There is a performance on our next season that we are expecting to be very popular and to sell out quickly. We want to ensure that we make a good number of tickets available to students and would like to do so via a lottery.
I see in previous questions posted on the subject that Royal Albert Hall and The Public Theater have programs they like. Would anyone else have suggestions based on experience for approaches that work?
Anyone want to help prevent headaches by sharing things that have been tried and gone horribly wrong?
Thank you!
In addition to what Nicole mentioned, when we ran the Wicked lottery at The Kentucky Center, we made sure each day had a corresponding stamp color and design so lottery-winners couldn't bring in their previous winning entries and try to get additional tickets to a future performance. Depending on how many tickets you're planning to allocate to the lottery, you may want to do a hard pull of tickets ahead of time, pay them off to a dummy payment method, and require cash only purchases for lottery winners. It worked well for us. Just make sure you have a seasoned veteran operating those transactions.
If you're looking for a digital lottery platform, I believe the The Public, as well as a variety of Broadway and off-Broadway houses here in New York, use the TodayTix app for their lotteries. We use it here at Roundabout, and it's been successful. Another option is looking into Jujamcyn Theater's model. They currently operate the Hamilton lottery. It may be a little more in-depth than what you're looking to do, but it's a very clean design and works well (other than the fact I've never won).
Lastly, you may need to look into setting aside an accessible location in addition to your general lottery allocation. I'm not sure how your venue handles accessibility, but it's definitely something to look into.
Hope this helps!
Emily - I had not heard of TodayTix and would be interested to learn more about how that works. Will you be at the conference this year?
And thanks for the reminder about accessible seating, I'll be sure to tuck some away for this student ticket lottery.
We've decided to allow people to register for the lottery in advance via a google form which will allow us to import the information into Tessitura. Still haven't figured out how to generate winners but we've got time.
Unfortunately not this year. :/
The way we use TodayTix is by allocating seats through holds and they run a digital lottery through their app. Anyone can log on and enter throughout the day, and they're automatically are awarded additional entries if they share their entry on social media channels. Yay free marketing!
Lotteries close 1-2 hours before the performance and patrons are required to pick up their tickets from the Box Office. I'm not sure how the setup works on the back-end or how to get started with your venue; I'm currently working on the Box Office side of things. I would suggest sending a note over to their support team. They should be able to determine best practices for your venue: https://todaytix.zendesk.com/hc/en-us
Hi Christina!
Just seeing this lottery post - we do a virtual lottery every day for Shakespeare in the Park.
We used to run our own lottery with a series of SSMS procedures, but this year switched to TodayTix.
With the TodayTix integration we customized the Tess standard order import procedure so that when TodayTix sends us the winners' names, we can have Theater Managers upload data files to a local web site which imports/matches constituents + creates orders - takes about 5 minutes, and we get lots of new names into the system. It was a heavy lift setting it up but it's been working out pretty great.
Feel free to email me direct // I will also be at the conference and would be happy to connect there.
Also - I'm from Ann Arbor - go blue!
frannie
Thanks for the info about TodayTix. I'm curious to hear more about it and will find you at the conference.
Yay that you're from Ann Arbor! Go Blue!
See you soon.
Christina