With significant growth in recent years combined with a large and diverse client base, AudienceView shares their plans across product, technology and community in support of innovation for live events with new requirements to ensure the industry survives and thrives.
TORONTO, ON – July 14, 2020 – AudienceView, a premier partner for live events and entertainment organizations to help their events be discovered, attended and remembered, today unveiled a strategic innovation plan designed to efficiently introduce new solutions to the industry in response to evolving client needs and requirements.
Since the 2019 acquisitions of Vendini and UniversityTickets, AudienceView has been building a unified solution that provides great products, direct access to highly engaged consumer audiences and an integrated community of learning, insights and engagement. Earlier in 2020, AudienceView announced a brand transformation that kicked off the strategic innovation plan in earnest. Since then, the industry experienced an unprecedented shutdown that has significantly impacted the entire live events landscape, from venues to producers and artists to suppliers like AudienceView. As a result, AudienceView has accelerated elements of its strategic innovation plan to better support the industry when the lights come back on.
“Over the past three years, AudienceView has experienced rapid growth to become one of the largest ticketing providers in the industry,” said Mark Fowlie, CEO of AudienceView. “During this growth, we’ve remained consistent with our strategic vision to combine our assets within the AudienceView portfolio to build the best overall solution for live events. We’ve made the decision to accelerate our strategic innovation plan because the industry has forever changed and our clients have new needs that we must respond to. We are confident that AudienceView is uniquely positioned to help the industry thrive, not just survive.”
The company’s strategic innovation encompasses multiple key areas of focus, all made possible with a new technology platform that seamlessly connects with ticketing systems across the AudienceView portfolio to make building and releasing features much more efficient. Created with speed and flexibility in mind, AudienceView can respond to client needs and launch new solutions to all software clients, regardless of which AudienceView ticketing product is being used.
With this new platform, AudienceView can maximize its investment in resources to rapidly offer solutions designed to help venues reopen based on new processes or procedures that may need to be introduced due to COVID-19 and other future industry disruptions or opportunities.
The investment in new technology has enabled AudienceView to build solutions that expand well beyond traditional ticketing. The following features and capabilities have been identified as near-term additions to AudienceView that software clients will gain exclusive access to utilize:
- Marketing Portal & Consumer Brand Integration – created to help clients find and engage with new audiences built by AudienceView’s popular consumer brands. TheaterMania, WhatsOnStage, LaughStub, ElectroStub and TuneStub each shine a spotlight on different industry genres with an aggregate following of 6.8-million live event enthusiasts. Software clients will enjoy a full integration with these consumer sites to seamlessly share their events and access multimedia and show details which enhance their event messages through their own marketing channels.
- Live Streaming Integration – the desire to introduce virtual events as a secure, ticketed option has been identified as a high priority for AudienceView clients while in-person events are not a reliable enough source of revenue. Software clients will gain tools for ticketing live streaming events along with access to built-in international audiences through AudienceView’s consumer brands. This access to grow beyond local audiences for all sizes of organizations is a massive advantage when competing across the virtual event landscape. In the long term, organizations can leverage this functionality for hybrid performances, generating revenue by selling both physical seats and live virtual access.
- Community Engagement – With a massive community of live event professionals in the tens of thousands, AudienceView has committed to integrating learning and engagement opportunities into a single experience. The launch of Unobstructed, a unifying brand that gives entertainment professionals a clear view on the live events industry, was a first step in this process. Unobstructed includes an engaging podcast series as well as access to industry insights such as “The Patrons’ Perspective” report, which shares insights into current feelings and attitudes of 5,000+ theater fans on returning to the theater.
- Learning & Education – AudienceView has also launched a new learning platform that spans various ticketing solutions. Since early 2020, this ‘AudienceView Learning’ management system has been populated with over 325 new on-demand videos, articles and learning tools to help clients and their teams become more efficient and effective. An intense focus on teaching users to maximize the tools and capabilities available to them aims to make clients stronger adopters of various solutions that advance their business goals through revenue generation, customer engagement strategies and/or operational efficiencies.
“As an organization, we have chosen to use this ‘industry intermission’ to leverage innovation to further support our clients and the industry,” said Fowlie. “Live events are in need of more pioneering ideas and new solutions. As one of the largest providers in live events, AudienceView is structured and funded to efficiently offer this to our clients. In addition, re-building audiences has never been more important, which is why we chose to invest in integrating our consumer brands with our software clients. I’m proud of the hard work and dedication shown by the AudienceView team to ensure that our new tools will be in place to help audiences return after the COVID-19 shutdown. We look forward to sharing this and more with our clients throughout the remainder of 2020 and beyond.”
About AudienceView
AudienceView believes in the power of live events and its purpose is to ignite that passion in people around the world. As the essential partner to get live events discovered, attended and remembered, we serve the entire industry, regardless of genre or size, and help our clients sell more tickets every single day. Through an unmatched set of solutions that includes innovative technology, popular consumer brands and a unique engagement model, we support 9,000+ venues, process over $3 billion in ticketing and fundraising transactions and sell over 110-million tickets each year. Learn more at audienceview.com.