Revitalising Season 2: Unveiling Ticketing's Future with Paul Williamson (Two Circles)

Join us for the thrilling finale of TicketingPodcast.com's second season, where we've assembled the brightest minds in the industry: Nicholas Brennan, Martin Goossens, Samuel Boyden, Manal Smith, and Rick Jurkiewicz.

Now, brace yourself for an exhilarating episode as we welcome back the insightful Paul Williamson, Director at Two Circles, to recap and explore the most captivating moments from this extraordinary season.

In Season 2, we've ventured into the realms of cricket, football, netball, rugby, golf, and sailing, even touching upon the world of live music events. From technology's transformative impact to unlocking the potential of customer data, enhancing experiences, exploring subscription models, and fortifying security measures, we've left no stone unturned.

Whether you're a loyal listener or a newcomer, Paul's profound understanding of ticketing breathes new life into every aspect we've covered.

Don't worry if you missed a few episodes; this one promises to captivate and engage you thoroughly.

Get ready for an immersive journey into the digital transformation of ticketing, the dynamic power of collaboration among ticketing managers, and the exciting career opportunities that await in this industry.

Recorded on 26 June 2023, this episode is not to be missed!

TicketingPodcast.com is powered and sponsored by TicketCo and hosted by TicketCo’s CEO, Carl-Erik Michalsen Moberg.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hello and welcome to this season 2 finale of TicketingPodcastcom. This is the podcast where Ticketing experts reveal their secrets and share their insights. My name is Kallarik Moberg and my guest today is again Paul Williams, who is still director of Two Circles, and he'll be summing up the highlights of season 2. Feel free to listen in, it'll be worth it. Hello everyone, thank you so much for tuning in to the TicketingPodcastcom. My name is Kallarik Moberg and I'm the host of this podcast where we are interviewing the unsung heroes of the event industry, and that is, the Ticketing Managers. With me today is Paul Williams, director of Two Circles. It's a pleasure to have you back with us, paul.

Speaker 2: 0:50

Thank you very much for having me. I look forward to a discussion with you.

Speaker 1: 0:53

I have to say, many of our guests so far have mentioned you, paul, and I think you are a well-known man within the sector.

Speaker 2: 1:02

Yes, I'm one of the oldest in the sector. I've been around some time and I know lots of people who work in and around Ticketing, which is great because there's some really good people.

Speaker 1: 1:12

I think they've learned a lot from you, paul, and I think that is reflected in the interviews we had as well. So super happy to have you with us today to sum up and to talk about the seasons we had and to summarize everything. So, for those of you who don't know, you are one of our guests at the first season and the reason why we asked you to pay us a visit today is basically to summarize season two, where we have five great guests before this season finale, as they say. So what do you think about the guests so far, paul?

Speaker 2: 1:44

Really interesting. I've listened to the podcast myself, mainly while painting the ceiling of the bedroom in my daughter's new house, so Ticketing podcasts have kept me sane as I try and get the paint on the ceiling rather than on myself. But hey, we all listen in different ways, don't we? But I found the mixture, but also the similarity between the challenges and the opportunities that the people we have interviewed have had to be really interesting, and it shows what a busy and wide-ranging industry that Ticketing is.

Speaker 1: 2:19

Definitely, and you also see these guests varying from different sports, different sectors, different challenges, and they're not afraid of taking on new challenges, that's for sure.

Speaker 2: 2:31

And, okay, we're only at the start of this discussion, but my big takeout for this discussion today is in the past, ticketing was a job that people fell into and kind of stayed around because it paid them and they're happy doing it and they're busy. Now people are making a career out of Ticketing and some of your guests have made a career in multiple different jobs, doing different roles each time, and I think that's fantastic and that just shows the growth and the change within this Ticketing industry that we're seeing in the last few years 100% agree with you and I've been asking like there's no studies for Ticketing, but there should be.

Speaker 1: 3:13

Maybe it will be in the future as well, right as this is evolving.

Speaker 2: 3:18

Well, we currently have the University of Life and that gives you the qualification for Ticketing. But you're right, there aren't any specific courses on Ticketing. And yet Ticketing is such a broad ranging business area now, with finance and customer relations and technology and revenues and planning and live operations, that it cuts across so many different areas that it's a great grounding for anyone in business, definitely.

Speaker 1: 3:44

One thing you touched on is the similarities, but also, i mean, the broadness. The opening season was a little bit heavy on the football side, right, and this season we've tried to balance that with corporate boards, cricket, football, netball, the hundred which is also cricket but a different concept and rugby. And we've also actually paid a visit to festivals and live music, because these people are transitioning between two completely different industries. Last but not the least, we've touched upon golf, sailing and big multi-sports events like the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics, which you know very well, paul. So any thoughts on the variety of different things, but still there are some similarities here.

Speaker 2: 4:29

Football dominates sport now, particularly in Western Europe, because it's the biggest, the boldest, the richest sport by a long way and whether that's domestic leagues or whether that's champions league, football gets the media coverage and it sells the most tickets. but people come to football, people leave football and they work in other sports and actually those other sports are often more innovative, faster moving and needing to be smarter, because they have to work harder than football does to sell their tickets, to make sure the fans get in and to make sure the fans come back completely agree with you on that ball And if we continue a little bit on football right which, as you say, the most popular things, we maybe should kick off a little bit with that.

Speaker 1: 5:16

And one thing that I found really exciting was the conversation I had with Mikkel Bjarra from FC Copenhagen is the inventor of subscriptions in season tickets for football. Think of it as the same way as you pay for your Spotify account or your Netflix subscription or maybe your gym membership right following the football club. And also we had Martin Gossens, who is the ticketing manager at a Royal Sporty Club, Annalescht, And they are also now adopting what FC Copenhagen did gradually in Belgium, And they've also spoken to Mikkel and gotten feedback from him and the trial and errors he's done. So people are learning from each other. What do you think about the subscription on season tickets, Paul?

Speaker 2: 6:00

I think it's a definite change which is happening, going to happen, and, frankly, i'm surprised at how the old season ticket model has survived so long. If I talk to my kids who are in their 20s, they don't pay for anything, with a one off payment each year, it's all. Hey, can I afford this per month at 20 euros, 50 euros per month or not? And that's how they look at things. And I was discussing with my son you know, i own a car. Every car I've owned, i've always bought it outright.

Speaker 2: 6:36

Okay, my kids will never buy a car outright. They will always have a subscription for a car if they want a car, and then they'll hand it back when they don't want the subscription anymore. And it's the same as their mobile device, their mobile phone, same as Netflix, as you say. And why can't football, why can't other sports get into that model as well? And I think they can, i think they will And I think that the work done at FC Copenhagen and elsewhere is market leading and shows the way. And I think in five years time, if we had this same conversation, we'd look back and say what was the big question about subscriptions?

Speaker 1: 7:15

That's a very good question to ask a couple of years ahead, But isn't it great that some clubs are willing to innovate back this I mean and that innovation comes from the ticketing side of things It does?

Speaker 2: 7:27

But for some clubs it's a scary innovation because instead of millions of euros landing in their bank accounts in May, june each year, they're going to get one 12th of that every month, which is a much better cash flow. But it's a challenge to start that process When you're hooked on that big hit of money at the end of each season.

Speaker 1: 7:51

Good point, good point, but who do you think within the club, who do you think would challenge this model And who do you think would proactively work towards it? I mean, there's different stakeholders within a club, right Well?

Speaker 2: 8:01

I think supporters groups will actively work towards it because I think in the rest of their lives they have a subscription model. I think that cash flow in finance, but also in the commercial team or the senior management leadership. They'll be saying, hey, but why do we change? It's not broken And we got the money in last season, we'll get the money in next season. Let's keep going for one more season, and I think there'll be a lot of clubs like that. But it was the same with digital ticketing. Hey, why do we need digital ticketing? Paperworks will give it one more season, we'll give it one more season. Then COVID came along and suddenly bang, lots and lots of organisations have gone digital ticketing and hey, it works.

Speaker 1: 8:45

Yeah, and I guess you won't go back. That's not the goal.

Speaker 2: 8:50

I think it's tough to go back from a subscription model. Do I want to pay my mobile phone bill a year in advance? No, I don't. So they can't change that model back to a different one, at least not at the moment. No, I think so.

Speaker 1: 9:03

And I also saw. I mean, we read a lot of LinkedIn these days, don't we? I mean there's a lot of content and you follow the people you are interested in, etc. And I obviously follow a lot of different ticketing managers. And I also saw one post the other day about the time spent in renewing the season. I mean it's an all hands on deck exercise. They've been working day and night calling supporters getting the renewal And then they had great numbers, but still I mean the time and effort that goes into it.

Speaker 2: 9:34

It's tremendous, i think it's a really interesting debate because I was having this debate with one of my two circles colleagues in North America last month. In the UK now, if you look at football clubs, virtually all season ticket renewals are done online. Okay, so the supporter gets a reminder, they click through their personalized link or they log in, they pay and their season ticket is renewed. In America they still hire teams of college students to telephone people to get them to do their renewals and either invite them in or talk to them over the phone and take a credit card booking then And I just don't understand that difference in business practice for NFL teams, for NBA teams, compared with Premier League football teams. And hey, maybe America's behind us in some places.

Speaker 1: 10:30

I'm sure so These organizations are so big not that the Premier League isn't big, it's huge but it takes more time to change, doesn't it? I mean to get that new way of working. And one last question on subscriptions and basically innovation in general Do you think innovation will come in the Premier League or do you think it'll come further down, with the smaller clubs first, and then rise up?

Speaker 2: 10:52

I think it will come from both directions, because I think from bottom up you can get edgier, newer, more dynamic technology, trialed, lower risk with smaller organizations. But from the top down, the Premier League as an entity or the major leagues across Europe have a lot of financial plow to a lot of financial strength. So if they decide they want to go in a direction, that's a big shift for the industry very quickly. Now there may not be many of those shifts, but when they do shift it's significant, True.

Speaker 1: 11:31

Another thing that comes into play here regarding a subscription is the cost of living crisis, which we've been touching upon also in the different episodes. Do you think that also will push subscriptions more as a new payment method or?

Speaker 2: 11:48

Yes, but I think it will also cause innovation through digital as well. In the past, football clubs were very cautious about people sharing a season ticket or passing it around within their family or their friends or selling it on. I think, with the cost of living crisis, many clubs are grateful if a season ticket gets renewed, and I think we'll see short-form season tickets, part season tickets, mini season tickets as well, with different ticket products being released to the market which are more affordable So that two people share a season ticket across the year, and so I think we'll see new innovations in the product mix as well as the technology mix.

Speaker 1: 12:35

Yes, and you definitely touched on that as well in your episode, paul, where you built the different packages together and focused more on selling the dream than selling the ticket in itself. I recommend everyone to jump in and have a listen to that, but let's leave subscriptions for a little while, and I think it's extremely interesting. but another interesting takeaway from Martin in Belgium was the new security law introduced over there, where every attendee at a football match, including staff members and server personnel, needs to identify themselves to be able to enter the stadium on match day. What's your thoughts on that?

Speaker 2: 13:15

From a ticketing point of view.

Speaker 2: 13:16

It's painful, it's hard work, it's very hard work, but if that is the law of the country, you need to respect that and implement it and make it work, because if you don't, you go out of business.

Speaker 2: 13:30

And I know that in Belgium and I think in the Netherlands, there have been challenges around fan behaviour, around violence, and therefore the root forward is about identity and knowing who's inside the venue. Now the good news is, in a digital world that's much easier to manage and track, both in terms of sales and access to the venue, than it ever was before. If we scroll back, 10 years ago, it was really really hard, whereas now I think it's possible, but it's not easy. I hope that in Belgium they can become more flexible on this identity challenge as time goes forward so that Martin and his colleagues' life is a bit easier, because we had this threatened in England 30 years ago after a lot of fan violence and it never quite happened, thank goodness, and football moved on and football is now well organised and safe and steady as a good place to be, and I hope that through a short, sharp shock in Belgium and other countries with a digital solution, that they can find a way forward.

Speaker 1: 14:38

If you look at airports, they've been stricter and stricter. Security is tighter and tighter as the years have gone by, but still the customer journey is now quicker than ever.

Speaker 2: 14:47

If you look at the total perspective, But I've had that discussion with security people and they say, paul, why can't we just have identity checks? They do it at airports. And I say, yes, they do, and it takes 30 minutes to get 200 people onto an airplane at an airport. How long will it take you to get 30,000 people into a stadium, true, true? The answer to that is ah, and so it has to be a streamlined digital solution if it's going to work at all.

Speaker 1: 15:18

Don't you think it's its suppliers responsibility? I mean digital solutions integrating as seamless as possible to try and help the customers have a better journey.

Speaker 2: 15:29

Yes, but it's the human factor. Hey, how many times have you stood in a passport queue and the person in front of you has not got the right visa? and they take 10 minutes being sorted out by the passport official and you're the next in line and it's painful. Well, if that happens at a football stadium, that's dangerous.

Speaker 1: 15:50

Yeah, that's true. That's true. I think it goes always right. We have to follow the developments. Yeah, Moving forward. I think another thing which really is spiked my interest during these interviews is the fact that these ticketing managers they tend to take, should we say, internships or they have, like consultants, seeing different events, big events. They're pulled out of their normal job and they work on big events, learn a lot and they come back and they get so much inspiration and so much. Isn't that a great thing to do when you work in ticketing? Yeah, it is.

Speaker 2: 16:25

I'm part of that and I was involved with Rugby League, world Cup and Commonwealth Games last summer and the Women's Euros, when we encouraged people to come from other ticketing businesses to join the team for a week or a weekend or a month to help with the big event. I think it's good on two different counts. One is the ticketing person gets to meet different people, gets to exchange ideas, gets to see other ways of achieving the same solution. The other one is it gets people out of their comfort zone. When you've worked at the same venue for a year or five years, you can do it in your sleep. When you're working someone else's venue, you have to wake up and you have to be on your top behaviour. You have to get it right. That's good, getting people to focus and be on edge to make sure it's brilliant.

Speaker 1: 17:19

I 100% agree with you, i think, to get that inspiration go out of your comfort zone, because if not, you get stuck in your ways. Isn't that what?

Speaker 2: 17:27

you're saying, stuck in your ways is maybe unfair, but you don't see the bigger picture. You don't see some of the opportunities because the way you operate is very strict and very focused and sometimes if you're working somewhere else on a different sport, in a different venue, hey, you get new ideas Definitely.

Speaker 1: 17:47

Another thing is that sooner or later, as you are performing well let's say, a football club is performing well and you're playing UEFA games then you really have to get out of your comfort zone, whether you like it or not. What we touched on in this season as well was the vitamin pill that this created for the organisation. Now we're going to work on different rules, different regulations, bigger events, etc.

Speaker 2: 18:14

Yeah, i think football is very good at that. rugby does that as well with some of the European competitions and also, in a smaller way, handel and Volleyball and Water Polo have European-wide competitions Hockey 2, where clubs travel. I think that's great for ticketing staff because they get some different customers into their venue and they're also selling for their fans to travel away. Again. that gives new ideas and energy across borders. People always think about it in security terms. This is a high-risk match. Therefore we must have maximum security because fans are travelling from Italy or from Belgium or from Norway. It's also about cultural welcoming and being friendly and seeing how big the world is. That helps with ticketing as well.

Speaker 1: 19:08

I would maybe attack the security to cope with those Norwegians though.

Speaker 2: 19:14

That's my son, said those Norwegians. they play on a plastic pitch in the Arctic Circle, so how can I have a fair game up there when it's the middle of winter and the ball bounces 20 meters high?

Speaker 1: 19:25

I saw that when was it Rome who played up in the north of Norway? and I mean, it's pretty unfair if you look at the weather conditions. I can agree with that. But yeah, moving to cricket, paul, your cricket fan yourself.

Speaker 2: 19:38

Yes, i enjoy cricket. I'm going to a cricket match this week very British sports, i know that and it's not a sport played across Europe, but it's a big spectator sport in the UK and it has a very passionate fan base, a very passionate crowd following.

Speaker 1: 19:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah, because we had two cricket guests in seasons, you, as you know. First of all, we had Nicholas Brennan, who's a ticketing systems manager at Warwickshire County Cricket Club, and then we had Manal Smith who, at the time for interview, was head of ticketing at the 100 and has now moved to sale GP. As far as I understand. You know her quite well from the London 2012 Olympics, don't you?

Speaker 2: 20:15

I know Manal very well. Yes, we go back about 15 years now and she's done fantastically back at London 2012 and then in golf, and then at the 100 in cricket and I'm sure she'll do well going into sell GP.

Speaker 1: 20:28

What I think was very fascinating with that one was her ability to jump on new challenges and being part of a big change within the organization.

Speaker 2: 20:37

Yeah, and I've discussed this with Manal in the past and I think he came across in your interview with her how building a startup in sport in the world is exciting because the 100 didn't exist. So creating the rules, creating the pricing, the route to market is exciting because there's no previous page, there's no handbook of how you have to do this and I think she really enjoyed that ride. It's tough fun but it is good fun, but it's hard work as well. And then I think when she layered on top of that, like we all did, covid, where we were all making it up as we went along because we didn't know what was next week or next month or next year, that made it both very challenging and really, really exciting when the world did come back, because the world realized that it enjoys live and sport delivers live in a way that nothing else does. And I think the hundred critic competition hit that curve of launch and coming back after COVID very successfully.

Speaker 1: 21:45

Agreed. And, as a cricket fan, what were your thoughts when you heard of the hundred for the first time.

Speaker 2: 21:50

Well, i was actually involved in some of the ticket planning for it and we're now joined and working out how best to price it and to launch it. And I was very excited because it's a short form of cricket which takes two or three hours rather than several days, and its DNA, its purpose was to bring in new spectators, younger spectators, families, friends, because cricket's audience is aging, it's getting older every year and the hundred was bringing in people at the bottom end who could learn to love cricket when they were kids and hopefully carry that forward for many years to come.

Speaker 1: 22:28

Yeah, i think it was really cool, and that is innovation on a different level. Right has nothing to do with technology in that per se.

Speaker 2: 22:35

It has to do with the concept and rethinking as a sport, and that's what I enjoyed with the hundred was all of that concept around. What's the story, what's the narrative, what's the reason, what's the positioning of this event that's different from other types of cricket and other sports. It's not about better or worse, it's about different so that a different market, a different person can be targeted. And the hundred started with that premise, started with that plan of how can we make this?

Speaker 1: 23:08

different. And speaking of a start-up in sports, right, you really have to build a business plan, you have to set your target group, goals and whatnot.

Speaker 2: 23:18

Indeed, and you know you need a strategic vision, a strategic plan, and then you need a go-to-market plan and pricing and ticket products. And creating all of those is really interesting, really challenging, and I think Manal and her colleagues at the hundred did a fantastic job. Because the interesting thing with the hundred was everyone expected the men's competition to do well because it had some great stars and people expected it. But the women's competition took the UK by storm because no one saw that coming and they were getting crowds of 10,000 plus for women's cricket, whereas before the hundred a big crowd was maybe, you know, two, three hundred people and suddenly the top women cricketers were playing in front of real crowds who cared passionately about the game and them as sports people and they happen to be women playing cricket and that was fantastic to see. That's an amazing achievement.

Speaker 1: 24:18

I mean from 300 to 10,000. I mean that's a percentage growth that you would like in the start of the world for sure. Why do you think that was? what was the main reason for that?

Speaker 2: 24:29

Well, i think it's starting with the DNA of the product. They didn't say here is the men's hundred, it's really good, and here also is the women's hundred, which is not so good. They said here is the hundred, here is the fixed your list. These matches are men's, these matches are women's. Which do you want to come to? Yeah, and so people's start point was very different and so, therefore, their perception of what they were buying and the product was different and that was good.

Speaker 1: 24:56

Agreed, and then you come off with a fresh start right. You can communicate exactly how you want to. You can start from scratch. You don't have a history behind you, which probably was also critical.

Speaker 2: 25:06

Absolutely. With a blank sheet of paper to start with, you can push the boundaries, you can reach further than if you're coming from an existing start point. I thought Nicholas at Warwickshire working in cricket was really interesting too and he made that point very clearly that, hey, there are sports other than football, there are places you can innovate other than football, there are big crowds other than football and he's doing a great job at that venue. Last week they had a series of sell out days of 20,000 or so for England versus Australia five days running and that's amazing and what they did there was hugely successful and I think the work he's done to change the technologies, change the attitude to technology in a major cricket venue is very creditable, particularly with the small team, because in cricket and other sports they have less resource than you have in football.

Speaker 1: 26:02

Yeah, which you mentioned right in the beginning, means that you have to be clever in the way you market and the way you talk to fans, etc. And I was also really inspired by that. Nicholas said right technology is your friend. How can you use it? and when it comes to technology, another thing that I've seen with these ticketing managers is that they have to stay in front of technology. They have to understand what's happening in the market. How important do you think the ticketing manager is in building a product like the hundred, for example?

Speaker 2: 26:33

I think the ticketing manager whether it's the 100 or the test matches that Nicholas is managing, the ticketing manager is really important in delivering that vision of what the event is about through to the reality of what is the ticket product that the customer is buying. And is that customer journey a smooth one? Is that customer journey one that makes sense? Is it a digital journey which gives them information all the way through, from purchase through to attendance many months later? and it's their job to make that work and to make that as simple as possible.

Speaker 1: 27:11

I think what Nicholas mentioned at Hedge Bass. They have a goal or a vision or a motto to be the best cricket business in the world. What do you think it takes to reach that goal?

Speaker 2: 27:23

I think that's a really good goal. I know a few people who dispute whether their venue is the best in the world, but that's healthy competition For all of us in the ticketing world and around it. we want to keep pushing those boundaries. I'm working on the Paris Olympics project. I want that to be the best Olympics ever. I want Paris to be amazing and it would be terrible if we went into a project or went into a job and accepted being second best, accepted being normal, accepted being boring. We want to have an exciting project, because live sport should be exciting and ticketing should be part of that.

Speaker 1: 28:01

Yeah, 100% agree. Another great episode was the episode with Samuel Boyden of England Netball, which is also interesting, and he started his ticketing career at Bradford Bulls that's rugby. Then he went to the Emirates old Trafford at Lancashire Cricket Club which is of course cricket before he started at England Netball and he did some freelance work which we just discussed right, getting inspiration, getting out of the bubble and comfort zone at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games and also at the 100. But what made the most impact on me during that conversation was the fact that the ticketing manager role can very often be a lonely one When you're working with big events or if you're working in a big club, etc. Do you agree on that? Oh?

Speaker 2: 28:53

I think it's worse than that. We have a saying there's no good news in ticketing. There's either no news or there's bad news. Ok, because no one ever says hey, great job ticketing, you did a really good match day there. They'll only comment if something goes wrong, ok.

Speaker 2: 29:09

But that's the world ticketing lives in, and I think there's two parts to what Samuel said. One part is it's a lonely job because it's hard work. It's different to the work in the rest of the sports organization And often the team is quite small to who's working on ticketing. The other point is that it can be physically lonely as well, because in many venues the ticket office is separate from the offices where the rest of the staff work, and the rest of the staff are working in an open plan office or in a few offices And they're in close proximity to the leadership and ticketing, maybe 100 meters away on the edge of the venue, working in a ticket office that becomes the match day ticket office, and so they're physically distant from their colleagues and their friends as well, and that does make life different and more lonely for working in ticketing.

Speaker 1: 30:10

I think that's interesting because we refer to, like, the startup and building a business within sports, right, then one thing we do know when working in a startup is that you have to be close with your customers. You have to understand the customers, right, and the ticketing managers. They meet their customer facing, so they meet, talk to fans. I spoke with one ticketing manager, amir, at Birmingham, right, he just had a one hour coffee with one of his fans who came by the ticketing office. I mean there's so much to learn from those conversations And shouldn't they be closer to the ticketing office and then be closer to the fans? I mean the whole organization and the management.

Speaker 2: 30:48

Yes, but in many sports organisations most staff are very nervous of fans because fans can be negative. They can be anti, particularly if the team lost last week And ticketing gets used to that. It's normal in ticketing, but for many other people fans are pretty scary people.

Speaker 1: 31:06

Hmm they can be. yeah, i completely agree with you. So all of a sudden ticketing becomes kind of like a filter as well. A filter is through the information to the management.

Speaker 2: 31:17

Yes, and actually that filter has got a much stronger filter now that most transactions are digital, with no face-to-face contact. And the face-to-face is really around problems and issues rather than around transactions, because now that we're buying digitally or renewing digitally, we have less customer interaction than we've ever had before. But that's a new norm because the customers on the other side are used to that as well And they don't want the inefficiencies of the old days, when you had to go and line up outside a football stadium to buy a ticket for the next home game. True, true.

Speaker 1: 31:56

No, I think it definitely goes both ways, And communication becomes more effective. You use social media, etc. But then again, nothing beats the physical presence of sitting down talking to people, does it?

Speaker 2: 32:09

I agree And you know I won't say I look forward to. but when I'm working on big sports projects I talk to customers, i talk to fans. I phone people up, i answer their queries And people are often shocked that someone's phoned them up to discuss their problem. But you find out more about your own business with those discussions than you find out in months, because people tell you what they really think.

Speaker 1: 32:34

Exactly, and with people who are unhappy, they become very honest as well, right, and then you get the honest answer very often.

Speaker 2: 32:40

Indeed indeed, and very often their problem isn't with ticketing. Their problem is because the line at half time to buy a beer is too long And by the time half time it's finished, they haven't got their beer. And what are ticketing doing about it?

Speaker 1: 32:58

It goes back to the lonely roller, i suppose. So England netball, which we touched on with Samuel right, is the national body that oversees, promotes and manages netball in England And the rugby football league, where Rick Jörkowicz is head of ticketing, has a similar role within rugby And the ticketing manager or head of ticketing role with governing body like England netball or the rugby football league. How different is that from the same role within a club?

Speaker 2: 33:27

I think the two sports are slightly different. Rugby league has a long history with 20 plus professional clubs, each of whom have a ticketing manager who runs their day to day business, and then Rick and the central rugby football league oversee internationals and cup finals and big matches, and so they're kind of a layer on top. In netball it's a much lighter sport. There aren't professional players, there aren't professionalised clubs, and so England netball are influencing what happens across the sport even more than in most other sports, because it's a lighter touch, growing sport, where, if England netball get their strategy right, get their plan right, they can double the size of the sport in the next five years, because there's a real growth opportunity, yeah, an opportunity to do.

Speaker 2: 34:16

Yeah, and I think we both, samuel and Rick. What I loved was their passion for the product, their passion for sport. You could cut them in half and it would say live sports or, in Rick's case, live music as well. They both love live and they go to stuff and they watch stuff and they enjoy it as well as their day job of organising sport 100% agree with you.

Speaker 1: 34:38

It was super engaging to listen to and to talk to them, of course. So if you look at one of Rick's biggest pains you touched on it in the beginning digitalisation. He was printing a lot of tickets. the same day as I interviewed him He had printed. He had printed a ticket last fall. That's a good question.

Speaker 2: 35:00

Physically, I'm just thinking we had a few printed tickets, a lot of print at home, and that's different. But we had a few printed tickets last year at World Athletics in Oregon for a few customers in America, but that was nearly all digital. Women's Euros was digital. Rugby League World Cup was digital. I'm just trying to think out loud Cricket World Cup in Australia. That was all digital with some print at home. So I think we printed a few tickets last summer in Oregon in the USA. But going back, really, Cricket World Cup 2019, we printed a lot of tickets. The venues hadn't gone digital. Then They went into COVID and came out as digital venues.

Speaker 1: 35:46

Yeah, and that was the fundamental change. I think, a new era in ticketing in many ways. So all of this we discussed Ticket Manager being a lonely role and that people should talk together and collaborate more.

Speaker 2: 36:00

You can't see this on the podcast, but I'm just showing him a ticket from Cricket World Cup. Okay, it did exist. That's a physical ticket, like with a barcode, but it was what? 15 centimeters by five centimeters. It existed, It was real.

Speaker 1: 36:15

It looks very nice, though, definitely the good souvenir. But I think, talking about competition, i mean there's a lot of competition on the pitch, which where it should be right. How do you think ticketing managers can learn from each other in a better way? How should they collaborate, where should they go, etc.

Speaker 2: 36:32

Well, i look back many years, decades to when I ran a ticketing company and one of the most interesting things we did two, three times a year was run a user group where we brought together as many of our clients as we could all into one place. Yeah well, it was scary because they tended to shout at us sometimes over software fixes that they needed quickly. It was a great day because people talked and engaged and found out different ways of doing things from colleagues or pushed things harder and wanted to do things faster. That actual physical interaction of getting people together to talk And they may not be talking about ticketing, they may just be socializing, but they've made a connection and that helps.

Speaker 2: 37:19

Next time those two clubs play because they will talk about improving the business And I'm a firm believer in getting people together And teams is okay. But I know from Two Circles Business and from my day to day, the most important discussions take place while you're waiting at the coffee machine and you bump into someone and you haven't seen them for a week and you think, ah, yes, but ticketing is the same. Is that chance of talking to people that moves the business forward? Yes, couldn't agree more. And if this ticketing podcast can provoke more people to talk to each other, then it's done its job well.

Speaker 1: 37:55

Hopefully it will, and I think that is the goal of this podcast, and thank you so much, paul. It's been great to have you with us today to summarize season two of the Ticketing Podcastcom. Thank you so much for taking the time, but before we completely wrap up here, of all our five guests and their interviews, are there any particular statement by any of them that springs to mind as the essence of what ticketing is all about?

Speaker 2: 38:23

Yeah, a couple of things And we've touched on them in the last few minutes. One is ticketing is becoming a proper business with career opportunities for people And those are career opportunities within ticketing and then growing using that skill set from ticketing and taking it elsewhere. 10 years ago that wasn't the case, it was a cul-de-sac. But now ticketing is a more mainstream business And that's really good news for the people in it.

Speaker 2: 38:51

I thought a throwaway comment from Nicholas was really interesting. It's not just football. Let's make sure we look wider than football, because the innovation often doesn't come in big business, it comes in small business And those smaller businesses around the edge and those smaller businesses, maybe different sports, the football, and there's more chance to make some change there. And I think Martin made a great point about the challenge in business is often not the technology, it's the business model or, in his case, the government laws or, in Manel's case, it's the startup concept of the event. And the challenge isn't the technology, because the technology is there. We can flex that to make it work. And challenge is the context and the narrative and understanding that to work out what the business solution is.

Speaker 1: 39:41

Great takeaways. Paul, Thank you again for joining today.

Speaker 2: 39:45

It's been a pleasure And thank you very much for having me.

Speaker 1: 39:48

So you've been listening to the ticketingpodcastcom, where today's guest in this season two summary episode has been Paul Williamson, director at Two Circles. Thank you so much for listening And thank you to our sponsor, Ticketco, for powering the ticketingpodcastcom. Have a great rest of the day.