Interviews

Published on September 28th, 2019 | by Clayton Durant

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Shanna Jade, DICE’s Head of North American Music On The Secondary Ticket Market, DICE’s Growth Strategy, And The Future Of Online Ticketing

Photo credit Erica Hernandez

In conversation with CAD Management CEO Clayton Durant, Shanna Jade, Head of Music North America at DICE discusses DICE’s growth strategy, the need for capping on secondary ticket prices, and why DICE’s biggest competitor is Netflix.

In perfect market conditions, a ticket for a concert that is limited in supply would be sold for the highest price that the market could purchase. This supply-and-demand model made sense when buying concert tickets used to be as simple as going to the box office, picking up your ticket stubs and seeing the show you paid for. Fast forward a few decades, and ticketing has been transformed not only by the internet but by-products like smartphones that have shifted consumer behavior to favor virtual tickets that can be accessed instantaneously.

Although this provided convenience, it also gave rise to the secondary ticket market. In a recent report published by Technavio, experts evaluate that it will generate north of $15.2 billion a year. Moreover, with over 42 percent of ticket purchase activity generated by bots, online ticketing has seen exponential increases from the retail price to the resale price. This issue of price disparity on the secondary market has made it more difficult for fans to see their favorite acts live and harder for venues to fill out their rooms.

Standing in the middle of this complex issue is Shanna Jade, Head of Music North America at DICE, a UK ticketing platform that launched in the United States in March. DICE takes primary tickets for events and locks them onto smartphones to help eliminate scalping. I got a chance to sit down with Jade and talk about DICE’s growth strategy, the need for capping resale prices on concert tickets, and why DICE is competing with Netflix to get people off the couch and into live venues.

 DICE, a UK based company, just launched in the US only a few months ago. In that short time, DICE has several exclusive U.S. venues confirmed, including Sound, Gold Diggers, Public Records, Alphaville and Chelsea Music Hall. What is next in terms of expanding the platform? Do you think DICE will one day partner with an arena-size venue, like MSG?

DICE is ramping up in the US in a big way. We’re growing quickly in Los Angeles & New York as well as expanding to cities like Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Austin, and Miami. We want fans to be able to touch down in any major city all over the world, open DICE and discover and buy tickets to the best events the city has to offer right then and there.

Bigger venues are definitely on our radar, and we can handle that volume — whether it’s Kanye West’s satellite listening parties or Cuco’s downtown LA block party that brought over 20-thousand fans onto DICE.

Our mission is to get people out more, so we’re looking beyond just the large events. We know that small parties and club shows can make for an unforgettable night out just as much as a major arena show can. When we go into a new territory, our music team searches high and low, big and small to do deals with the best venues and promoters that speak to the cultural DNA of a given city.

DICE has been in a year-long partnership with Troxy, a historic venue in East London, making it the largest mobile-only venue in the world. Walk us through how that partnership came to be and the impact the partnership has had. 

Troxy was always on the UK team’s radar – it’s an iconic, historic room that hosts an amazing range of events. Since Troxy came on board, the venue has become a no-go for scalpers, and whereas a ‘sold out’ show used to come with 10-15% drop off, and thanks to our Waiting List & Refund system, it’s now much less. That means more fans getting in, having an amazing night, spending money at the bar, and the venue doing well as a result. Plus, it’s a great proof of concept for mobile ticketing – Troxy is a 3,000 cap venue that thousands of fans are accessing via DICE night after night.

More and more event organizers are parting ways with secondary ticketing platforms that allow fans to sell tickets without a cap on the resale price. Do you think the live entertainment industry as a whole is going to shift towards a capping price model so that major concert tickets don’t get three to four times their original value on other secondary ticketing sites?

Fans are sick of being gouged on secondary sites. Think about it: bots buy up tickets so a show appears sold out, scalpers post tickets for 3-4x their original price and genuine fans may be priced out of being able to see their favorite artists live. If those tickets aren’t purchased on the secondary sites, they just sit there — this means a lower turnout than expected, which directly translates to lower bar and merch sales. Not to mention, any of the extra money being made by scalpers isn’t finding its way into the pockets of the venue, promoter or artist.

It’s unfair and that’s what we’re trying to do – create a fairer ticketing system. Even with primary ticketing, think about the way fees are sprung on fans at check out. A ticket is advertised at $20, but by the time you get your credit card out… it’s $28! Fans are tired of bait and switch pricing which is why we always ensure that the first price is the full price. It just feels like a much simpler and fairer way to do things.

It seems like the issue in the secondary ticket market is less about the platform and more so about bots that are purchasing massive amounts of tickets to popular tours. How does DICE’s platform protect its consumers against bots and tickets ending up on other secondary ticket market platforms?

First off, DICE tickets are securely locked to fans’ phone numbers within the app. When they sign up for an account, we use two-factor authentication to confirm it’s really them, and then the ticket is tied to that authenticated phone number. Our ‘ticket’ is an animated QR code that only goes live two hours before the show. There’s nothing to actually sell on secondary.

Second, we have our Waiting List system. When a show sells out on DICE, we turn on a Waiting List, which gives fans an action to take; they can request the number of tickets they like, and sign up to be notified if any tickets become available.

If a fan with a ticket can no longer make it to the show, they get a full refund, and their ticket will go up for sale to the next fan in line on the Waiting List. It’s the cleanest system possible, and a win-win for all parties. There’s just no need for secondary resale with DICE.

Fans know they are getting a real ticket to see their favorite artists, the venue is in turn fuller since there are fewer no-shows for unused tickets, and promoters, agents and managers are able to see the true demand for an artist in a given city, not just that they sold out a specific venue.

One of the main missions of DICE is concert discovery. Walk us through how the app enables fans to discover new live events.

Discover is a huge part of DICE. A point of frustration that our team felt when we started out was that there was no place to discover cool events across genres while being able to buy tickets directly.

DICE is tuned to each fan’s individual music tastes, so fans are trusting us with so much more than buying a ticket — they’re relying on DICE to show them gigs that are relevant to them without the clutter of things that are not. We want to get people out more, so we’re constantly innovating how to make it easier to connect fans with events.

Accessing all of our Discover features is simple, too. When fans sign up for DICE, they’re prompted to connect their Spotify or Apple Music accounts as well as select from a list of artists. From there, the Discover tab on DICE begins to populate with gigs we think they’ll like based on their selections and music library. We also go as far as to organize lists of events based on what we think fans want to see — including things like genre and what’s happening this weekend, as well as New Shows Thursday (where we highlight all the best shows announced in the past week), shows your friends are interested in, events under $5, and more.

Your CEO Phil Hutcheon was quoted in Billboard saying that DICE views its main competitor as Netflix. If that’s the case, how is DICE encouraging more people to leave their house to experience new live events, particularly in the major touring markets of LA and NYC? 

Discover is how DICE gets people out more. Our music team in each city is comprised of people who love to go out, know their city well and have the connections to get the best gigs and parties on DICE. That’s why fans love us — because, at our core, we love music and experiences just as much as they do. We create trust with fans because we take our curation a step further by personalizing their Discover tab to their specific tastes. If you listen to a lot of rap music, you’ll only see gigs relevant to that genre in DICE. In the same way that Netflix revolutionized how we watch content and Spotify how we discover new music, DICE is changing the game for how fans discover and access shows.

 



About the Author

Clayton Durant is the founder and CEO of CAD Management, an entertainment consulting company that focuses on event, tour, and strategic management for indie artists and brands. Email him at [email protected] to connect.


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