Titanium Security Arena will be close over the Christmas and New Year break until 10am, Thursday 3 January 2019. This includes the ticketmaster outlet. Staff wish all our customers and tenants a happy Christmas and a safe New Year.

The Aliens have invaded, well that is how it sometimes feels when you are trying to navigate to find the correct website to purchase your event ticket. I always ask myself, am I on the right website to get my official tickets?

Having the potential customer get to the venue website is becoming infinitely important to be able to direct them to the official ticketing website, allowing customers to buy tickets at the advertised price and to receive the official tickets for the event.

With the increased use of 3^rd party resale websites, it has had an impact on the customer experience. Having to turn away patrons who have purchased invalid tickets and their emotional turmoil of not being able to see the event has become an increased occurrence throughout venues in Australia.

Some 3^rd party resale incidents at our venue include; the same tickets being sold multiple times and only the first buyer gets into the venue, tickets not arriving and the buyer tries to get them reprinted at the ticket box with no success (ticket is not purchased under their name from 3^rd party sites), buying adult tickets and they all come through as children tickets. There is also the big sting of over inflated costs when they could have gone to the official website and purchased tickets. It’s just not happening for sold-out events, it can happen for any event!

What can venues do? Venues already work with the promoters to ensure that their marketing plan highlights the venue’s official ticketing agent is important and is consistently done throughout the industry. Consumers are increasingly using the internet to purchase tickets and regularly use search engines to look up the latest artist coming to town and buying Google Search ad space for your website keywords can become costly if your venue doesn’t have a high marketing budget.

Should the Government get involved to legislate to define clear lines? Or is it up to venues, promotors, artists and the events community to educate the consumer to buy right.

The only recourse is for the buyer to lodge a complaint with their bank and with the resale site they purchased from.

Until we find a solution to help our potential customers, the aliens will continue to invade.

Titanium Security Arena’s official ticketing partner is ticketmaster, head to ticketmaster.com.au for all purchasing of tickets to events held at the venue.

Skye Harwood

Ticketing Manager

by Arena Stadium Management COO Mandy Spear

‘Welcome to our venue! We hope you have an amazing time! What risks have you brought with you? Let us search your personal belongings, make you wait in a queue for wanding and confiscate your open drink. Have a lovely day!’

 

When you work in venue management and your portfolio includes both Customer Experience and Work, Health and Safety (WHS), every event becomes an incredibly difficult balancing act. With every patron comes a myriad of unforeseeable potential risks. Risks to themselves, other guests and to the business. These risks range from acts of terror, to acts of violence, to people doing silly things and not wanting to take responsibility for their actions. In the last 2 years, our venue has experienced all 3 of these. In October 2016 we had a credible bomb threat. In 2017 a fight broke out in the stands and guests had to be ejected. Just this year a patron breeched a barrier that had a ‘Do Not Enter’ warning on it, fell and broke their shoulder and tried to sue the company for not having adequate lighting in the place they weren’t supposed to walk.

In a time where event security and patron safety are at the forefront of every event organiser and venue manager’s mind, coupled with an increase in the demand for exceptional experiences, how does one find that perfect balance? Does one forgo the mid-performance light show spectacular for an extra 10 security personnel?

The fact is, additional medical and security staff, compliant fire exit doors, expensive staff training and WHS software, although can mean the difference between life and death, do not enhance the experience of our guests. Increasing the ticket prices and entry fees to cover the additional cost of security and WHS is one way to achieve a compromise but making events more expensive leaves them inaccessible to most and a product for the privileged.

I don’t know that there is a perfect solution to the Experience/Safety dichotomy, however there are a few things venues and event organisers can do to achieve a reasonable compromise. One of these things is to collect and analyse the data. It is very easy for us as venues to provide cookie-cutter safety and security solutions to all our events, but this can prove to be needlessly costly for hirers and promotors, which in turn can impact on the accessibility and quality of the event and subsequently the customer experience. Conversely, this approach can also lead to inadequate security and staffing which also has a negative impact of the customer experience, or worse. Information should be the single most important factor considered when assessing risk and putting together a risk management and event plan.

Pre-purchased ticket sales give an indication of how many people are expected. Information from similar past events such as ingress and egress patterns, incident reports and demographic reports allow us to make informed decisions regarding staffing and security requirements. Catering history, particularly alcohol consumption patterns, are also helpful when assessing security and staffing needs.

Our patron’s contact details provide a communication channel to advise of any security concerns, information about getting to and from the event, conditions of entry and information about what can and cannot be brought into the venue, prior to the event. Advising guests to expect long queuing times can alleviate tensions and provide better working conditions for event day staff.  All of these things can relieve resource pressure or ensure enough resource is assigned when and where it is needed.

The customer experience starts when a guest makes the decision to attend an event. The opportunity to collect customer data starts at the same time. To our valued guests, thank you for filling out those all-important information forms when you buy tickets. Thank you for getting to the venue early. Thank you for your patience while we secure the event. Have a lovely day!

On Tuesday 27 November, Arena CEO Guy Hedderwick officially opened the Female Facility Upgrade in the new Media Room as part of the Female Facility Upgrade grant from the Office for Recreation, Sport and Racing. Guests included Government Officials, Member of Parliament - Hon Katrine Hildyard, Mayor of the City of Charles Sturt - Angela Evans, Adelaide Lightning Legend Rachael Sporn, CEO of Adelaide Basketball, CEO of Basketball SA and team members of SA Country Basketball, Basketball SA and Arena Stadium Management.

For the first time, Titanium Security Arena (TSA) is offering an exclusive Arena membership for selected events held at Titanium Security Arena. This membership will be known as Club 99.

Valid from 1^st September 2018 – 31st August 2019

Includes;

• Reserved Seating Area for Club 99 members for all selected events.
• Reserved Car Park (1 reserved car park per 2 memberships) in the Southern Car Park for all selected events.

Events included in the membership;

• NBL including home finals
• WNBL including home finals
• All cooperating events held at Titanium Security Arena

For this past year, TSA has hosted the following events. These are examples of the type of events that will be included in membership;

• Concerts – I Love the 90’s
• Major Sporting events – Australian Boomers Men’s Basketball Team, Australian Diamonds Netball Team, MMA (Mixed Martial Arts)
• Entertainment – Professional Wrestling and Harlem Globetrotters

This exclusive introductory Arena membership offer is $1,200 + GST per seat

As TSA confirm cooperating events on the calendar, you will be notified of the additional events and your barcode will be activated.

We will also be hosting a networking event throughout the year for all Club 99 members as well as offering special deals for Private Suites and on food and beverage.

For businesses taking up membership, you can also be spotlighted in the Arena newsletter that goes out to over 25,000 unique subscribers and all members will also go into the running for Club 99 lotteries to win exciting prizes.

This exclusive TSA Membership is capped at 99, so get in quick to secure your place!

To secure your place, email club99@titaniumarena.com.au