As we roll into the second quarter of the year, I wanted to take a minute to reflect on a phenomenal first quarter for our clients and our own organisation. Across our whole international business, the team and I have been working hard winning new clients, delivering some of the biggest sports projects in the world, and most importantly helping our clients grow their businesses and delight their fans.
On the Tournaments side of the business, we are delighted to announce our new partnership with the 2018 Mediterranean Games which will be held in Tarragona this year – the teams in Barcelona and Madrid will be working hard to ensure we deliver a great service for this fantastic event.
Alongside this, our technology team in Athens, along with our project team on the ground in Tokyo have delivered incredible volumes of ticket sales for the 2019 Rugby World Cup, using our tournaments platform to deliver multiple, complex phases of balloting across packages, single tickets and various closed user groups. With the event only 18 months away, the team is starting to get their hands dirty on-site – check out the picture of them at the venue for next year’s final in Yokohama.
Back in the UK we’re very proud to welcome Motherwell FC to the Ticketmaster Sport family. We’d like to thank them for putting their trust in us, and we’re looking forward to working with their teams in the new season. We’re also delighted that Hampshire Cricket have renewed their contract with us, and we look forward to helping them build upon their recent expansion and successes through great service and innovation.
Outside the UK I’d like to congratulate our team in the Netherlands for delivering a fantastic UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Q1 – the Dutch showed once again what passionate sports fans they are, and our team did a great job of ensuring that ticketing was delivered seamlessly – check out the case study. To round out a packed Q1, Moscow Ticketing Forum were kind enough to invite me to speak at their 2018 edition – great to see such a huge audience, and enjoy time with colleagues in the growing industry in Russia and the wider region discussing their challenges and opportunities.
Finally, and by no means least, at the start of the year, we were thrilled to announce our new global relationship with the IAAF. Coming off the back of an incredibly successful World Championships in 2017 we have worked closely with the team at IAAF to ensure we can help them achieve their goals of engaging athletics fans around the world and providing a destination to discover the wealth of incredible events they stage. We’re hugely proud to be part of the IAAF’s exciting vision for the future. Our next track and field event is the Athletics World Cup 2018 – a fantastic new competition at the London Stadium this summer.
As we look forward to the next quarter, the hard work keeps coming, and we can’t wait! It’s almost football playoff season and we’ll be working with the teams who have their incredible moment at Wembley Stadium, plus we’ll have another announcement about one of the world’s greatest events.
We’ll continue to hold workshops and events around the new GDPR laws which come into effect towards the end of May, to ensure our clients are informed and prepared – if we can do anything to help you and your business please do get in touch. Finally, there are some major announcements around product and technology which we’re excited to share with you very soon.
To sign off, I’d just like to give a shout out to our amazing people across client services and technology. They really are at the heart of our success, and they are continually motivated by the ambitions of our equally incredible clients and the relationships we have with them. We all look forward to a great summer working on amazing tournaments, the upcoming cricket season, the culmination of an amazing football season and much more besides.
Adam Newsam
Managing Director, Ticketmaster Sport
