences unlike any other venue in the region. The facility includes a fully restored 1889 grand opera house with approximately 950 seats, a 200 seat studio theatre and 30,000 square feet of meeting space. The venue is distinctly unique and hosts a variety of events, conferences, and concerts. In 2008, the Center even hosted John McCain’s announcement for the presidency.

Derron Radcliff, Box Office Manager, talks about the Center’s role in the community: “We host between 40 to 50 performances and events each year and attract more than 60,000 visitors. They all return because the Riley Center is a special place for social interaction, enjoying the arts, engaging in lifelong learning and stimulating community growth and development.”

The Riley Center has been a customer of Tickets.com® since its opening in 2006 and recently upgraded to the ProVenue® ticketing system to improve sales and marketing operations, while also improving the patron experience.

“We have been able to improve our online presence and sales as a result of the new system. With the integrated tools including MyProVenue™ and Access Control, we have been able to better plan for other performances based on audience reaction and participation,” says Radcliff.

“The improved online platform is more user-friendly, and its features have been extremely well received by our staff and our customers,” Radcliff added.

“Thanks to MyProVenue, we can now do things we weren’t previously able to,” says Radcliff.

Radcliff continued, “Tickets@Home and Ticket Forwarding are particular favourites with our audiences and a remarkable improvement on our previous system. Our patrons can now forward tickets onto their friends and no longer have to wait in line to pick them up.”

The team at the Riley Center can now implement targeted marketing strategies aided by the comprehensive patron information available through ProVenue, and the complete data capture from Access Control. Radcliff states, “The best feature for us is Access Control. I love having the ability to record an accurate head count after each performance. This, combined with ProVenue’s other features, means we can be more effective with our communications.”

Radcliff mentions not only ProVenue as a reason that the Riley Center has remained a loyal Tickets.com client, but also the team that supports it: “My experience has been great all round. I personally have never had reason to call support, but I know that they go out of their way to solve any issue or problem. The Tickets.com team truly excels in supporting its clients.”

For more information about The MSU Riley Center, visit http://www.msurileycenter.com/

The Harlequin Theatre and Cinema is a multi-purpose arts venue in Redhill, Surrey, UK, with an auditorium that can be adapted from a 494-seat venue to a 600+ standing capacity space. Alongside is a bijou 100-seat cinema, screening the latest films and event cinema presentations.

The venue is open all year round and with such a variety of performances, it has become a treasured asset within the community.

“We have around 70,000 customers attend events each year, with the total estimated footfall to be double this with many more who visit to use the venue’s facilities,” explains Ian Orrick, Front of House Manager.

“We host around 150-200 live events – including a run of over 40 pantomime performances during December – plus over 1000 cinema screenings each year and building on this, in 2018 we’re embarking on bringing theatre to outside spaces as we focus on engaging the local community even further.”

As a longstanding client, The Harlequin Theatre made the decision to migrate to the ProVenue® ticketing platform to help the venue be more competitive in the ever-expanding digital marketplace.

“We have built up a great relationship over a number of years with the Tickets.com team, whose customer service and market awareness has always been impeccable, and so we had no hesitation in moving to ProVenue®”, says Ian.

“The system’s responsive design allows us to compete more effectively across digital platforms by making us more accessible to online bookers using tablet or mobile, and the interface is also clearer and slicker than anything we’ve used previously.”

As Tickets.com®’s most advanced platform, ProVenue® has been developed with the venue and its patrons at the forefront. It is a fully integrated ticketing solution that allows clients to capture, access and own consumer data, enabling them to build a picture of the buying habits and preferences of their patrons. With the help of the advanced reporting tools, venues can then design and implement targeted marketing campaigns to sell tickets effectively.

In addition to the enhanced digital capabilities provided by ProVenue®, the team at the Harlequin Theatre cite batch printing amongst their favourite features: “The printing feature has meant that our organisation of tickets – and the time spent printing them – has greatly improved, meaning that we are able to better use our time elsewhere.

“As well as batch printing, ProVenue®’s user-friendly interface allows event administration and ticket selling to work in tandem, and with it being a web-based programme we can now work from any computer in the venue”, confirms Ian.

And, with the impending introduction of the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws, the Harlequin Theatre continues to be encouraged by the work of the team at Tickets.com®: “Tickets.com® are a great company to have a relationship with and as we move towards GDPR in May, it is reassuring to know that we have such a great team and product to work with.

“During the initial transfer to ProVenue® they were attentive, informative and ultimately very patient. Subsequently, they are always happy to help with queries we have and communication regarding any upcoming upgrades is always punctual and easy to understand.”

For more information about the Harlequin Theatre, visit www.harlequintheatre.co.uk.

Tickets.com is offering all customers an exclusive discount on ticket printers from Boca, the inventors of the thermal ticket printer.

Usually priced at £1,100.00 + VAT, you can save up to £200.00 on Boca printers purchased until 12th April 2018*:

One unit: £985.00 + VAT (per unit)
Two units: £945.00 + VAT (per unit)
Three or more units: £900.00 + VAT (per unit)

(Prices available in euros for customers in Ireland – please contact the team for more information)

This offer is exclusively available on the Lemur 3.25″ reversible adjustable 200 DPI Boca Ticket Printer and the Lemur 2 – 4″ adjustable 200 DPI Boca Ticket Printer.

Click here for full product specifications

For more information or to place your order, contact the Tickets.com team:

E: uksales@tickets.com
T: +44 (0) 1908 232404
* Carriage costs apply

Testimonial: Adrian Terry (Box Office Manager)

The Theatre Chipping Norton is a small venue making big noises since its inception in 1975. The Oxfordshire-based theatre turned arthouse cinema, gallery and concert hall sees over 53,000 visitors per year as a result of its unique and enterprising offering of performances, festivals and workshops. With around 1200 events and workshops in 2017, it is easy to see why they are often the cause of much acclaim in the local community.

The Theatre Chipping Norton started working with Tickets.com in 1994, as Adrian Terry, box office manager, recalls: “We first engaged with Tickets.com over 20 years ago to further our digital and CRM capabilities and help us to better understand our patrons; this has been instrumental in implementing effective CRM campaigns to keep our visitors coming back.”

During this time, the theatre has migrated across from ProVenueDatabox® and ProVenueOnline® to ProVenue®, Tickets.com’s most advanced ticketing platform.

Since ProVenue® was first implemented in 2017, the Theatre Chipping Norton has benefited from MyProVenue™, the web application built on responsive web design to facilitate online ticket sales and patron self-service features.

In addition, the venue also uses CrowdConnect, Tickets.com’s cloud-based email marketing platform with advanced data capture functionality to further support patron engagement.

Like many Tickets.com customers, Adrian has experienced first-hand just how Tickets.com’s technology can support a smaller venue and achieve impressive results: “First and foremost we have a much greater understanding of our client base, which has led to an increase in ticket and sundry sales online through segmented and refined campaigns.

“As a venue we are unique, yet our move to ProVenue has futureproofed our booking tools and established a premium customer service platform that we hope will successfully launch our new seating campaign and the Chipping Norton Comedy Festival, as well as promote the upcoming literary festival.”

For more information about The Theatre Chipping Norton, visit www.chippingnortontheatre.com.