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CASE STUDY

A New Revenue Management Capability

A pricing, forecasting and reporting system for the Ambassador Theatre Group.

The Client

The Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG) is a major international theatre organisation with 46 venues across the UK, USA and Australia. Their business model combines theatre ownership with production management, marketing and ticketing operations. This complete control means that ATG is a world leader and major influencer in the arts.

By itself, the ATG Tickets business is one of the largest global players in live events ticketing, used by over 11 million people a year to purchase 16 million tickets. Events include hit musicals, plays, concerts, comedy shows, attractions and exhibitions.

Revenue Management at ATG is the art of filling events spaces to capacity (which delivers the best audience experience) at a price-point that works for both customers and producers.

THE CHALLENGE

Despite almost 75% of their UK venues sitting outside London, the traditional focus of the Revenue Management team had been on the West End. The team had begun to expand its focus into the regions but they awere finding it challenging to assimilate the substantial increase in data and research required to price optimally.

Although the team had acquired a deep knowledge of pricing from years of experience, the substantial increase in the numbers of shows, performances and venues that now required their attentions was a challenge.

ATG engaged Unai to help develop a Revenue Management System for the regions, a system that could support and automate much of the manual activity that was consuming the team's time, enabling them to focus on higher value analysis and decision-making.

What Unai Delivered

  • Data Integration. Unai consolidated the variety of regional data feeds into a single, consolidated data model. This reporting database not only provided sales intelligence but supported analysis of patterns of demand and sales performance.

  • Dynamic Pricing Tool. A major headache for the Revenue Management team was updating the sales systems with price changes across a large number of shows. Unai developed a Dynamic Pricing tool which combined specific business rules with optimised pricing schedules to feed automated pricing adjustments to the sales platform.

  • Demand Model. Unai developed a brand new demand model, powered by modern machine learning to produce the most accurate forecasts of ticketing demand that ATG had ever had access to. The model was responsive: when demand deviated from predictions the algorithm would adjust the recommended pricing - an adjustment the Revenue Management team could either accept or overrule.

The Result

The Revenue Management system is now live, with Unai delivering long- term technical support and feature improvements. The system saves hundreds of hours of time each month and an internal ATG study attributed a 3% increase in tickeing revenues due to dynamic pricing.

It’s very rare to work with external developers who want to enable your business to succeed as much as you, but that’s exactly what you get when working with Unai.

From the very first briefing meeting, they understood what it was that we were trying to achieve, and after a few days provided a comprehensive overview and plan outlining the steps required to achieve our objective. Setting Unai apart from other companies however, was how accommodating and truly agile they were and willing to work to an ever changing brief.

What they built for us was a bespoke and unique analytics platform which now enables ATG to offer a service unrivalled within the theatre industry.

Alison Tracey, Head of Revenue Management. ATG Tickets