Case Study: London 2017 – A record-breaking summer of world athletics

London 2017 was the first time the IAAF and IPC World Championships were held in the same year, city and venue. Not only would this offer sports fans an incredible action-packed summer of world-class athletics, but it would be present an interesting challenge for the multiple teams at Ticketmaster Sport tasked with the project. Timelines: […]

London 2017 was the first time the IAAF and IPC World Championships were held in the same year, city and venue. Not only would this offer sports fans an incredible action-packed summer of world-class athletics, but it would be present an interesting challenge for the multiple teams at Ticketmaster Sport tasked with the project.

Timelines:

  • Go live presales May 2017
  • Onsale Lottery August 2017
  • Games time operations July – August 2017

What services and expertise were required?

A robust and resilient ticketing platform for tournaments incorporating key client tools, balloting and a single website required to deliver 2 separate tournaments with differing branding and functional requirements through a single platform.

We also provided London 2017 with call centre and games time operations services plus a cross-channel package of marketing support.

The team:

The project was supported by our dedicated tournaments division with an experienced project manager working alongside the organising committee for the duration of the project. In addition, an operations manager coordinated key activities up to and throughout both tournaments, overseeing ticket printing and fulfilment, onsite ticket office setup, staffing and access control operations.

What were the challenges?

Creating a multi-branded tournament under one website presented a challenge in that each tournament’s specific set of rules and technical requirements needed careful consideration and planning.An evolving sales strategy demanded a number of new ticket promotions and therefore we were required to develop new features to support these promotional opportunities.

We’re very accustomed to handling tournaments of every size and degree of complexity and it’s this that makes us uniquely positioned to deal with these types of requests and challenges quickly, efficiently and via the most appropriate method for our clients and their fans.

The Results:

705,000 tickets sold across both tournaments is not only a huge achievement it is also record-breaking, following an award from the Guinness World Record for most tickets sold for an IAAF World Championships event.