Growing audiences has always been hard —and today’s live event consumer expects a seamless online experience tailored for their preferences to find, purchase, and engage. Unfortunately, the fragmented technology landscape currently makes this challenging for Arts and Culture organizations. So, how will venues keep pace in a world where live events must bridge the physical and digital seamlessly? Building and maintaining an audience now demands a unified approach: blending authentic, digital engagement with innovative technology that empowers every stage of the customer journey.
In this conversation with CEO Eric White, we explore how Intelligent Event Commerce is reshaping the way live event venues build lasting online relationships that foster a loyal audience.
Shifting Consumer Expectations: From Transactions to Relationships
Q: The live events industry has long been focused on selling tickets and filling seats. What shift are you seeing in what consumers expect from their relationship with venues today?
Eric White: The traditional ‘sell a seat’ engagement model is still how much of the live event industry operates, especially in sports and popular music. But for Arts and Culture venues, audience relationships have always been front and center. Unlike a summer concert or one-time event, most of our clients serve a more niche audience and rely on strong consumer relationships to bring audiences back multiple times a year—and often to encourage donations.
The move toward building stronger digital engagement with audiences is accelerating as live event experiences such as theater, immersive experiences, museum exhibitions, festivals, and local music compete with countless entertainment alternatives like streaming and digital content.
Most of the venues we serve now recognize that the first contact with a potential audience is digital. It may start with a social media campaign, move to the venue website, and hopefully culminate in a purchase experience that bundles an event experience with parking, merchandise and a post event local nightlife experience. The relationship may then migrate to a mobile app where the purchaser shares tickets and information with friends that result in new contacts for future marketing. The venue may engage those new contacts with a message offering a free drink or something if they refer to other friends that purchase additional tickets. That engagement all happens at the digital level before any live interaction.
On the day of the event, the digital touchpoint might include an SMS message alerting to avoid construction near the venue. It’s amazing how small touch points along the journey make a difference. Two years ago, I dropped my teenage daughter off at an outdoor concert – she was so excited. We all saw rain coming and the venue put a 2-hour delay on the show. They informed the audience once they were on site. My daughter sat in the cold rain with her friends waiting. She loved the concert but has not asked to revisit that venue since. One simple message would have changed her whole experience.
During live events, other digital interactions may include messaging about a seat upsell opportunity generating additional revenue for the venue. Post-event, it may evolve to a drip campaign evoking memories and highlighting new content. It may even solicit an online donation or the opportunity to join a loyalty program. The challenge venues face is doing this in a seamless and intelligent way where the box office, marketing, finance, operations, and fundraising departments work as one. That’s where AudienceView plays a role. We help make all that work – we call it event commerce.
From Box Office Software to Intelligent Event Commerce
Q: Speaking of event commerce, AudienceView has evolved beyond traditional box office software. What sparked the realization that the industry needed something fundamentally different?
EW: When I joined AudienceView in early 2024, I spent months talking to our clients, not just box office managers but CFOs, marketers, development teams, and operations managers at dozens of venues. What emerged was eye-opening: our software had become mission-critical infrastructure across entire organizations, but it was mostly built for box office and fundraising workflows, not an integrated event commerce model that works for finance, marketing, and operations as well.
One of the loudest requests I heard was to make the box office data easier to use for Marketing teams. To help solve that we acquired Audience Republic, a marketing suite based in Sydney, Australia that is designed specifically for live events. Our combined solutions enable the box office and marketing to work as one seamless system, not two separate platforms trying to share data.
For years, it’s been difficult for marketing organizations to attribute which of their campaigns resulted in a ticket purchase. A deeply connected system makes this easy. It also enables new workflows and automations that we’re excited about. A smaller venue recently told me they replaced paid Google search with a referral contest for a single show—sold it out and saved $4K in ad spend. For an organization running dozens of events a year, those savings multiply fast. And that’s just the cost side; they’re also capturing better audience data than a Google ad ever would. We’re at the very beginning of tapping the full potential on both the revenue and cost side created by marketing and ticketing working well together.
We aren’t just in the box office software business anymore; we are managing the central nervous system of live event organizations. That’s what sparked our evolution toward Intelligent Event Commerce.
Breaking Down Silos: The High Cost of Fragmentation
Q: Many venues operate in silos—box office, marketing, finance, development, operations—often disconnected. What does this fragmentation cost venues?
EW: The costs are real, and it starts with lost time and mindshare. For example, I hear from venue employees that spend hours each week manually managing contact opt-outs across multiple databases and importing/exporting excel sheets, taking time away from audience growth and relationship building initiatives. Fragmented systems make it hard to shift marketing strategies in real time. The hard costs are large too: venues might spend thousands on paid advertising when a more integrated system could enable organic, data-driven campaigns with clear ROI and attribution. Then there’s the payment processing friction—when your ticketing, fundraising, and commerce run on different processors, you’re paying multiple sets of fees and reconciling transactions across systems. Fragmentation also leads to increased staffing needs, security risks, and duplicated software expenses.
For smaller organizations, the vendor management burden is significant. Managing multiple technology partners means troubleshooting integration failures and coordinating between disconnected systems. With a single, integrated partner, that complexity collapses: one support relationship, one strategic partner who enables you to see the complete picture. For lean teams, this isn’t just convenient; it’s a competitive advantage.
Ultimately, disconnected workflows mean missed revenue and diminished audience experiences.
Defining Intelligent Event Commerce
Q: We’ve talked about event commerce but what does Intelligent Event Commerce mean to you, and why is this the right frame for where the industry is heading?
EW: We had to get event commerce right first—that foundation of ticketing, marketing, fundraising, payments, and operations working as one system instead of fragmented tools. That’s the “commerce” part. Most of the data that powers these workflows originates in your ticketing system, so we had the responsibility to make the entire ecosystem work together seamlessly.
Now we’re focused on the “intelligent” part—and it starts with your data. When everything runs through one platform, you’re capturing a complete picture of each customers journey: what they buy, when they engage, what campaigns resonate, how they give. That unified data becomes the foundation for intelligence that actually supports your mission.
We’re building tools that surface insights without requiring you to be a data analyst. Our reporting is evolving so you can ask questions in plain language and get immediate answers. We’re working toward a system that spots patterns—maybe ticket sales are lagging for a specific show, or a donor segment hasn’t been engaged recently—and suggests targeted actions. The goal isn’t just to automate tasks; it’s to give you a partner in building stronger relationships with your audience.
This is what our more forward-thinking clients are pushing us toward: technology that supports the relationship-building work that’s core to arts and culture venues, not just transaction processing. That’s where we’re headed.
Empowering Clients: Control and Sophistication
Q: Many venues worry about being dependent on vendors for every change or configuration. How is AudienceView thinking about empowering clients with more control and sophistication?
EW: Honestly, this isn’t a major concern I hear from our clients. AudienceView enables users to make changes themselves—and that matters because every venue is unique. A symphony orchestra operates differently from a children’s theater or a contemporary art museum. Our focus is on delivering solutions that integrate seamlessly while providing the flexibility each organization needs to manage their operations independently, with the sophistication required to grow their specific audience.
AudienceView is a little like Shopify for live events: we provide all the technology and infrastructure, but our clients maintain complete ownership of their data, their customer relationships, and their brand. When someone buys a ticket through our platform, it’s a direct interaction with your venue—your logo, your voice, your brand experience. They know exactly who they’re supporting, and you control that relationship from first click to final curtain call.
That brand control is becoming a real differentiator. When you’re competing with Netflix, YouTube, and endless digital content for attention, you can’t afford to feel like a generic listing on a marketplace. You need to establish a direct relationship with your audience, and that starts with owning the entire experience—commerce, communications, and brand—not outsourcing it to a third party.
Looking Ahead: The Future of Intelligent Event Commerce
Q: Where do you see intelligent event commerce in the next three to five years, and what role will AudienceView play in shaping that future?
EW: The transition to Intelligent Event Commerce is already driving consolidation in the industry. Smaller players that focus solely on ticketing will struggle to keep pace with innovation and will need to find a different path for their business.
The critical question for Arts and Culture venue executives isn’t whether to evolve toward intelligent event commerce but how quickly. Every new event operated with fragmented systems represents real opportunity cost: revenue left on the table, audiences who experience disconnected journeys, staff hours consumed by workarounds. Venues that move first are building stronger relationships with their audiences—capturing engagement data, personalizing experiences, and earning mindshare in an increasingly crowded entertainment landscape. That momentum compounds over time.
The pace of change is rapid, but it’s an exciting time. AudienceView is committed to leading the industry forward, ensuring our clients are ready for whatever comes next.