Badminton Horse Trials: the ultimate test for horse, rider ... and ticketing

The Mitsubishi Motors Badminton Horse Trials is one of the greatest occasions in the sporting calendar. For the 2004 event, the organisers required an online box office system with the capacity and flexibility to sell tickets through a wide variety of sales channels. IRIS Ticketing Solutions provided a complete and sophisticated box office system, able to sell everything from admission tickets, aircraft passes and even radio earpieces, via, call centre, Internet, mail order and face-to face channels. Held in the glorious surroundings of the Duke of Beaufort's Gloucestershire Park, Badminton is open to only the top hundred horses and riders in the world. The first event took place in 1949 and was started by the previous Duke to help the British team prepare for the Olympic Games. Almost immediately it became the most famous permanent event of its type. Badminton can comfortably accommodate an enormous crowd of over 200,000 people over its four days, one of the biggest on-site audiences in sport.

Multiple sales channels

The world over, Badminton is seen as the ultimate test of all-round horse and rider. The behind-the-scenes demands are no less testing for the organisers and for their service providers, including ts.com.

"Badminton has been using the IRIS Web service to sell tickets online since 2002,” says Hugh Thomas, Event Director. “This year we decided to extend the service, incorporating online, telephone, mail order and walk-up sales, while maintaining in-house control over the printing and despatch of tickets."

Flexible for all ticket types

"The IRIS Web system enables us to sell a variety of tickets including car passes, hospitality packages, camping passes, aircraft landing passes and four-day passes for the whole event. In addition, we are able to sell merchandising, such as sweatshirts, jackets, caps, programmes and earpieces to listen to Radio Badminton. Everything can be purchased online or through mail order, telephone and walk-up channels."

Seats are allocated according to a strict protocol, as Hugh explains. "The best seats are offered online and seat selection is offered for telephone and walk-up sales, with operators selecting the exact seat the customer wants or suggesting the best price. Operators are also able to select the best place for a particular party size."

IRIS Web is integrated into its back office systems, so information can be passed to accounting systems for financial reporting. The service is also used on site during the event for all walk-up sales with tickets are being printed immediately via the system.

Membership and loyalty rewarded

"We are also able to use the system to enhance and reward loyalty among our customers, with preferential pricing and early access to tickets," adds Hugh.

"So, for example, officials of British Eventing can be offered free personal admission tickets and members of the Horse Trials Support Group can claim free car passes."

In order to offer reward schemes such as these, membership schemes have been set up within IRIS Web. Members are given a unique username and password, which they either enter online or when booking by telephone, through the sales operator. The IRIS Web system recognises the membership details and automatically shows the appropriate discount.

In addition to membership schemes, Badminton are also able to offer discounts and benefits using promotional schemes for organisations such as The Pony Club and The Riding Club. Codes are set up in the system and assigned particular attributes depending on the benefits of the individual schemes. Customers either use the promotional code online or via a sales operator.

With so many visitors over such a relatively short time, it is important to the Badminton organisers to anticipate and relieve any possible pinchpoints. The use of membership schemes means that previous customer details are already entered into the system. This reduces sales processing times for telesales operators and speeds up customer service via the Internet, as personal details don’t have to be re-entered.

"The membership and promotional code schemes are an effective way of delivering benefits over the web and in reducing pressure on box office staff. More than 45% of our pre-sales were delivered via the web in 2004," says Hugh.

Secure and flexible technology

"Security is another important issue for us. IRIS Web neatly solves the potential problems of trying to organise a box office system in a temporary marquee in the middle of the deer park. Such a system would be vulnerable to power failures and theft and the consequences of losing all our transaction and customer data would be unimaginable. As it is, the IRIS Web service is hosted in an external hosting facility with 24-hour monitoring, making is far more secure," Hugh concludes.

Quotes

"Selling all our inventory via one system whether by phone, internet or mail order and having real-time card payment processing reduces time and the headaches of managing allocations and provides the convenience that our customers demand."

Carol Alexander, Box Office Manager, Badminton Horse Trials

"With a new, small management team and tight budgets at Windsor we needed to drive pre-sales as cost effectively as possible without the headaches of implementing new systems. IRIS Ticketing Solutions print-at-home solution and their knowledge and experience of 3-Day Eventing has proved an invaluable part of our ticketing operation."&

Mike Tucker Event Director, Windsor International Horse Trials

"Having taken over at Bramham this year with a new team, I needed a proven ticketing system from a company that understood the dynamics and pressures of running a 3 Day Event to ease the pressure on our limited resources. IRIS Ticketing Solutions knowledge, experience and professional approach have made this happen."

Harry Verney Event Director, Bramham Horse Trials

"When we were looking for a new online ticketing system our objectives were to find a flexible, reliable and usable system. ts.com came out on top. We are now able to offer bespoke promotional ticket offers for our sponsors' and customers' increasing advance ticket sales and creating the correct image for our event. The IRIS Ticketing Solutions system does all the work - an efficient, professional service that impresses our customers, our sponsors and us.""

Tim Henson Event Director, Festival of British Eventing, Gatcombe Park

"As any 3-Day-Event organiser knows keeping down costs and driving up sales is a No.1 priority. We used IRIS Ticketing Solutions promotional features to stimulate early pre-booking for the 2003 European Championships and more than doubled our sales. For our 2004 event we'll be using Print-at-Home ticketing to reduce costs and using the system to take our entries online. It's an invaluable part of our operation."

Tim Phillips Event Director, The International Sporthorse Show, Punchestown