It’s been a few months since the start of Ticketmaster’s partnership with Elon University, and Elon Athletics has seen mixed results.
Elon University announced a partnership with the leader in the ticketing industry in late July. The partnership was created to allow for an enhanced ticket-buying experience for Elon Athletics, cultural programs and other campus events.
The collaboration with Ticketmaster has allowed for ticketing for all Elon events to be in one place, and this streamlined site is located at elontickets.com.
In a July press release, Elon said that the collaboration would increase the availability of ticketing services to others hosting events on campus. Elon Athletics promised to streamline the user experience. Ticket purchasers are now able to transfer tickets to friends or family and resell tickets through Ticketmaster’s technology.
Along with various campus events, the primary sporting events that utilize Ticketmaster are basketball, baseball and football.
The early numbers for Elon football are promising but remain skewed. Elon Athletics still allows students to just show their Phoenix Card and enter without scanning. Since not everyone who attends games uses Ticketmaster, the number of students using Ticketmaster doesn’t match attendance estimates.
According to Elon Athletics, on Sept. 14 against Western Carolina, 1,119 students used Ticketmaster, whereas the estimated total student attendance was 1,519. Similarly, 427 students used Ticketmaster to attend the Sept. 21 game against East Tennessee State University, but a total of 927 are estimated to have attended. On Family Weekend against Richmond University, many students entered with their families and just showed their ID without claiming their ticket through Ticketmaster, so the number was massively skewed with 2,114 total students attending but only 536 using Ticketmaster.
Elon professor of sport management Alex Traugutt said he believes the Athletics department is allowing students to use their ID just for the time being as people get used to the new system.
“I would imagine by this time next year, in the football season, that won't be an option, and there will be more of an onboarding process for returning students and for new students,” Traugutt said. “They want to be able to track everyone that kind of comes in and Ticketmaster would have allowed us to do that more easily because of all of the scans, and when we're not able to do that, that obviously hurts the attendance numbers.”
Traugutt said faculty members were also originally supposed to use Ticketmaster to go to football games but have reverted back to giving faculty members tickets for the time being until they get a better handle on the system.
Tragutt said Ticketmaster’s ability to track attendance and gather data on who is attending their games is a primary reason for the partnership.
“Everything that the partnership is geared toward is more granular, tracking of fans in and out of the stadium,” Traugutt said.
Tragautt said the change on the consumer side is beneficial both as it allows transferring tickets to others easier, and because many Elon students are likely familiar with the platform.
“It should theoretically create a more streamlined kind of process from the fan perspective from the start to the end,” Tragautt said. “Everyone's pretty familiar with it by now because if they've been to a concert or a different kind of sporting event, they probably have a Ticketmaster account.”
However, Ticketmaster is not universally beloved. Ticketmaster has been involved in a number of recent controversies including price gouging, anti competition claims and data breaches.
Traugutt doesn’t think these scandals will affect Elon, though.
“We won't be subject to that kind of backlash because we're not using it on a concert-level kind of scale,” Traugutt said. “I think for us, it's just when people hear we're using a Ticketmaster now, if it's a younger individual who's had experience with them in the past, they're going to have a kind of bias toward them, generally not positive.”
Tragutt said he believes the end goal of the partnership is Elon getting a better profile of their fans while driving ticket sales and retention.
Student opinion of the change has been mixed. Freshman Janiya Hickman, who attended the Oct.12 football game, said she hasn’t had any issues with Ticketmaster but believes it is easier to just use a Phoenix Card.
“It would be easier for us to come in and tap our Phoenix Card,” Hickman said. “I feel like it could be a little more smoother if we just use our Phoenix Card.”
Janey Smith, a freshman, isn’t a fan of the change. She cited website glitches where she isn’t able to sign in and the fact that the barcode doesn’t always work, making it hard for ticket workers to let them in. She also said that Ticketmaster doesn’t always work properly to give the student price.
“I was trying to help my friend and his wouldn’t let him get the student discount and they were telling him to pay the $15, but we’re students, we get it for free,” Smith said. “So, he actually ended up not getting a ticket for a musical that we all wanted to see.”
Freshman Harry Denehy is happy with Ticketmaster, though, and said it’s made things very easy.
“It only takes two minutes to get my tickets and I get emails every week from Ticketmaster to get the free tickets.
Traugutt acknowledged the issues students have had with Ticketmaster but thinks people will get used to it as it becomes more integrated into Elon’s ticketing process.
“I think there probably could have been some more of an onboarding process for everybody,” Traugutt said. “There's going to be a learning curve for everybody. I think they probably went into this football season as a kind of test, and I imagine by the basketball season, they'll have it kind of dialed in.”
Anjolina Fantaroni contributed to the reporting of this story.