Reflections On INTIX 2018

THE BIGGEST TAKEAWAY

This year the biggest US ticketing conference, Intix, was held in Baltimore. Activity Stream was there as an exhibitor, for the second time, and these are my personal reflections on the conference.

The biggest takeaway for me was that the business is really moving towards being an ecosystem where most venues and organizations are looking beyond just their ticketing partner to help them in key areas.

Whether it is revenue management, pricing, queueing, data/analytics, ticket insurance, production planning etc, we are seeing more and more specialized offerings. And only if this ecosystem works well together, organizations will get the full benefit.

This is a challenge for both clients and platforms – for some it may be that they do not have the organization to support multiple systems and third party providers, for the ticketing companies it is the challenge of having to open up their platform. As a representative of the third parties, let me tell you that some ticketing companies are handling it very well – and others less well.

In line with the above observation, I was really happy to see that so many companies are focusing on making it easy to set up add-on services and that the services are “born” to speak together. In my opinion, this will be a very big value driver in the future.

A more personal observation: The ticketing business really is a business based on trust. Being a second-year exhibitor was a very different experience from the first year, as people actually take note of you and invest time in talking to you. It is not out of lack of interest in the newcomers, I think, but a lot of companies have come and gone, and therefore some cynicism sneaks in. I personally remember being dismissed at a conference some years ago by the words: “Every year, there’s a guy like you”. Ouch! But if you were at Intix for the first time, as a supplier, take some comfort in the fact that year two is much better.

As always, Intix was also a lot of hard work, fun, and good food. Thanks to Baltimore for hosting us!