Ticketmaster won Best in Sports Technology at last night's Sports Business Awards, with its Presence identity-based ticketing system helping to create a new industry paradigm. The digital, cloud-based platform, allowing for a much deeper tracking of a ticket’s chain of custody and the identity of its final user, is now in more than 100 venues and represents a key underpinning of the company’s new five-year ticketing deal with the NFL. The technology has helped fuel Ticketmaster to company record ticket sales and gross transaction value in each of the last two quarters, and ’18 NFL ticket sales are already up substantially since last month’s schedule release. Early Presence team clients have seen sizable increases in the number of new fan names entering its database, and the product has also helped accelerate the establishment of mobile ticketing. “This has been a product two years in the making with a ton of work behind it, but it’s time for the industry to change,” Ticketmaster North America President Jared Smith said.
