Free start-up to challenge dominance of Ticketmaster
Howard Lake | 11 February 2008 | News
A London based start-up is set to challenge the dominance of Ticketmaster in the online ticketing sector, allowing organisers to sell tickets online free of charge, with no booking fees charged to their customers.
URgoing.to will make life easier for the myriad of smaller event organisers who wish to set-up online ticketing and merchandising for their event. For years the online ticketing market has been dominated by sites such as Ticketmaster and Ticketweb, who only deal with large scale events and charge booking fees both to organisers and to their customers.
The website allows organisers to collect ticket payments directly into their PayPal accounts, rather than collecting the funds on their behalf and then forwarding them on, hence helping to reduce any cash-flow problems a smaller organiser may be facing. As the site is free to use as an organiser and there are no booking fees for ticket-buyers it seems an ideal system for those organising a fund-raising event.
Urgoing.to provides a flexible platform enabling the ticketing of any sized event, anywhere in the world, to be set-up in minutes. Each event is then allocated a unique URL of choice, e.g. www.Urgoing.to/MyEvent. If events are private, organisers can chose not to appear in the URgoing.to directory. If the event is made public, aesthetic “buy tickets” and “book now” buttons can be coded into any external website to link directly to the specific URgoing.to page, providing a useful tool to event organisers.
Advanced ticketing options also ensure flexibility, as organisers are able to sell several different types of tickets for the same event, offer automatic discount periods to customers to encourage early booking or to shift tickets last-minute and sell extras or merchandise such as raffle tickets or t-shirts. Tickets and merchandise can be purchased 24/7 between the specified dates, with payments (in all major currencies) instantly received into the organiser’s PayPal account. Organisers can then keep track on their progress with sales reports and guest lists that can be produced at any time to see how many tickets/merchandise have been sold and to whom.
URgoing.to is already being used to host a wide range of events, from salsa weekends to club nights, and conventions to talent shows and fundraising parties. The wide scope of events hosted on URgoing.to naturally makes it an attractive platform for organisers to promote their event on, as all public events receive a worldwide listing and can be searched for intuitively by keyword, date, location etc.
Urgoing.to’s Adam Symons said: “We believe we have got a product here that will revolutionise the way people organise their events. URgoing.to can work for anyone and is free to use, so watch this space”.
Notes to Editor:
Bullet Point Summary
– Free to use online ticketing service for any kind of event/course/holiday
– Events are listed on the URgoing directory unless otherwise specified by user
– Events are given specific URLs and can be both private or public, paid or free
– Different priced tickets can be sold for the same event and automatic discount periods can be set
– Organisers can take payments for extras or merchandise
– Payments are taken directly into a PayPal account and can be processed in all major currencies
– Barcoded tickets are delivered by email
– Detailed sales reports and guest lists are available on site
Case Study
Laura Jackson and Leigh Gower – Fundraising party to raise money for Norwood, October 2007
“We had never thought of collecting money for our event online, but it was very simple to set up and didn’t cost us anything.”
In October 2007 Laura and Leigh hosted a party to help raise funds for a sponsored bike ride through South-East Asia, and ticketed their event through URgoing.to. They raised over £1000 in total and were very impressed by the simplicity of the system: “It only took 5 minutes to set-up and we could check up on our progress with sales reports whenever we wanted to”. They added that organising the event online made life easier on them: “It was great not to have to mess around with cash and waiting for cheques to clear”
Contact details
Adam Symons, Head of Marketing
ad**@UR*****.to
07771 535 972
020 3051 2719
www.URgoing.to
Images and materials are available at
www.URgoing.to/press
Adam Symons
+44 (0) 20 3051 2719
+44 (0) 7771 535972
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.