Powering Digital Ticketing at Scale at Rugby’s 2021 Autumn Internationals

Tixserve scaled up its digital ticket solution at the Rugby Autumn Internationals 2021 with over 430,000 admissions across two of the world’s largest and most iconic rugby venues - Principality Stadium and Twickenham Stadium.

Approach

Tixserve’s enterprising ticket fulfilment solution proved its capabilities at the rugby series - powering hundreds of thousands of digital tickets and passes for multiple events and product types across different sites - while ensuring ease of event entry, seamless traffic flow and queue management into the stadiums.

Technology

Three white label digital ticketing apps were used across the series - the Twickenham Stadium app, the Principality Stadium Ticketing app, and the all-new PSE VIP Tickets app.

PSE (Principality Stadium Experience) VIP Tickets app

The Autumn rugby series saw the deployment of the new Principality Stadium Experience (PSE) digital ticketing app built solely for hospitality and premium guests. Designed to optimise the hospitality experience, staff’s workflow and operations, and improve ticket and event security at the games - all guests now experience a personalised entry to their lounges, suites and boxes on match day.

Distribution Portal for International Teams and Sponsors

The Tixserve-powered Distribution Portals were used by all sponsors and competing teams to distribute their digital tickets to supporters, which included New Zealand Rugby, South Africa Rugby, Australia Rugby Union, and others.

This eliminated traditional ticket distribution costs and provided Principality Stadium and Twickenham Stadium with accurate attendee information and ticket traceability.

Outcomes

Using three distinct digital ticketing apps, two venue entry scan apps, several distribution portals and management portals - across multiple locations - Tixserve proved its robustness and scalability at the 2021 sporting fixtures.

Since successfully rolling out the digital ticketing system at Principality Stadium in the previous 2021 Summer Internationals, the WRU were confident in Tixserve’s ability to facilitate 100% digital ticketing at the full-attendance 74,500-capacity venue for the Autumn Internationals.

Across the series, Tixserve successfully enabled sponsors, commercial partners and rugby’s worldwide membership to utilise the ticket distribution system which required no training due to the software’s intuitive interface.

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.”

Steve Kitcher, Head of Ticketing at RFU said:

“We were delighted with how well our Autumn Series went; fans’ entry into the stadium was smooth and gave us great confidence for the forthcoming Six Nations.”