In Focus: Kaizen Ticketing Approaches Its Testimonial Year
To borrow football parlance, Kaizen Ticketing is approaching its testimonial year. The current campaign will make it 10 years since Founder and Managing Director, David Lynam left behind The FA, Spurs and Ticketmaster to build his own team.
A decade on – and as soaring revenue levels for a range of EFL clubs attest – Lynam and his team have not looked back. Celebrate the last ten, sure – but the primary focus is on making the next ten even more successful.
When a football club doubles its season tickets sales inside two years, or develops a way to sell a new supporter a single match ticket in less than seven seconds – capturing a tranche of new marketing data in the process – people take note.
Decision makers take note. Go into the boardrooms of any of Kaizen’s EFL clubs on matchdays and you might be forgiven for thinking that the company’s new business director was holding court, such is the talk of a system that is changing the fortunes of teams across the country.
Instead, the reality is that EFL clubs are enjoying growing with Kaizen to the point where much of the organisation’s new business now comes exclusively from referrals. The proverbial: ‘You need to talk to these guys’.
Mansfield Town double season ticket sales in two years
With more than 6,000 season ticket holders now on their books – a figure that has doubled inside the last two years – Mansfield Town are one of Kaizen’s stand-out success stories. Promotion to League One at the end of last season heralded a new dawn for the East Midlands side, with on-pitch success now mirrored off of it. Exponential growth.
“We have been a Kaizen client for three seasons now,” says the Stags’ Operations Director, Alex Sherriff. “During that time, we have progressed as a club and it has been so comforting to know that David and the Kaizen team have grown with us. Whatever we have needed – integrations, new leagues, new prices – they have delivered.” When the club were looking for a new supplier originally, the brief was clear: bring the ticketing operation into the digital space.
Three years later and Mansfield now hold the record for the supporter with the quickest ever purchase time of a ticket – seven seconds. Mission accomplished! Of course, Kaizen’s delivery goes beyond just one purchase but the spirit of that sale is what’s important – quick and easy. Plus, the club now have marketable supporter data they didn’t have before. The benefits are felt across the club, too.
In the run-up to matchdays and on game days themselves, in-person cash-based buying of tickets has totally diminished. With supporters now enjoying a seamless experience online, ticket office staff can now dedicate the time to dealing with more nuanced queries face-to-face.
As Sherriff makes clear: “The knock-on effect to the overall supporter experience has been exceptional – we probably hadn’t considered the time and care we would be able to give to supporters through the savings made on the digital side of things. The overall sense of the club being there to help supporters with other queries really quickly has helped everyone settle into the ‘new’ way of doing things.”
The system has grown and evolved as the club has needed it to. This has included the integration with their access control system – meaning supporters use QR codes and digital membership cards to access the stadium, ensuring this is an end-to-end digital journey. So too a new ‘loyalty points’ system – which tracks game attendance – and the choice to ‘forward’ a ticket that would otherwise be unused. Previously, all completely unimaginable.
Like so many other clubs in the EFL, Mansfield’s ticketing operations were largely based around antiquated processes not really fit for today – and paper season ticket booklets, which conjured memories of yesteryear. Not anymore. The latest Kaizen upgrade gives the club the option to distribute away tickets digitally too. It has been a giant leap.
Exeter City reaping the benefits of in-depth supporter data
Unquestionably, football supporters are creatures of habit. If you have sat in the same seat for 30 years, you can’t really be blamed for staying wedded to a routine! That is why it is all the more impressive when a club takes supporters with them on their journey toward modernity – enter Exeter City.
“There was a clear need to modernise,” says Chief Finance Officer, Joe Gorman – who only a year into his role, was quick to recognise Kaizen’s potential to help with this. “We called it our ‘digital-first’ project – a move toward the club having full, real-time, visibility over who was buying tickets and whether we could reduce the levels of nonattending season ticket holders.”
The club’s path had previously been blocked. In the past, someone at the club had to sell 23 individual tickets to make up a season ticket. To say it was labour intensive was an understatement. There was also the issue of being unable to extract any meaningful data from the sale.
With Kaizen in-situ, things changed quickly. A full roll-out of the system saw an immediate ‘digitisation’ of the club’s ticketing system. Paper vouchers and tickets were replaced with season cards or mobile tickets. Data dashboards became a feature of club administration with club executives now able to see rich data at the touch of a button. The ease of purchase bore fruit with more season tickets sold than in the previous season.
Gorman outlines another issue Kaizen were able to solve. “Roughly half of the club’s St James Park home is terraced, so standing room only,” he says. “Invariably, this means that seats are at a premium with the club understandably keen to make sure everyone who wants a seat, gets one. With Kaizen, we were able to develop a system where season ticket holders could forward their tickets to a friend or effectively sell them back to the club.”
In a similar vein, the City for All Community Ticket Scheme allows supporters to donate their seat to someone who may otherwise not be able to attend a match. This is exactly the sort of functionality that engenders goodwill from supporters and encourages use of the platform, which is so crucial in the early weeks and months.
Record season ticket sales help usher in new dawn at Southend United
Southend United’s ownership issues have plagued the club’s progress in recent years – but the dark clouds lifted in July, when a new consortium purchased the club. Relieved that the club’s previous paralysis had gone, fans showed their support with record breaking season ticket sales. The day the takeover was announced, the club sold over 1,000 season tickets in four hours.
Rhys Ellingham, who is the club’s Commercial & Operations Director, remembers the call to David at Kaizen. “I was in touch with David the day the takeover was agreed to say that I knew our fans would come out to support us – so the system needed to be ready,” he says. “As ever, it was. We sold the first 1,000 tickets in four hours. That was amazing to see and be part of.”
A week after going on sale, the club had passed all of the previous season’s records. Ellingham is clear that Kaizen is a big driver of that. “In my view, you need two things – a reason for your supporters to buy and an online infrastructure to support that. We had the takeover ‘bounce’ and Kaizen – a match made in heaven. Kaizen makes selling easy.”
The club had just under 8,000 fans at the first home game of the season. Thanks to Kaizen, Ellingham and his team could quickly identify that this included about 350 supporters who had not previously purchased through the club. In an effort to welcome them, the club sent bespoke emails with helpful match details to make them feel more welcome.
With a stadium renovation in the pipeline, the Shrimpers’ Board have lots to keep Kaizen busy with. They are also expanding their offering to supporters by including hospitality, non-matchday events and even a lottery – all available through the system.
Kaizen To Fund Opportunities For Youngsters To Watch Local Matches For Free
As part of Kaizen’s 10-year anniversary celebrations, the business has launched the ‘Tickets for Schools Program’, in collaboration with the clubs they work with. Kaizen have asked all clubs that want to take part to partner-up with a local school for the season – with students receiving free tickets to matches, paid for by Kaizen.
The school will be encouraged to reward students. Rewards can be for any number of reasons: good behaviour, improvement in grades, a great sporting effort or anything else worthy of recognition. Kaizen will pay for each student to attend a match with a parent or guardian for a designated match during the season. With over 30 schools signed up already, Kaizen have pledged nearly 1,500 tickets for school children to visit their local club with a family member.
The Winner Takes It All! Kaizen Sees Off Abba To Scoop Ticketing Award
Kaizen is unlikely to share a stage with Agnetha, Anni-Frid, Benny, and Bjorn anytime soon but ticketing’s pluckiest underdogs did beat ABBA Voyage to win The Ticketing Business Awards’ 2024 Disruptor Award.
The Emirates Old Trafford in Manchester, was the setting for the famous – and unexpected, considering the competition – win in the ‘Virtual/Community Ticket’ category. The Ticketing Business Awards are the only awards to recognise a whole spectrum of achievements from across the global entertainment ticketing industry. Hundreds of nominations were whittled down to create the shortlist, judged by an independent panel of industry figures.
Founder and Managing Director, David Lynam, said: “Picking up the trophy for the Disruptor category is a real honour. Getting recognition from fellow industry professionals means a lot. I was taken aback by the support and goodwill towards us that night and we will always be grateful for it.”
