TICKETING PRODUCTS & SERVICES
Payment plan: Subscription-based ticket
models offer sports clubs the same success
of online companies to stabilize revenue
Ever since online-based companies
began to establish and introduce
subscription models as a way of
providing constant access to services
and content, such as music or video
streaming, it has rapidly gained in popularity
within the greater market. Today, it is
commonplace to see a wide range of
companies offering a subscription plan for
its services, all paid for by consumers with
an automatic monthly bill, rather than an
annual contract. Due to the number of
benefits it offers both retailers and
consumers, it’s no surprise.
In the digital payment era, the
subscription model is easy to operate. For
customers, an automatically paid monthly bill
relieves the stress from having to remember
making a payment on time. A monthly
payment option, as opposed to an annual
fee, also takes the financial strain away of
having to pay for services upfront in one
lump sum and is less of a bill shock than an
annual payment.
At the same time, businesses are
benefiting even more. Subscription reduces
the cost of maintaining existing customers
and also provides revenue prediction, which
is valuable data. However, all these benefits
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64
of a subscription-based payment model
aren’t exclusively reserved for digital industry
companies such as Spotify or Netflix.
Fan favorite
Danish Alka Superliga soccer clubs FC
Copenhagen and AaB Fodbold became the
first teams in the league to decide to switch
to a subscription-based ticketing model
to see how it could perform in a market
dominated for years by season tickets. For
FC Copenhagen, the result was greater than
it had anticipated as it reached its highest
number of season tickets sold in the past
decade. AaB, meanwhile, sold more than 50%
of its season tickets as a subscription.
“We see the subscription model as the
future for sports clubs and are expecting
subscriptions to be the successor of the old
business model with season tickets in FC
Copenhagen. We have been witnessing the
change in the North American market and
are working to fit it to the Danish/European
market,” says Mikkel Bjerre, ticketing manager
of FC Copenhagen.
From these two case studies it goes to
show that the subscription model not only is
well-suited to the sports industry, but it’s also
something that is clubs are clearly lacking
and should look to adopt. There are few
markets that face the problem of unstable
revenue as much as sports clubs, where
ticket sales are as unpredictable as the game
itself. Ticket sale disruption is always evident
when the team is underperforming, and
therefore a subscription may be the ideal
solution to mitigate this factor as it takes the
emotion away from the decision to buy a
ticket or not.
Roboticket and NewC, the two companies
that are providing the technical solution for
FC Copenhagen and AaB Fodbold are fully
optimistic for the future of this model. A
subscription model is fully supported and
easily achievable for every team using its
ticketing and fan relationship management
system, allowing every team the opportunity
to implement the technology.
With this in mind, perhaps very soon the
subscription-based ticketing model will
become as popular among sports teams as it
is currently among technology companies. n
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