Following five exciting weekends of rugby’s Guinness Six Nations, 370,000 Tixserve-powered digital tickets were delivered across both Twickenham Stadium London, and the Principality Stadium Cardiff, for fixtures against Scotland, France, Ireland and Italy.
Digital match day ticketing, hospitality ticketing and car parking passes were issued via the Tixserve platform and delivered into the relevant clients’ white label ticketing apps.
The solution enabled the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) and England Rugby (RFU) to capture accurate ticket holder data, including ticket transfers; allocate tickets to sponsors, clubs and visiting teams digitally; hinder ticket fraud with patented security features; generate an active revenue stream; and ensure a smooth mobile entry experience for fans visiting both stadiums.
Digital Ticket Delivery
Both Union’s Six Nations tickets were delivered into their branded digital ticketing apps - powered by Tixserve.
Using the Tixserve digital ticket fulfilment solution, the WRU and RFU could easily design their interactive digital tickets with informative event details, an interactive map with transport information and seating plans — and uniquely included event content, sponsorship branding, advertising, and mobile commerce functionality.
Both clients also used the push notifications function to communicate event info and announcements to all ticket holders before, during and after match days - with over 1 million notifications sent from the Tixserve-powered platform throughout the Six Nations series.
Verified Data
The Tixserve solution provided accurate customer data allowing the WRU and RFU to know every ticket holder - including ticket transfers - and where they were seated at the stadium on match day.
The England V Ireland match, on 12th March at Twickenham Stadium, saw highlight statistics recording approximately 97,000 ticket transfers of the 66,000 digital tickets; and a staggering 32,000 of these fans were new to RFU’s database.
Steve Kitcher, Head of Ticketing at RFU commented:
“The RFU’s use of the Tixserve solution has delivered some great successes across the organisation in what is a relatively short space of time. Not only are we providing the England Rugby family with an efficient way to receive and distribute their match tickets; the data now available to us is providing information that will really drive our decision-making going forward.”
The WRU at the 74,000-capacity Principality Stadium had similarly impressive figures at the Wales V Scotland fixture with 60,826 ticket transfers and 52% of ticket holder data being new and clean data for the WRU.
Matthew Clarke, Ticketing Manager at WRU, commented:
“The move to a fully digital approach for Welsh Rugby internationals at Principality Stadium has been adopted with overwhelming positivity by supporters and stakeholders alike. The user-friendly solution delivered by Tixserve provides a robust digital ticket and has also opened up access to data in order to provide key operational messages to all attendees and offers future commercial opportunities.”
The accurate data also gives the event organisers new and powerful marketing opportunities, allowing them to personally market future events to fans they now know may be interested in attending.
Visiting Teams and Sponsor Allocations
Competing teams playing against England (RFU) and Wales (WRU) rugby teams were given access to the Distribution Portal to securely self-distribute their own ticket allocations. This process provided the RFU and WRU with full ticket traceability and accurate attendee data for all their home fixtures, whilst eliminating traditional paper ticket distribution costs.
Sponsors were also able to easily self-distribute digital tickets whilst getting full transparency on knowing when the tickets had been delivered to their clients - and who those clients transferred their tickets to.
Digital Ticket Security
Digital ticket security was achieved by Tixserve’s patented security features whereby the QR code was protected / hidden until a predetermined time set by the WRU and RFU.
Revenue Generation
The rugby series also saw the adoption of Tixserve’s in-app mobile commerce and fan engagement tools. Both rugby unions added engaging and interactive content, services and offers to their digital tickets - allowing them to generate additional revenue before and during match day. The WRU advertised links to their official WRU store and the RFU offered Click & Collect pre-order services to their official merchandise store.
Patrick Kirby, Managing Director of Tixserve, commented:
“The Six Nations campaign followed on from the successful Autumn Internationals and as a client-focused company, the Tixserve team is delighted with the positive feedback from England Rugby and Welsh Rugby. The Tixserve product is now selling itself and a number of senior executives involved in the live sporting and music events who used the Tixserve-powered mobile ticketing apps at Twickenham Stadium and Principality Stadium were motivated to contact us resulting in very exciting new business opportunities in the UK and other international markets”.
Beyond the Six Nations, this Summer sees more exciting upcoming events for both the WRU and RFU. This June, Stereophonics and Tom Jones will be at Principality Stadium for two sell-out shows. The Tixserve-powered digital ticketing app will be used by fans and will allow the artists and promoters to utilise the in-app revenue generation opportunities.
At Twickenham Stadium, the Premiership Rugby Final will return this June for another energised battle to see who becomes the Champions of 2022.