Would you like a TicketForEvent?

A Ticket for Event is an online e-ticketing and registration platform which is operating worldwide. This is an easy tool for event organizers to easily arrange e-ticket sales. To learn more about it Voice of Russia's 'Rushing for Success' program host Linda Mills is joined by Anton Skazochkin, who is the Sales Director at TicketForEvent.

 

So, you work worldwide selling tickets or just for events worldwide?

Anton Skazochkin: We have organizers from around 15 countries, I think, and ticket buyers form more than 50.

Tell me about how the company got started?

Anton Skazochkin: The company was started in 2011. The technological part of the platform was part of another project, but then, there were many customer requests. The customers basically asked – we want this thing to be a separate project and pay only for the ticketing part. So, the management of the company decided to make it a separate project and call it a Ticket for Event.

We are an international company with the headquarters in London. There is a big sales office in Russia, also a sales and technology center in Ukraine and a representative office in Turkey.

I can imagine that you are not the only company of this sort in the world.

Anton Skazochkin: Yes, this is correct, but the niche that we are working in was basically vacant and this is why there were so many customer requests. The idea is to provide b2b (business to business) platform. There are many operators that are doing b2c (business to customer) ticket sales for concerts, for sporting events and things like that. But there was no platform for b to b ticket sales.

So, you don’t sell to customers at all.

Anton Skazochkin: We do, but our customers are the event organizers. So, they come to us, we conduct a contract and via our service they sell the tickets to the end customer. Our target audience is basically the top of b to b market and we do not go deeply into small organizers or the b to c market at the moment.

And what is the scope of events?

Anton Skazochkin: We have business events, seminars, trainings. We have concerts, sports events, even museum tickets or excursions. And it is starting from – I don’t know – 10 people, and the biggest event we had was in Kiev a few years ago, it was about 130 000.

What was that?

Anton Skazochkin: I think that there is no English word for the holiday. It is Maslenitsa. We were the main ticket operator and we did the checking at the entrance.

So, you also provide services on the ground for the event as well.

Anton Skazochkin: We provide all the necessary prerequisites. If we need, we do that, of course. But the idea is that this is a self-service platform. So, we provide all the tools and the organizer is able to do everything by himself.

And what about the kinds of events? Is there a difference as far as the market and what kinds of events people buy tickets for? Either more business-oriented trainings in the West or in Russia? What are some of the tendencies as far what kinds of things people prefer to buy or attend?

Anton Skazochkin: We are mostly a business-oriented platform. The business market in Russia in growing and it is more or less the same with Europe. But there are, of course, some interesting examples that I haven't seen anywhere but the CIS market. For example, just recently we had a request of a company selling tickets to a survival spaceship, which will be built in like 10 or something years. The tickets are $1-5 million. This is a survival ship in case of a catastrophe and 5000 people would be able to save themselves on this ship, but they would need to book the tickets now via our service.

This is crazy! What kind of growth have you witnessed since launching the company?

Anton Skazochkin: We are showing I think 200+% growth per year.

What is making you grow, 200% year is really good?

Anton Skazochkin: I would say that, probably, it is the popularity of the service and people are getting more used to paying online. The Internet penetration is expanding and the amount of banking cards that people have in their hands is expanding.

What is the most challenging thing about working on the Russian market?

Anton Skazochkin: At the moment the most challenging part is to be able to offer our service to all the types of customer, because we really bring a lot of advantages and to feel it, you need to try and be able to afford our service. So, we are now working on several ways of making our services cheaper. And we are even launching something like a low cost project for the really small organizers.

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