TixSuite Launches Subscription Ticketing Software In Australia, Eyes ‘Huge Opportunities’ For Small Venues

New Zealand’s Eventfinda presses the button on its TixSuite platform in Australia, a novel subscription software that its creators hope will blow-up with small and regional venues.

TixSuite last week quietly launched its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) ticketing system, which, as The Music Network previously reported, enables venues, promoters, and event organisers to control their ticketing for a fixed monthly cost, with no locked-in per-ticket fees.

The proprietary software allows clients to collect all ticketing revenue up front, and leaves them to make a call on whether to charge a ticketing fee, wave those costs, or funnel them into a charity of their choice.

It’s a point of difference that James McGlinn, Eventfinda CEO, is confident will shake up the marketplace.

“We haven’t made a big fanfare about it,” Eventfinda CEO James McGlinn tells The Music Network. “The product line’s out there. We have clients who’ve signed up for it. We’re really happy with how it’s gone so far. We’re looking forward to really taking it further and hopefully getting more of the industry to find out about it.”

TixSuite was drawn-up during the extended downtime that was the pandemic. “When the industry was going through a new rollercoaster, we thought what else can we do,” McGlinn recounts.

With its launch here, TixSuite offers three subscription tiers, based on volume of tickets, with the first event free for up to 1,000 ticket sales sold within 90 days of going on sale.

“For too long venues and promoters in Australia have been at the behest of an outdated ticketing model and legacy ticketing services, which leaves them with little or no control over fees or cash flow,” comments McGlinn in a statement.

TixSuite, he continues, “has been designed with the express purpose of putting control back in the hands of those running events, through a straightforward subscription model.”

Its parent is Eventfinda, which began in 2006 as an online cultural events calendar for performing arts and events in NZ. Three years later, in 2009, the business launched its first ticketing system.

Today, it’s New Zealand’s largest independent ticketing company, the company claims, having  facilitated ticket sales north of $100 million on both sides of the Tasman.

The Music Network caught up with McGlinn ahead of launch.

Who are you targeting with this new product?

We see the TixSuite product in the self-service area, at the lower-end of the market, the smaller bars and pubs and comedy clubs, where they’re actually doing all the ticketing work themselves.

The ones who are in the back setting it up, they’re getting the show on sale, they’re doing the customer support themselves, they probably are the ones who are selling with a ticket scanner in their hands.

So we’re giving them the opportunity to buy that software on a subscription basis, like they do probably every other piece of software that they have. And if they want to put their own booking fees on it to cover the cost of the ticket (they can).

Those people should be compensated for the work that they’re doing. Or if they take those fees away completely, then the ticket holders and patrons are actually getting the benefit.

We’d love to see every small-and-medium size venue, busy promoters, using software like ours.

There’s huge opportunities, especially for those people who are doing the ticketing work themselves to actually have the software on a basis where they’re not being penalised for selling more tickets.

We’ve been in the ticketing industry for quite a long time, we understand how the traditional commercial model works intimately. We think it’s time to try something a bit different.

One large area of the entertainment market that’s underserved is regional Australia. Is that part of your mix?

100 percent, yes. For exactly the same reasons, and possibly even more so.

For the most part, they are doing it themselves, they’re hiring people themselves, they’re doing the lion’s share of that work.

And so by providing them with software that allows them to run it themselves and to put the fees on it themselves, hopefully that gives them the ability to actually deliver a better service, whether they capture that revenue and use it to employ those staff, or whether they take it off completely, is up to them.

You’ve already signed up clients in Australia?

Yes, we do have some clients who are up and running with it, but it is very early days.

Obviously, we’ve been in the Australian market for some time with a self-service ticketing product, and we even have a number of venues that we provide ticketing services for.

And we also have a pretty significant database of events, stakeholders, promoters and venues across Australia, that we’ve been working with since 2011.

We think this will really resonate with our early clients. 

Already, we’re getting inquiries coming in from people who are selling a couple of 1,000 tickets, 5,000-plus tickets a month, who are interested, and how could that work for them. 

Australia’s live entertainment industry has its own set of challenges. How’s business in New Zealand?

There’s a lot of opportunity, especially at the top end of the market. There’s a lot of choice at the moment.

On the flip side of that, the country is in a technical recession and the cost-of-living crisis is top of mind, people are concerned about the price of tickets, and what they’re having to pay to go out to a concert and, potentially, travel and accommodation.

So we kind of have this really interesting situation moment, where it’s not an easy time for the industry. And it’s not an easy time for the people that are going out to those events.

But in some ways, if we think about that through this TixSuite lens, it’s a good time for us to be launching a product where perhaps your booking fees aren’t going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back in terms of people’s opportunity to get out to these events.