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Eventbrite adds reserved seating onto its platform
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 6 March 2014
Ticketing firm Eventbrite yesterday announced the launch of new reserved seating functionality within its platform, which will allow promoters and event organisers who sell their tickets via the service to set up venue plans and allocate specific seats to punters as they buy. Down the line the new widget will also likely allow customers to choose their own seats.
Announcing the new functionality, which will be made available to all Eventbrite users for free, initially in the US and later this month via its other websites around the world, the firm’s CEO Kevin Hartz told CMU: “Reserved seating technology has been broken for years, and it shows in the experience organisers and attendees face today. The industry is hungry for an alternative, and today’s launch is our first step in eliminating the pain of outdated and expensive reserved seating tools and replacing them with simple, yet robust technology”.
The firm reckons that its Seat Designer widget, through which promoters input a seating plan into the system, is more sophisticated than the process used by those ticketing companies that already offer a reserved seating option, and allows more flexibility for venues where seating plans vary from show to show. Says Senior Director Of Product (Platform) Sean Porter: “We challenged ourselves to throw out all assumptions and rethink how reserved seats are sold and bought. The result progresses Eventbrite’s mission to transform arcane and inaccessible tools into solutions that are intuitive and globally available to all event organisers and attendees”.
Of course, Eventbrite is used by event organisers well beyond the music space, and arguably reserved seating is more important for theatre, comedy and gala events than the grassroots gig community, where most shows are probably standing anyway. And even where venues are seated, smaller shows don’t generally offer reserved seats. Though it will be interesting to see if there is any interest for that functionality in the grassroots music domain once it’s available in a free and easy-to-use fashion.
