In 10 years of business, Lynne King Smith and Brad Smith, co-founders of TicketForce, have successfully helped thousands of venues and promoters drastically increase ticketing revenues and control their patron data. Since its incorporation in 2003, TicketForce, a leading provider of ticketing solutions in the U.S. and Canada, has serviced over 3,000 venues and promoters in 49 states and Canada.
In 2012 alone, TicketForce clients created more than $20 million in ticketing revenue utilizing the company’s solutions.
Lynne and her husband, Brad’s, passion for the industry and for providing real results to clients has resulted in major growth for their company; in fact, TicketForce has doubled its revenue every year for the first five years with private funding – and has increased revenue ever year since inception. Ticket sales in 2012 totaled $52 million.
“Brad and I both have non-profit experience, and love the live event market,” said Lynne. “As event planners and promoters in the 90’s, we were always streamlining processes and finding creative solutions for our clients. We still love finding solutions today!”
The company started with just two employees, Lynne and Brad, and a single client in their garage office in 2002. Today, the company has employed over 50 people. That first client, Extreme Faith Productions, is still a client today, 10 years later. In fact, the company retains 99 percent of its clients year after year.
TicketForce is known for its scalable, full suite of ticketing solutions, including private label, full-service, social and mobile ticketing options. Featuring a customer-centric buying experience, TicketForce’s ticketing solutions include event/client branding, video clips, social media sharing and more. The company offers its services at a much lower fee per ticket than its publically held competitors and delivers a more personal level of customer service.
“Our clients appreciate that they can pick up the phone and call us at any time,” said Lynne. “What’s more – they have access to myself and Brad, not just our employees. We take pride in that accessibility that clients have to us, and we make it a priority to get to know our clients face-to-face whenever possible. Many of them have become friends.”
The company is widely known as one of the most innovative ticketing solutions across multiple genres including performing arts, universities, arenas, civic venues, concert halls, casinos, racing, fairs, rodeos and festivals. So far in 2013, TicketForce has signed more than $500,000 in new business across many of those sectors.
Lynne says that TicketForce differentiates itself further by offering marketing tools to help its clients sell more tickets – a feature that many other companies promise to deliver but never actually execute.
“We offer free monthly social media webinars, toolkits, LinkedIn discussions, complete analytics and consulting to ensure that our clients have the know-how to utilize the latest marketing tools to truly sell more tickets,” said Lynne. “We have found that our investment in those resources generate real results for our clients, and in turn, for TicketForce.”
The company has become a true family business over the past decade. Brad’s mom was TicketForce’s first call center employee and all three of the pair’s daughters have worked for the company at some point over the past decade. Today, Lynne’s brother, Ron King, is one of TicketForce’s IT specialists and her oldest daughter, Joanna, has returned full-time as a business administrator.
“Our employees are like family – we take trips, have monthly lunches, and have an atmosphere of collaboration and acceptance,” said Lynne. “You’ll never find them throwing each other under the bus – it’s a tight group. And that’s what brings me to work every day. Tickets are secondary to creating a fantastic place to work.”
For more information about TicketForce, visit www.ticketforce.com.
