Speaking Stadia - Article 4
by Alan Patching
There are a number of issues which are always hot topics for venue owners and operators. Access technologies, branding/sponsorship/naming rights, and food and beverage issues are a couple of beauties.
Access technologies
With people fed up with call centre 'service' - 'you're call is really really important to us so we are going to put you on hold listening to our inane advertising hype for a really really long time to show how much we really really care' - the internet solution for airline and event ticket purchases had all the signs of a winner.
Internet airline tickets are often (usually?) e-tickets and identification at check in is all part and parcel of the flying experience. The chances of multiple punters turning up for the one airline seat are pretty remote, and even if it does happen, the average airport has the security and authority to deal with any ruckus beyond the capability of the flight attendants.
Internet ticketing presents a very different scenario for venues. One common system is for credit card payment to be made over the net and a bar coded ticket printed out in the patrons' homes. A problem arises when a patron has an attack of entrepreneurial enthusiasm and produces several dozen high resolution copies of that ticket for sale at a local pub in an area where he or she is never again likely to set foot.
On event day, hordes of angry people with tattoos in places where most of us don't even have places - possibly even a couple of guys among them – arrive and want to tear both the entry turnstiles and the operators apart because they can't get in. Meanwhile, the first arrival's happily seated with a pie and beer, blissfully unaware of the ruckus outside.
'But ticket scams are always a possibility', you might say, 'and modern access control systems prevent a second entry off the one ticket code'. True. And I agree that a lot of feedback about internet ticketing does appear to be ill-considered.
However, some internet ticketing does give rise to costly-to-manage problems. Printed and issued tickets are difficult to duplicate, and a home computer printout ticket is not. If internet ticketing is to be the winner it has the capacity to be, much more thought is required regarding the access authorisation method at venues.
The future might well see entry authorisation downloaded onto a micro-chip based general ID card, or a Medicare, social security or driver's licence card. Oh what the heck – bring on compulsory sub-cutaneous micro-chipping for all sports fans. I can see the footy hooliganism monitoring authorities grinning from ear to ear at the thought!
Food and beverage
Sporting arenas definitely have their very own PET problems.
Beverage suppliers love PET packaging. It has great appeal to venue patrons, requires minimum dispensation effort at point of purchase (a winning point at busy break periods), has excellent supplier branding characteristics, and presents a great reason for suppliers not contributing to the expensive beverage infrastructure for which venue owners are constantly putting the bite on others.
But it does present its challenges. Wellington's (New Zealand) Westpac Stadium problem a while ago was not the first ugly incident involving beverage containers being used as projectiles directed at the playing arena, and it's unlikely to be the last. I remember seeing, in the late sixties at the then Lang Park Stadium in Brisbane Australia, photographer, Geoff McLaughlan of the Telegraph, having his forehead opened up by a half full beer can thrown after an unpopular decision by a rugby league referee. The result could have been a lot worse than the eleven stitches he needed, but even that is too high a price for an innocent victim to pay for idiotic behaviour.
Owners currently planning or building venues, with a PET beverage solution would be well advised to at least install the line infrastructure (piping and connections) for reticulated beverages now, even if not the supply and service end equipment.
It's quite possibly only a matter of time before the various sporting bodies refuse to play at venues supplying beverages in PET containers, and retrofitting an entire infrastructure can be a time consuming and very expensive exercise.
Branding, Sponsorship and Naming rights
Let's face it, sport stopped being just sport and became an industry ages ago. While there's much to be said for the values of an amateur system, it cannot be reasonably argued that amateurs in the true sense of the word could ever be likely to consistently compete on the international stage with well remunerated professionals. Organisations and teams employing professional sports people must source funds someplace, and sponsorship is a key source of funds. Sponsorship becomes a more sensible proposition for sponsors when they can identify some degree of commercial return for their sponsorship investment. Branding seems to play a large part in that commercial justification formula.
Some sporting bodies extend their branding clout beyond the point of reason in negotiations with venue managers. They attempt to screw hiring fees and conditions well below the expectations of the financial models on which decisions were made to proceed with the development of the venues involved. The consequence is venues, in turn, need to look beyond traditional hiring fees for their own revenue generation, and naming and signage rights evolved from this requirement. Old news!
The more recent news is the increasing scope for debate arising from perceived clashes of interest between venue hirers and their sponsors and venue owners and their sponsors. Situations like Vodaphone Wallabies playing at Australia's Telstra Stadia triggers interesting thought about venue hiring negotiations…and about a future column.
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