Case Study: EFL Play offs 2018

For many clubs, reaching the play offs is one of the ultimate goals in professional football and the pinnacle of the football calendar for both clubs and fans alike. With triumphant wins and losses on the pitch and the expected build up of anticipation and excitement amongst the fans, we’re proud to have played a […]

For many clubs, reaching the play offs is one of the ultimate goals in professional football and the pinnacle of the football calendar for both clubs and fans alike. With triumphant wins and losses on the pitch and the expected build up of anticipation and excitement amongst the fans, we’re proud to have played a part in helping to deliver many of these exciting matches.

Timelines:
From mid-season on, we approach the clubs to discuss the process. After 1 week of the club qualifying our time works quickly to develop the white label site and uploading the relevant data whilst agreeing and arranging ticket allocation and stock in preparation for onsale.

Following the onsale tickets are then dispatched to the agreed timescales with the club.

What services and expertise were required?
•    White label responsive site set up in club colours
•    Telephone booking sales
•    Ticket fulfilment and despatch
•    Account management
•    Customer service

What were the challenges?
Few events are delivered in such short timescales and with multiple teams and hundreds of staff across the UK, Ticketmaster can confidently scale resources and rise to the challenge to deliver a best-in-class service to both clubs and fans.

For many clubs this is a once in a lifetime experience for fans and therefore safe, secure and easy access to tickets is paramount. Using Ticketmaster’s state-of-the art sports ticketing technology ensures that long queues at the box office stadium are avoided.

What was unique?
Ticketmaster has a long history in helping to deliver these complex matches. With multiple stakeholders and numerous rules and processes to follow, we already have the relationships in place and extensive experience in dealing with these events which helps clubs perhaps new to the process, navigate the complexities more efficiently.

The numerous challenges and short timescales of these events puts incredible pressure on clubs, often working with a small ticketing team. The experienced Ticketmaster ticketing team can help share the burden placed on in-house ticketing teams to scale up the operation quickly. In addition, a dedicated account manager is provided to help manage the club throughout the entire process also assisting on match days where required.

Jayne Maggs, Ticketmaster Sport Client Account Manager:
“Following qualification we had 5 days prior to Charlton’s home leg tie on Thursday 10 May 2018 to deliver and fulfil tickets for this play off match. We’re backed by an amazing, hard-working team with finely tuned processes that help us to deliver to these short timescales.”

The results:

Using Ticketmaster Sport’s specialist sports technology over 78k ticket sales were delivered for the Play offs. Nearly 11,000 tickets were sold in the first hour for Fulham’s Championship play-off match which is a fantastic achievement.

Ticketmaster’s experienced call centre team delivered over 7600 sales calls and throughout the entire process over 3000 customer service calls were handled ensuring that fans’ queries were answered prior to match day.

Michael Ashley, Ticketmaster Sport Services Manager:
“With the challenge of dispatching 78,000 tickets within a week we were able to use our scalable resources to successfully fulfil and reconcile the bookings and tickets for each club removing this huge part of their ticketing operation, allowing them to focus on all the other details. This, supported in parallel by our customer service, is a unique service and an added quality to the clubs’ fan experience.”