Ticket Star Picks Up the Pace Online
December 2, 2004
by Kendra Meinert

If you’ve ever cursed Ticket Star’s Web site while trying to score a pair of tickets to Shania or Cher at the Resch Center on a crazed on-sale morning, think of this as an early gift from Santa.

PMI’s ticketing system is being upgraded with a new system next week. It will still be called Ticket Star, but the new Paciolan hardware and software means good news for online ticket buyers in particular. More people will be able to purchase tickets at www.ticketstaronline.com at one time and have quicker access while they do it.

“The primary feature is speed and the scalability of the number of users we can have purchasing tickets through our system,’’ said Brendan Bruss, PMI controller.

That should mean fewer difficulties for online ticket patrons, who may have had trouble in the past getting on the site during high-profile on-sale times or were forced to wait and keep refreshing once they did.

“It’s kind of like we’re trying to get everyone through a straw right now, and we’re expanding it to a very large pipe,’’ Bruss said of the online ticket traffic upgrade. “We’re going to be able to move a lot more tickets on the Internet.’’

The new system will also give patrons a shopping-cart capability if they want to buy tickets for more than one concert or sporting event. For certain events, online users will also have the option of printing tickets at home.

Tickets purchased with the new system will be electronically scanned at the Resch doors. No more ripping tickets.

Ticket Star’s three outlets outside of Green Bay will also benefit with new high-speed connections. Outlet patrons, who currently need to pay with cash, will be able to use credit cards with the new system.

Paciolan replaces 10-year-old software, which Bruss says in the technology world qualifies as “ancient.’’

Switching all the ticket data over to the new system is a sizable undertaking. Ticket Star will be closed Monday and Tuesday to make the transition. That means no tickets will be sold online, by phone, at the outlets or at the Resch Center box office those two days.

The new and improved Ticket Star will reopen on Wednesday and will get its first major workout on Dec. 11 when tickets for Disney on Ice (Feb. 2-6) go on sale at 10 a.m. and Josh Groban (Feb. 22) at 1 p.m.

Concert ticket diehards who like to camp out and buy their tickets right from the Resch box office will still have access to prime seats, Bruss said, as will phone callers. But as with major ticketing services like Ticketmaster, Bruss expects that more and more of Ticket Star’s business in the future will be done online.

The increased efficiency of Internet ticketing could also mean big Resch concerts that generally have sold out in an hour in the past will now clock in with even quicker sellouts, Bruss said.

“The end result for us always has to be people having a good experience buying the ticket and a good experience at the event,’’ Bruss said.

Article originally published in: Green Bay Press Gazette

WEEKEND editor Kendra Meinert can be reached at (920) 431-8347 or kmeinert@greenbaypressgazette.com