The company is now using cloud computing - where services are hosted on and accessed through the internet, as opposed to operating through mainframe servers - and wants to expand its use of unmanned, automated ticketing kiosks.
TicketDirect managing director Matthew Davey said with cloud computing TicketDirect could now handle any size or scale of event and would be able to compete against large competitors Ticketek and Tickeketmaster, in Australia and the United States, respectively.
"Cloud computing means we can scale our operations at an incredible rate. It is this elasticity that is particularly appealing to us" Mr Davey said yesterday.
He estimated that since the company began in 1999 in Dunedin, the city's sports and theatre organisations had benefited by $12 million, using the TicketDirect selling system, as opposed to a larger share of profits going to an Australian ticketing company.
"They [Dunedin organisations] earn the service fees that would otherwise go overseas," Mr Davey said in an interview yesterday.
Mr Davey has been in negotiations with the management of Forsyth Barr Stadium to provide ticketing services, which could include kiosks at some stage, but no decision had been made, he said.
TicketDirect earlier this year unveiled New Zealand-made, unmanned, automated ticketing kiosks and 11 have been installed in The Warehouse outlets in Canterbury, South Canterbury and the West Coast, as part of a marketing strategy to fulfil ticketing contracts with both the Crusaders and Canterbury Rugby Union.
"We would like to see more kiosks in locations where people shop ... early indications are that it is extremely successful and well accepted by the purchasing public," Mr Davey said.
The Canterbury union had subsequently reported a 20% increase in ticket sales, having sold on average 20,000 tickets for each of the Crusaders' six home games this season.
Mr Davey said the cloud computing success in ticket selling was being able to handle peak ticket demand without having to have expensive hardware sitting around during the non-spike periods.
"We can go from selling around 6000 tickets a day to 100,000 tickets an hour if we need, and we can do it anywhere in the world. Cloud hosting removes location from the equation, and for New Zealand companies that is pretty exciting," Mr Davey said.
The world was " littered with examples" where tickets had gone on sale and the ticket company's servers had crashed because they could not keep up with demand.
The company began in 1999 when Otago rugby wanted a ticketing system robust enough to carry it through the perceived down side of Y2K issues over 1999-2000. That prompted TicketDirect to then take its system to other sports and entertainment organisations around the country.
At present, TicketDirect has 20 employees, and has its headquarters in Dunedin, with two other offices in New Zealand and a fourth in Sydney.
Mr Davey said TicketDirect was the only New Zealand company, and one of only 20 in the world, in Microsoft's TAP (Technical Adoption Programme) using its new Azure cloud computing platform, which recently featured at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.
TicketDirect
> Works with more than 80 venues across New Zealand and Australia and is the largest ticket provider for professional sport in New Zealand.
> Has rights to 11 of the 14 rugby unions - Southland, Otago, Canterbury, Tasman, Manawatu, Taranaki, Hawkes Bay, Bay of Plenty, Counties-Manakau, North Harbour and Northland.
> 2010: Has services for six international tests, including three All Black tests at Dunedin, Christchurch and New Plymouth, the Bledisloe Cup in Christchurch and three Maori centenary matches in Whangarei, Rotorua and Napier.
> Ticketing for four of the five ANZ Netball franchises, the Michael Hill NZ Open and most regional theatres and multipurpose centres in New Zealand.
