Offaly-based start-up shaking up the way companies sell tickets online

Years of running and selling events left businessman Liam Holton with a jaundiced view of online ticketing systems. From his perspective, they appeared to be based on "what some techie decided they should look like" rather than what the businesses actually needed.

He also felt that their developers were as focused on winning customers for themselves as on selling tickets. So believing he could do better Holton joined forces last year with two "techies", Emelyn Murray and Mark Cotter, with whom he had worked previously. "They took my idea that a ticketing system should be designed from the market backwards and the event upwards and built it from there," he says.

What they wanted was a system that would work for each individual event, big or small, allowing the organisers to control every aspect, from branding and finance to customer relations, of selling tickets online.

The business became Tullamore, Co Offaly-based start-up, Future Ticketing, where Holton is chief executive. From a standing start is has sold more than half a million tickets in 17 countries. The company is winning new business at home and abroad. Its latest recruit, Blair Castle International Horse Trials, attracts 40,000 people a year, making it one of Scotland's biggest outdoor events.

Also in the UK, it has signed up Cage Warriors, one of the promoters behind the rapidly growing mixed martial arts phenomenon. Holton says it is in talks with other sports and events organisers in Britain and Ireland at the moment.

Here at home its customers include Doolin Ferries, Dublin Bay cruises, Punchestown Racecourse, Holton's former employer and home to a racing festival that attracts 100,000 people, Limerick Races, and Tullamore Agricultural Show. The company is the throes of negotiating other deals in this country. When customers buy tickets through clients' websites, Future Ticketing's software handles the entire transaction, but the process is seamless so the purchaser does not notice. Owning those customers is a recurring theme for Holton. Selling tickets, he says, is crucial to any events business, in fact, he argues that it more or less is the business.

However, he points out that most ticketing systems are structured so that those events effectively hand over their customers, as the developers control the data. “You go to all that trouble getting the customer in the first place, and then you go and allow someone else, another business, to take that customer,” he argues, saying this is much the same as a newsagent directing a customer around the corner to a rival.

Future Ticketing does the opposite. Its clients keep their customers’ data. In fact, it does not normally see this information, as it is kept behind a password in the cloud and control rests solely with the event itself. Future Ticketing can only access this if its client allows it do so. “It means that you have a direct relationship with your customer,” Holton says.

A big advantage that Future Ticketing claims over established competitors such as Eventbrite and Ticketmaster is its flexibility. Holton says that the company’s software is very scale-able. It does not matter if an event is selling 100 tickets or 100,000, it can meet any situation.

Nor does it need massive infrastructure – and therefore cost – to verify tickets at the gate. “We built it for a mobile-first environment,” he explains. “You can scan in the middle of a field, you do not need any infrastructure at all, all you need is wifi or 3G, or if you don’t have either, then you can download the information in advance. You can do it with just a mobile phone.”

That feature means that Future Ticketing can tap a big market for outdoor events that existing operators have neglected because their infrastructure is too expensive, or just won’t work. At the tip of that iceberg, agriculture shows in Ireland attract one million visitors a year and six million in Britain.

The company earns revenues by collecting royalties for the use of its system, which suits its clients, and which also means that their customers are not handing over a commission to another business.

Future Ticketing has attracted investors’ interest. Its chief executive confirms it has met with a number of parties, but, as he, Cotter and Murray have successfully nurtured the company through its first phase, they are not going to take on a backer just for the sake of it. “What we’re interested in is a partnership,” Holton says.

The businessman is confident that any partner will be joining a business that offers long-term opportunities. He believes that in a decade’s time, Future Ticketing’s software will sit at the back end of the systems of every company, big or small, that wants to sell tickets to any event. “This will democratise the ticketing market,” he predicts.