SeatGeek offers a platform that can help with ticket allocations, where socially distanced seating would be the first step towards welcoming fans back – for competitions such as the A-League.
Founded in 2009, SeatGeek is a mobile-focused ticket platform based in New York and provides assess to tickets for live events, whether it be buying or selling.
With a wide range of sports covered, SeatGeek is trusted by clients around the world and has already been working with UK-based Premier League and EFL Championship clubs about how to navigate through this tricky time.
SeatGeek engaged with their UK clients and created a series of tools that enable football clubs to reintroduce fans to stadiums safely and effectively – social distancing seating plans, demand-based algorithms and online sales tools just some of the products and services.
“There were two key areas to our response to dealing with our clients’ needs across such an uncertain landscape,” Peter Joyce, Managing Director for SeatGeek Sport (EMEA), said.
“First of all we needed to engage in high levels of communication across our client group to enable all of us to stay well informed and share ideas.
“Secondly we needed to quickly investigate how we could build enhancements to our software functionality that would assist a new way of staging football matches and sports events with more restrictions required around the sale and distribution of tickets, as well as the methods of entering stadiums on match-day.”
Clubs who are looking to drive their sales activity online have been benefited by the introduction of Pod sales functionality. Underpinned by SeatGeek’s rules-based enterprise software platform, SeatGeek clients have maximised their seat inventory by allowing fans to purchase in their approved social bubbles, with parameters included to allocation definitions, meaning that contiguous seats are sold together. 3D Digital Venue is a SeatGeek partner who have engaged with a range of clients to offer their visual seat mapping tool to further add to its functionality on offer.
In the summer pre-season leading up to UK football seasons getting underway, several SeatGeek clients were chosen to host events that would test the new features that are being planned to roll out.
Brighton & Hove Albion FC welcomed Chelsea in a pre-season friendly in front of 2,500 supporters at the Amex Stadium in August, while Middlesbrough FC were one of the first 9 EFL clubs to host a league fixture with fans during September. 1,000 supporters were allowed to be in attendance at The Riverside Stadium for their home game v AFC Bournemouth.
“The football community as a whole has been dealing with such an uncertain landscape when it comes to planning our matches leading into this season, but we were delighted to be selected by the EFL to stage one of the first round of games with fans coming back to stadiums in September and we were pleased with the handling of the game,” Lee Fryett, Head of Commercial & Ticketing at Middlesbrough FC, said.
“We were able to work closely with the team at SeatGeek who have provided excellent support as have other partners involved in helping us stage the game.”
In Australia, the A-League and W-League seasons have been confirmed to start on the same date of Sunday 27th December 2020.
In the two months leading up to the season start, there is the potential for more trials of socially distant seating measures that can be implemented, where restrictions are slowly being eased across the country.
“There has been a huge amount of work and planning covered in a short space of time to react to the challenges that have been presented and it has been encouraging to see a whole range of partners and clients come together to find solutions,” SeatGeek’s MD, Peter Joyce said.
“With the sharing of best practice and the launch of the Adapt tool kit, we’ve produced a range of functions and services that will provide real value to our partners as they look to leverage technology, with mobile ticket entry becoming a key component of the recently successful test events conducted at many of our SeatGeek supported venues.”
