Preston North End scores ticketing win

 Preston North End Football Club is implementing a new ticketing solution from sports technology specialist Advanced to improve the online purchasing experience for its fans. From the end of the 2019/20 season the Championship football club will begin using TALENT, a Cloud-based ticketing and fan engagement solution which is also used by fellow Championship sides Leeds United and Wigan Athletic. 

This new deal follows a comprehensive review of the ticketing market to achieve the club’s ambitions to provide the best online fan experience. In addition, the corporate hospitality department at Preston North End will be taking advantage of the hospitality module to provide high value corporate and hospitality, offering fans with a premium online experience. This will give the football club flexibility to sell executive boxes and lounges more effectively online, therefore increasing its premium revenue potential all year round. 

“The profitability of our club heavily relies on ticketing revenue,” says Hannah Woodburn, Ticket Office Manager at Preston North End. “So it’s crucial we use the best ticketing software. Advanced has long been recognised as a leading supplier of highly flexible ticketing software to similar size clubs to us – and this is exactly why we are investing in its TALENT solution. It will enable us to grow our fan base as well as support our commitment to technology innovation which we see as essential for boosting the online experience and increasing online sales.” 

TALENT is designed specifically for clubs and venues like Preston North End. It provides a personalised, responsive and secure online user experience, offering fans full mobile functionality for the sale of tickets and both matchday and seasonal hospitality. As a Cloud-based application, TALENT allows tickets to be bought on any device, giving the ticket office greater flexibility to sell a range of tickets and experiences from anywhere and at any time.

What’s more, the solution delivers simplified user friendly back office management, as well as comprehensive commercial reporting through Advanced’s Power BI dashboard tool which, for Preston North End, is a clincher as it offers real-time and bespoke reporting. It will work alongside the football club’s existing financial management system (FMS), which will not only enhance forecasting for the finance team and board but generate significant time savings too.

Kevin Abbott, Financial Director for the Lilywhites, explains: “We are particularly impressed with the reporting module as we will have the ability to produce different reports relevant to different departments, all of which can be automatically sent to the right person, making daily reconciliation much more efficient. The dashboards will give us easily visible analysis over revenue, ticket sales and fan data and a host of performance metrics like never before – meaning we will have more insight to inform fan engagement strategies.”

Mark Dewell, Managing Director – Public, Private and Third Sector – at Advanced, concludes: “Advanced has a strong track record in the sports sector and it is a strategic focus for us to grow our footprint. We really wanted to work with Preston North End and our tenacious approach has certainly paid off. We are confident our solution will deliver the fast and reliable online service its fans have now come to expect, while supporting the prosperity of the club.”