Moshtix Unveils New Ticket Resale Platform (EXCLUSIVE)

Evolve, or be eradicated. It’s simple stuff, advice every entrepreneur understands (and some ignore). 

Less than five years after its acquisition by Ticketmaster, Moshtix enters another phase of evolution — this time playing in the space for ticket resales. 

The pandemic changed everything, including ticket buyers’ behaviour.  Confusion still reigns over secondary ticketing, how it works, and what’s legit.

When a transaction goes wrong, it can ruin your year. 

“It’s devastating to see fans turn up at the box office with tickets that have been purchased via sources which can’t verify their legitimacy and end up being turned away from the show,” explains Harley Evans, managing director of Moshtix, a greenfield and venue experts with 20-plus in the game.

“We want to play a proactive role in eliminating that scenario.”

The ticketing specialist launches Moshtix Resale, a solution which, as its name suggest, enables a ticket-holder who can’t go to the show to put their ticket up for resale. The platform is created independently of Ticketmaster’s own fan-to-fan ticket exchange.

With Evans at the helm, Moshtix has already put considerable resources into developing tech solutions for its clients, which include Splendour In The Grass, Byron Bay Bluesfest, Yours & Owls Festival and more.

To coincide with its 15th anniversary in 2018, the company made a string of hires and launched a handful of new features, all of which fed into its “make live easy” mission.

Last year, Moshtix formed a partnership that would allow its users to access Audience Republic’s range of marketing tools for venues, promoters and festivals.

The Music Network caught up with Evans for a look under the bonnet of Moshtix Resale.

You’ve invested in a new tool – Moshtix Resale. What sent you in this direction?

We were the first ticketing company in Australia to offer secure re-sale tools when we developed these for Splendour in the Grass more than 10 years ago.

Obviously, the secondary ticket landscape has evolved dramatically since then, and the secondary market often seems more topical than the primary one these days. That’s primarily due to the confusion in fans’ minds about what’s legitimate and what’s not in the secondary market.

Despite a significant push from the live industry to call out unauthorised secondary market players over the last few years, confusion remains for the fan, who are concerned about whether they’ll get entry, will their ticket scan at the door or will they get their money back?

Moshtix’s fundamental view is that the best scenario for the fan is that they can buy and sell their ticket via the primary ticket agent, reducing confusion, building confidence to pre-buy, and making it possible to service and support the fan and ticket throughout its lifecycle. 

It’s devastating to see fans turn up at the box office with tickets that have been purchased via sources which can’t verify their legitimacy and end up being turned away from the show.

We want to play a proactive role in eliminating that scenario.

How does it work?

With Moshtix Resale we’ve created a solution whereby a fan who can’t attend an event for any reason can put their ticket up for resale and share a secure link provided by Moshtix with a friend or colleague.

If they buy the ticket, a new ticket is issued, making customer support and communications, such as pre-event notifications, with the new ticket-holder much more seamless.

The other new benefit is that with Moshtix Resale, the fan selling their ticket can list the price to up to 110% of the price they paid — subject to state resale law — and at any price below that.

This flexibility removes any need for the original buyer to ‘take a bet’ on selling their ticket in the often-unauthorised secondary market.

Moshtix’s Harley Evans

What sort of investment went into this?

We built out a new product team before taking on this project and hired a gun GM of product, Michael Zarif, who previously worked for Afterpay and other big brands; we wanted to get critical tools like this right first time.

There’s obviously a level of detail that then goes into scoping complex products like this that touch so many parts of the ticketing ecosystem, from reporting to access control, to the fan being supported by our in-house customer service team, to the legal elements of ticket-ownership, data.

Fan and client engagement is obviously key when we scope products like this.

The most important element of all of this is that the product is easy to use, and it solves a genuine problem.

We think with Moshtix Resale, we’ve achieved out overarching ambition to ‘Make Live Easy’. But we’re not finished yet and have plans to further iterate the solutions next year and beyond.

You’ve developed the solution outside of Ticketmaster. Why?

Ticketmaster’s tools are brilliant and solve problems across the globe, but they love encouraging niche businesses like Moshtix to be innovative, creative, and, where it makes sense, different.

The needs of our local GA clients can sometimes be unique, and at the same time, we don’t have a need for products that are engineered for reserved seated events, which is a specialty of Ticketmaster’s.

We’re fortunate to be able to tap into the best minds in the global business by running our ideas through the Ticketmaster Global Product teams, allowing us to learn from other markets what best practice looks like in 2023, while also having the freedom to develop solutions specifically catered for the ANZ market.

We share and learn from each other.

Also, we kept it simple for the fan when offering a closed ecosystem, so everything can be controlled from their Moshtix customer account.

Are concert goers in Australia won over by the legitimate secondary ticketing space? If not, why not?

The fan can only choose from the options that are presented to them, and if they can’t find an authorised solution, that’s where tickets start getting transferred in the unauthorised secondary market.

That’s where so many issues emerge for the fan, venue, promoter and artist.

The feedback from our event partners was that they overwhelmingly want to offer the fan a safe, simple, secure solution within the primary ticket ecosystem.

This is about giving fans absolute confidence to be able to re-sell a ticket, or buy one that’s been put up for sale, knowing that everyone’s money and data is being treated correctly, and the right fan gets into the right event.

There are many instances where that’s still not the case, and this generally occurs where there is a de-link between the primary and secondary providers.

Anything else to add?

People often forget the significant impact no-shows have on venues and for the artist.

With an industry standard of 8-10% no-show rate, which rose alarmingly post-COVID to 20-plus percent, the economic model to operate events gets very adversely tipped in the wrong direction.

Our ambition is to reduce the barriers between the fan and the artist and give fans the tools to legitimately sell their ticket to another real fan, ensuring our venues are full for artists.

In our view, this is an exciting step in the right direction for a thriving live ecosystem.

Central to all of this is making sure the fans, artists, promoters, and venues interests are being protected.

At the end of ‘town’ that Moshtix operates, the margins between success and failure are very slim for the key stakeholders. So we see these sorts of products as being part of the solution, where fans are encouraged to buy and buy early, and our venues are as full as possible for the artist and promoter.