What a week it’s been for live event ticketing companies and event ticketing platforms! Of course, I'm referring to Taylor Swift's long awaited tour going on sale - an event that has lead fans to feelings of defeat, victory, frustration, triumph, and much more. All week, it's given us at Opendate a broader topic of conversation, after all it's not every day that ticket selling platforms are at the top of the headlines (for better or worse).

The biggest ticketing company in the world was bombarded this week with ticketing "lines" as millions of people tried to purchase tickets at the same time. As one of the years biggest tours was prepping to start selling tickets, there were reports of sites crashing, incredibly long queues, and a myriad of other issues that had fans readying their pitchforks. When you step back and consider the massive scale and pressure on the technology, all of these troubles were understandable and anyone probably could have seen the challenges coming. Unfortunately - these aren't the headlines we all wish were in the news associated with live music! This has also lead to a flood of people searching for aftermarket tickets on sites like SeatGeek, StubHub, and TickPick as many try to find secondary tickets on these online ticket sales platforms. Hopefully most people searching for tickets will find them, however many will be met with a blank space when it comes to finding their seats (see what we did there?).

Even though most venues won't likely deal with mega-tours that cause entire concert ticket companies websites' to crash, this week has been a good reminder that every venue should be considering the best ticket selling platforms and event ticketing apps for their specific needs. As always, there are a number of different offerings and features that need to be met - things like ease of setup and use (for the venue and the fan!), fees, and in the example of this week, reliability even when things are crazy! The best ticketing companies and will of course meet these needs any time you don't have a million plus eager fans knocking on your metaphorical door.

From a fans perspective, what is most important? Well...most importantly we want to get our tickets. Following that function which is basic in most cases, we want a process of buying that is easy and smooth, we want to be able to get and store our tickets digitally (it is 2022 after all), and hopefully not pay a tremendous amount of excess fees. When it comes to show time, we want to easily be able to access our tickets and get into the show quickly - after all, that's what we bought the tickets for! Those are the basics of course, but a great ticketing platform also makes it easy (and encourages) to buy add-ons or merchandise as well as gives me all the necessary information I need leading up to the show.

At Opendate, we take huge pride in offering our customers a reliable place to sell their tickets - but there's so much more when it comes to helping you put on the best show and giving your fans an incredible experience. Opendate's ticketing platform also helps venues sell more tickets and can help drive even more revenue by making it easy to sell add-ons and upgrades - all in experience your fans will love using. Whether it's through easy but robust ticketing setup, integrating an easy way to buy directly into your existing website, or the time-saving, team-aligning venue management system we've developed, Opendate is more than just a ticketing platform, it's truly an operating system for great independent music venues.

If you want to learn more about how Opendate is giving venues and fans a great experience and making ticket buying easy - schedule a demo with us here!

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