Image: Boomtown: Chapter 10 – The Machine Cannot be Stopped, UK 2018.
Credit: Charlie Raven

This August, TheTicketSellers completed it’s ‘On Sale to On Site’ service for Boomtown Fair, helping the festival to welcome 65,000 attendees, crew, artists and volunteers to the ‘city’ at Matterley Estate, Hampshire.

Now in its tenth year, Boomtown has partnered with TheTicketSellers since 2010, bringing the team on board to deliver a full ticketing solution, from the hugely hyped on-sale in November through to the management of all entry systems and access control on site.

Working closely with the festival organisers, TheTicketSellers develop and shape their public ticketing platform and their ‘backstage’ management tool, Eventree, to meet the evolving needs of the festival. In 2018, over 500 different ticket types and vehicle passes were built into the platforms – giving the organisers exceptional insight into public and crew numbers and pinpoint control over access to the event site from build to break.  In addition, over 40,000 meal tickets were redeemed in five separate crew canteens.

Sell out show

The early bird tickets for this event sell out in seconds and a total of over 30,000 tickets were sold in the first five minutes for this year.

 Mo Jones, Director at TheTicketSellers explained;

“Our system has to scale and perform under huge pressure, with tens of thousands of people trying to get their hands on discounted tickets. Boomtown commented that this was their smoothest on-sale to date, all built by our dedicated team of in-house developers.

“This year we had the added challenge of a last-minute licence agreement passing in May, allowing the site to open a day early. Managing the process of allowing Thursday ticket holders to upgrade to Wednesday, including management of the associated coach tickets was a huge task but the end-to-end thinking again paid dividends with very little confusion at the gates, despite the complexity of ticket options.”

On site management

A radically improved 2018 site plan involved TheTicketSellers’ hardware being used at 40 different entry gates and locations, including public entrances, crew and artist accreditation, volunteer registration, 5 crew canteens and even the shuttle bus pick up in Winchester.

With all wristbands ‘disabled’ until associated to a ticket to prevent theft, scanning at various 24 hour pass in / out gates picks up unusual behaviour and gives valuable insights to the evictions and welfare teams.

TheTicketSellers elite team of 23 experienced crew delivered the on site service, overseeing and managing the technology, box office and audit functions and liaising with organisations such as MyCause, Festaff and CTM. The operation required over 100 laptops, 250 state-of-the-art mobile scanners and putting in over 1,200 man-hours for the 2 weeks they were on site.

Chris Rutherford, Co-founder at Boomtown commented;

“Boomtown’s core team is relatively small, achieving unbelievable results. As such, we also need our event partners to go above and beyond to fulfil our ambitious plans. Since partnering with TheTicketSellers way back in 2010, they have increased their responsibilities year on year, from supporting our customers to working with on site delivery teams and their service this year was exceptional. We know how much planning and hard work goes into the smooth running of all their operations and it paid dividends for our 10th Anniversary – the best yet!”

Adam Parry
Author: Adam Parry

Adam is the co-founder and editor of www.eventindustrynews.com Adam, a technology evangelist also organises Event Tech Live, Europe’s only show dedicated to event technology and the Event Technology Awards. Both events take place in November, London.