JANUARY 2017 VENUES TODAY 59

BOX OFFICE 2017

STARAWARDS

Embracing the ThrillTricia Brown deals with big egos with grace and style

by CHAD SWIATECKI

IN A ROUNDABOUT WAY, THE 2016 RIO

OLYMPICS WON TRICIA BROWN HER

VENUES TODAY 2017 BOX OFFICE STAR

AWARD. The Olympics also turned into a bigwin for the city of Indianapolis and BankersLife Fieldhouse and put Tricia Brown and herticketing team into a high profile pressurecooker. One ripple effect of the internationalgames was that the WNBA took a late-sum-mer pause so its players could represent theirhome countries in Brazil, which meant thatdates normally reserved for the Indiana Feverwere available. One of those late-August dateswound up turning into the kick-off concert forrapper Kanye West’s Saint Pablo tour, whichwas one of the most anticipated slates of theyear.

What set the Kanye date apart from otherarena shows was that West’s tour featured aunique hanging stage that made the venue pro-duction and seating plot something that hadnever been done before. Brown said seat killsand shifts were an ever-changing circumstanceright up to the day of the show because the tourcrew was figuring out its production needs as itworked to prepare for the kick-off date. That meant she had to work as a sort ofair traffic controller, managing the shiftingseating map as the space needs for the stagechanged and letting affected customers knowthey might have their seats moved the day ofthe show. “Kanye and his team were here for a weekand a half to prepare and get the show ready,and (Kanye) was very hands on for the full pro-

duction,” Brown said. “We had the ego rampwith floor barricades; VIP that was close to thestage; and everything we built changed on thefly. It was a case of, now we’re adding GA onthe floor, now we’re adding a pop-up tent inthe seating bowl so the band isn’t interferedwith. Right up until the day of the show every-thing was changing with our seating.” Brown had plenty of familiarity with thevenue because of her 16 years there, which hercolleagues say was key to making sure thehigh-stakes booking went off smoothly. Mel Raines, senior vice president of facili-ties operations for Pacers Sports &Entertainment, said the venue’s entire teamknew what was at stake when West’s touropted to launch with the Midwest date insteadof a more typical opening bow on one of thecoasts. “We knew from the moment we con-firmed both the weeklong rehearsal dates aswell as opening night of the Kayne West SaintPablo Tour that the whole team would need tobe flexible in every area but, especially, withbox office operations,” Raines said. “Tricia’sknowledge of Bankers Life Fieldhouse after 15years of working in the box office with hun-dreds of shows under her belt, as well as work-ing with various artist representatives and pro-moters, means she is always thinking a fewsteps ahead. Tricia was in constant communi-cation with the show promoter in regards toshow production changes, their ticketing needsfor artists and guests, and anticipating theirrequests on a 24/7 basis.” Brown said customers were receptivewhen notified of possible seat changes, withany resulting upgrades helping to build loyalty

TRICIA BROWN BOX OFFICE DIRECTOR, PACERS SPORTS

& ENTERTAINMENT, BANKERS LIFE

FIELDHOUSE, INDIANAPOLIS

“Kanye and his team were

here for a week and a half

to prepare and get the show

ready, and (Kanye) was

very hands on for the full

production.”


BOX OFFICE 2017

STARAWARDS


The Voice of ReasonDrama-free Lee Ann Gibbons coordinated over 200 on-sales in 2016 while incorporating dynamic pricing

by BRAD WEISSBERG

LEE ANN GIBBONS IS THE GREAT

COMMUNICATOR OF THE MESSINA

TOURING GROUP. She communicates withboth artist management and individual boxoffices to build shows and keep holds consis-tent. She also sets up all internal buys, monitorsand distributes tour ticket counts to agents,management and office personnel, and is a keycomponent in all discussions involving scalingand pricing of tickets. She oversees all the flex-ing of pricing as well as monitoringPricemaster initiatives. She coordinates all theVIP tickets, Platinum and American Expressplans and works closely with each touraccountant for settlement. She does all thiswith a staff of three. “What a fantastic honor,” said Gibbonsupon learning she won the 2016 VenuesToday Box Office Star Award. “I love my job,and this is such great confirmation that I’m

doing it well.” Gibbons works in the Austin, Texas,Messina Touring Group office and previouslyworked for AEG Live/Messina TouringGroup in Nashville. In-between, she worked atAustin (Texas) City Limits Live at the MoodyTheater. “I love to multitask and I love the constantschedule changes,” said Gibbons. “I love work-ing with the different tours, the differentartists and managers, and I love the fast-pacedenvironment of the promoters’ world.” Having a ticketing department is new toGibbons in 2016. Previously, she was a one-woman show. “This year was really big and we broughtin a ticketing department which, before, wasdifferent camps putting up shows and central-izing it with me,” said Gibbons. “Being able tobring in additional people for support has been

beneficial for the whole Messina TouringGroup. We’ve been able to centralize the work,and it’s making the ticketing so much better.” “I went from a department of one tofour,” she said. “It was a challenge in the begin-ning months trying to teach the new peoplewhile shows were going on sale, but what’sreally rewarding now is that they are able totake point and people are going to them now.To see them grow is really cool.” “The thing about Lee Ann that makes usfall to our knees with gratefulness is her even-keeled persona,” said Kate McMahon, execu-tive GVP of Messina Tour Group. “We have alot of big personalities in this office and we hadan insane six months. A Lumineers tour, aBlake Shelton tour, Eric Church, GeorgeStrait, it went on and on. Lee Ann took it all instride day after day.”

LEE ANN GIBBONS DIRECTOR OF TICKETING, MESSINA

TOURING GROUP, AUSTIN, TEXAS

“I love to multitask and I love the constant schedule

changes. I love working with the different tours, the

different artists and managers, and I love the fast-paced

environment of the promoters’ world.”


BOX OFFICE 2017

STARAWARDS


Arnold prepared by talking with hiscounterparts at another AEG-managed prop-erty, Staples Center, Los Angeles. “They hada similar experience with Michael Jackson’sfuneral and I thought it would be wise to chatthem up and get as much useful informationabout how to handle a unique situation likethe one I was facing from them,” Arnoldshared. “It was the most similar event I couldfind.” Unlike most events Arnold deals with,this one came with heavy partners — theFBI, Secret Service and local law enforce-ment. “We needed to come up with a planfor who was going to get in; how they weregoing to get in and what the family wantedto do.” Ali’s family took a portion of the ticketsfor the family and dignitaries, and they want-

ed the rest of the tickets to go to the public.“They didn’t want a ticketing companyinvolved or to let the tickets get into scalper’sor ticket reseller’s hands,”Arnold recalled. “It was unlike anything we’ve everdone here,” he said. “We had to get a mani-fest built, which was difficult because wedidn’t know where the altar was going to go.The details were changing by the day, some-times by the minute. The family would wantone thing; law enforcement would say itwasn’t possible and we had to start all overagain.” When it came to the public distributionof the tickets, Ali’s family wanted them to befree, which presented a problem for Arnoldand his team. To avoid a run at the door and the tick-ets going out hundreds at a time, Arnold and

his team decided to limit each person to fourtickets. “We wanted families, kids, long-timefans and, of course, Louisvillians to get thetickets.” Security blocked the plaza for two daysso fans wouldn’t camp out. The day of thefuneral, the plan was to give out the ticketsstarting at 10 a.m. When Arnold arrived at 7a.m., the line was already wrapped aroundthe building. “We didn’t let anyone on the premisesuntil it was light out, but no one expected theline to start forming that early or get so big,so early,” said Arnold. “It seemed like everyman, woman and child in Louisville waslined up, joined by thousands of people fromthe rest of the country. Even internationalvisitors wanted to get in.” Arnold and team counted the number of

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fans waiting in line and realized that theywere already going to max out with just thepeople already there. “If you weren’t in lineby then you weren’t going to get a ticket,” hesaid. He called in staff early, borrowed someadministrative staff and made the call to openthe box office and start handing out the tick-ets. “I didn’t see any reason to keep the peoplestanding in line, freezing, and waiting for theclock to strike 10 a.m.,” he said. In 45 minutes, 15,000-plus tickets werepassed out. The funeral was supposed to start at 11a.m. but didn’t start till 1 p.m. because the pro-cession went through the entire city, Ali’schildhood home and other landmarks aroundLouisville before landing at KFC Yum!Center. Law enforcement prepared for issues —people frustrated because they couldn’t get in,fights breaking out and possibly even a ter-rorist attack. But none of that came to be. “The fans behaved themselves remark-ably well with the decorum and reverencethat one would expect at a funeral,” saidArnold. “The funeral was moving, touchingand represented the best of Louisville.” “Muhammad Ali would have beenproud of how his life impacted so many peo-ple,” he said. “The whole town of Louisvillewas there. It was a neat event.” Arnold manages two full-time staffers, abox office manager and an assistant box officemanager and 25 part-timers. “He handed out 15,000-plus tickets andhe did a excellent job,” said said DennisPetrullo, GM, KFC Yum! Center. “Butlongterm, since 2012, David has done an out-standing job of servicing the promoters andthe building.” “When it comes to events in the build-ing, Dave really gets it,” he said. “He’s atremendous support to the promoters, andwhen they are ready to build a show,Dave’s ready to build the show. He doesn’twork on his schedule; he works oneveryone else’s schedule. That’s the way thatbox office operates.”

“We didn’t have much notice on theMuhammad Ali funeral,” said Petrullo. “Wehad only two business days to work on it.Through Dave’s ingenuity, we were able todeal with the situation in a fluid way and 95percent of the people who showed up gottickets. His leadership skills are superior, andwhat Dave and his entire staff understand isthat we are here for all the promoters andfans that come into the building.” Arnold’s other nontraditional ticketingevent in 2016 was Garth Brooks. The dynam-ic of putting a Garth Brooks show on-sale isdifferent and unique. While Ticketmasterand Brooks team have it down cold, it was allnew to Arnold and his team. “Garth is quite ingenious in the way hedoes his ticketing,” said Arnold. “We havenever done back-to-back nights or double-headers in one day as Brooks likes to do.Brooks is different in that he only announcesone show and then he adds shows as the tick-ets get sold.” “Even though his people were old handsat this it didn’t stop me from being nervous,”explained Arnold. “You have no idea howmany shows you will wind up doing. Brooksis actually on the conference call as the ticketsstart being sold he decides on the spot whathe wants to do.” In this case, Brooks decided to do a dou-ble-header on Friday and another double-header on Saturday. “They have a system to decide howmany shows to do,” said Arnold. “Brooks’people know exactly what they are doing andthey’re great at it. We know what we’redoing and are great at it. But we didn’t knowwhat they were doing. It was quite a learningexperience. Once I experienced it, I was ableto tell the venues down the line how it’sdone.” Arnold is clearly a man who faces trickysituations like a pro. “It was a lot of fun but achallenge,” he said. “And definitely not likeany other day.”

Interviewed for this story: David Arnold, (502) 640-9092;

Dennis Petrullo, (213) 446-7781

and create an enhanced experience. “The patrons were ecstatic because whenyou give them an unexpected move to the floor,they see that as an upgrade and then sharenews and images of that on Instagram withother fans and friends,” she said. “The bigthing was that we tried to give them advancewarning so we could manage expectations.That helped us roll with the punches as thingschanged and no one really saw it as a negativewhen their seats were changed.” Brown’s cheerful nature and diligencehelped keep people’s spirits up in a demandingand fluctuating situation. She said a job likehers demands attention to detail and commu-nication so that wires don’t get crossed. “You have to be detailed, flexible and ableto communicate, because if you’re not detailedwith a plan of attack for scenarios A, B and C,it will not work,” she said. “You have to letpeople know what’s going on and the repercus-sions of each change. Concert set-ups are forev-er pushing the envelope, and when you talkabout a floating stage, you have to accept thatthings are going to change. The question nowis, who’s going to try to top him?” Marc Elfenbaum, production director forLive Nation North America in Indianapolis,recalled one particular show change that wouldhave rattled other ticket office heads, but notBrown. “The best was when we came in a day ortwo before the show and the front-of-housecameras, mix position and band riser had beenmoved off the floor into the seats,” he said.“Add to this that a tent was built over the bandriser killing the view of seats that had beensold. Tricia figured out what seats had beenaffected by this change and just found seats torelocate everyone.” The Saint Pablo tour was actually the sec-ond high-profile launch at Bankers LifeFieldhouse in 2016, coming roughly a monthafter British rockers Coldplay launched theirU.S. tour there. Brown said that event was fair-ly traditional in terms of an arena rock show,but there were still shifting productiondemands up until show time.

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“Whenever you’re the first one, there aresome things that change, like the artists wantmore screens or video and you have to workwith that and how it changes things,” she said.“I have friends who work in other marketsthat tour went to, and they asked, ‘How didyou deal with this screen?’ But we didn’t haveto deal with that because we were first and theyhadn’t added that in yet.” Brown said she’s been attracted to theticketing world and the thrills of working inlive events since she had a role as assistant boxoffice manager at the Indiana StateFairgrounds. Her background with the mar-ket and timing — she joined the Pacers organ-ization not long after BankersLife Filedhouseopened in 1999 as Conseco Fieldhouse — helpsher know the temperament of customers andhow to serve them. “Indianapolis is an incredibly activeevents market and then, adding to that, wehave the National Collegiate AthleticAssociation headquarters here as well as sever-al national governing bodies and the nation’sfirst sports commission,” said Rick Fuson,president and COO of Pacers Sports &Entertainment. “Tricia has a strong knowl-edge of key stakeholders in the city and goodpolitical instincts coupled with strong relation-ships at the other major venues in Indianapolis.Her adaptability and professionalism as well asher quick response time to promoters is a bigpart of what makes her excellent at what shedoes.”


BOX OFFICE 2017

STARAWARDS

Interviewed for this story: Tricia Brown, (317) 917-2722;

Marc Elfenbaum, (317) 249-2710; Rick Fuson, (317) 262-

9962; Mel Raines, (317) 917-2538

“Concert set-ups are forever pushing the envelope and

when you talk about a floating stage, you have to accept

that things are

going to change.”

— TRICIA BROWN


“Managing a tour like Lee Ann does isabout being organized and being able tochange things on the fly,” said McMahon.“Things get rescaled and then she has to redothe work and then check it again and she justdid it over and over again, and never once didshe get snippy about it. She handles things withgrace, and we all left for vacation and thoughthow grateful we are that Lee Ann’s onthe team.” Gibbons had a big year. “Therewere a lot of tours in 2016,” she said.“We put over 200 shows on sale and Idirected and guided them and gotthem up and running in all the differ-ent venues around the country.” Gibbons was proud of accom-plishing the implementation of a web-based system to handle all internalorders. “We revamped what we dointo the web-based system, whichmakes it easier on the box offices aswell,” she said. “We were excited to trythis and are thrilled with the results.” Gibbons was also gung-ho on thePricemaster tool. It’s a tool that’s runby Ticketmaster that flexes pricing. “Instead of going to the box officeand having them change prices, the pro-moter is able to access all the inventoryand change the prices through the sys-tem,” said Gibbons. “It changes auto-matically so there’s no down time. Itchanges scaling as you go through anddetermines the prices and makes rec-ommendations for sales. A lot of differ-ent analytics go into it; this is all donewithout having to take down the show.It’s a great tool for increasing revenue.It’s been pretty beneficial for all our tours andit’s made things much easier for the box office.” Gibbons was thrilled to be the first pro-moter who used Pricemaster. “We tried this onfive of our tours,” she said. “We’ve used itbefore on sports, but this was the first time weused it in the concert world. It was exciting toput it together and learn how to use it andteach venues how to use it.”

Her most challenging ticketing experi-ence in 2016 was the Eric Church tour. “Wetypically don’t do a lot of national on sales,” shesaid. “But we did a national for Eric Church’spresale with all the fan clubs.” Gibbons put up 60 shows at the sametime. “Just the volume of shows, all going up atthe same time, not even spread across timezones, was quite a challenge. I then had to

monitor them and make sure they were up andrunning.” “Eric Church is adamant about takingcare of his fans and he wanted them to haveaccess to tickets at the same time to level theplaying field,” she said. “This was a move tothwart the scalpers and bots. Eric is taking thelead on the war on scalpers.” “I definitely feel like we have to find a

way to re-price the tickets so they don’t get intothe scalpers hands,” she said. “They hold themback and then put them on the secondary mar-ket. We need to do a better job of pricing thetickets to begin with.” Gibbons thinks tours need to price onmarket value and not on a tour’s projections.“Anything we can do to stop people from buy-ing and reselling we must do,” she said. “At the

end of the day it’s all about the fans.”Challenges of her job are “coordi-

nating with management teams andmaking sure we are all on the samepage. We have to bridge the gapbetween the artist managers and thebox office; we need to work in every-one’s best interests. If a tour wants todo something we have to make sure itworks for the venue as well. We’re allon the same team.”

Gibbons said the most rewardingaspect of her job was getting an emailfrom a fan who was thrilled to get aticket. “Sometimes I get an email witha picture from the show and I love itwhen I do,” she said. “Box office andticketing can sometimes be a thanklessjob. When someone reaches out with aheartfelt thanks it really makes itworth it.”

“Lee Ann and her team do all thecounts, distribute to the proper teams,and when we go on sale, they commu-nicate our builds, pricing, all of ourpresale fan clubs, Pricemaster,American Express Platinum andVIPs,” said McMahon. “She takes allthat information and communicates itto every single building we’re workingwith and then she constantly follows

up with them. Keeping all the informationstraight and executing it properly is one of hernumber one jobs.” “She’s a part of everything we do,”added McMahon. “She’s the voice of reasonhere.”

BOX OFFICE 2017

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Interviewed for this story: Lee Ann Gibbons, (512) 721-

2464; Kate McMahon, (512) 721-2450

THE VOICE OF REASON CONTINUED FROM PAGE 60

“I definitely feel like

we have to find a way

to re-price the tickets

so they don’t get into

the scalpers hands.

They hold them back

and then put them on

the secondary mar-

ket. We need to do a

better job of pricing

the tickets to begin

with.” — LEE ANN

GIBBONS

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