RapidScan in action at Victoria Warehouse

The end of January saw the international Hardwell Tour hit Manchester for two sell-out dates. As the exclusive online outlet for both dates, Skiddle took responsibility for the entire ticket selling process, from sale right through to entry management on the night.

Here’s a quick look at the challenges of ticketing a large event and how Skiddle’s services successfully dealt with each.

High Demand Sales

Having been announced as the #1 DJ in the world just a few months previous, these events were always going to be very popular. Skiddle was selected to manage the ticketing based upon our experience with other large-scale events and our ability to cope with high traffic on sale periods.

The onsale period was split into two availability phases – ‘Pre Release’ and ‘General Sale’. To allow the brand’s social media fans to have early access to the tickets before the general public, the promoters setup a Facebook application using a ‘like gate’ and data capture. This allowed additional Facebook fans to be gained during the onsale period. Once visitors had liked the Facebook page, they were presented with a special link to Skiddle, which contained an embedded password, giving them early access to tickets.

For the remaining customers, the general onsale was advertised, with any customer being able to purchase tickets online. This was widely anticipated, with tickets selling out in under a minute due to the high demand. During this time, Skiddle’s cloud infrastructure successfully met the demand and  sold all the available allocation with zero downtime. In fact, we sold the tickets so quickly some people missed the onsale period!

Tickets for @HARDWELL sold out within 38 seconds. Congrats to everyone that got theirs. #WeekendsMatter

— Skiddle.com (@skiddle) October 30, 2013

 

Quick entry to the event

With a venue capacity of over 5,000 across 3 rooms and just one public entrance, admitting all customers into the event quickly was a high priority for the event organisers – especially with the inclement weather in January! The Skiddle team met with the organisers, security and venue contacts to establish how our RapidScan system would integrate with the entry process and ensure all tickets were validated in real-time.

Skiddle provided both the RapidScan scanning technology for the event, plus additional staff to scan and supervise the entry process. This was in addition to the event’s own security staff who controlled queuing and searches. After a few tweaks on the opening night, our system admitted all customers (over 5,000) within just 2.5 hours of opening on the second night, using 5 lanes. That’s approximately 1 customer every 2 seconds, which is some pretty quick going! Thanks to the scalable nature of the RapidScan system, this can be adapted to more entry lanes with ease – with the only real limitation being the staffing and physical layout of the venue.

Stats, stats, stats

During the entry phase of the event, real-time stats were made available to the event organisers, providing a head-count of customers already onsite as well as expected numbers still to enter. This allowed adaptations to be made very quickly to ensure the flow of customers into the event remained high.

Find out more

To find out more about RapidScan, please get in touch with your Account Manager or call 0843 289 9489