Sears Centre Charts A New Course For Ticketing

November 13, 2006

CHICAGO - When the Sears Centre opened last month, they joined a growing number of venues that are handling their own ticketing. Eschewing third party ticket vendors, which are becoming an increasingly-expensive option. The newly-opened 11,000 seat multi-purpose family entertainment, cultural and sports center opened last month with serious ambitions to be a serious competitor in the Chicago live music market. Part of that plan is to sell their won tickets. Ticketmaster is currently the dominant ticket vendor in the market, providing ticketing services for Allstate Arena, the United Center and White Sox games in Chicago. Ticketmaster and other ticketing agents can add as much as thirty percent to the cost of an event ticket. CCO Entertainment, which operates the Sears Centre hopes that by reducing prices, that they can fill more seats.

"We went this way because we wanted to control our own destiny and prices," Steve Hyman, the executive director of CCO Ent. told the Daily Herald. "I think our (ticket) fees will be lower."

To implement their strategy, CCO has been working with Paciolan, a firm which produces web-based ticketing solutions and CCO hopes that the experiment will be successful so that they can implement it in additional venues which are currently under consideration.

If this plan will be successful remains to be seen. The Sears Centre is one of the only venues in the Chicago market that is not served by Ticketmaster. Recent performances by Bob Dylan, Duran Duran & Lionel Richie were not close to being sold out, the Daily Herald reported, but the Dylan shows at least, had higher ticket sales than typical for him.

Original article published by the Celebrity Access Media Wired and can be viewed here.