Photo: TheSpaceUK
The Red61 ticketing platform was built with the ability to collaborate at its heart, managing high demand to bring multiple venues and sales organisations together, resulting in increased ticket sales.
Red61’s ability to seamlessly network – with no additional IT setup required – continues to highlight the benefits of collaboration, and 2024 saw the widest use of this technology across major arts festivals in the UK, Australia and Canada.
Not only does the system offer a single venue or festival solution, but it can also bring together independently owned venues and manage complex ticketing networks with ease.
The Edinburgh model
As Red61 CEO Tony Davey explains, the need for sales collaboration between venues and organisations has never been greater in a competitive entertainment market.
“We use Edinburgh as the ultimate example of how opening up multiple channels and making it easy to buy a ticket can increase sales. The Red61 Ticketing System is used by 7 of the 11 ticketed Edinburgh festivals, processing more than 3 million tickets a year, with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe being the largest arts festival in the world.”
According to the Fringe’s Deputy Chief Executive Lyndsey Jackson, keeping the festival accessible and open to all takes an enormous collaborative effort to achieve.
“Our objective is to ensure audiences can find the work they want to see without friction or frustration,” says Jackson. “If you can get a ticket in the queue for the show with 4 minutes to spare then you’re truly at the Edinburgh Fringe!”
“To enable this we need a ticketing system that has dynamic collaboration at its core, that enables the Fringe community to work together to mutual success and provides audiences with a clean and simple to use experience across all platforms.
“This is why we’re a Red61 client – their system helps us live up to our vision to Give Everyone a Seat.”
Enhancing connections
Last year’s festival season created a new sense of collaboration in Edinburgh amongst the city’s cultural organisations, as Red61’s Tony Davey outlines.
“2024 saw a real cross-fertilisation of Edinburgh festivals. The Festival Fringe Society, one of the largest ticketing operations in the UK, also provided a ticketing service for both the Jazz and Blues Festival and the International Film Festival. The Film Festival showed films in Fringe venues, which enabled Red61 users to also sell tickets for the Film Festival, opening up another 10 sales channels in the process.
“The Edinburgh International Book Festival used a Fringe venue for its large events, which provided customers with the option of buying tickets from either the Book Festival, Underbelly, or the Edinburgh Fringe Society.”
The Edinburgh International Book Festival‘s new site opened in 2024, at the Edinburgh Futures Institute (above).
Creating sales opportunities
The 2024 Edinburgh Fringe season also saw the introduction of a new membership scheme, allowing customers to benefit from discounted tickets for shows at participating venues, enabling further sales collaboration during the festival.
These and other partnerships have helped to maximise ticket sales across the UK, and position Red61 as the leader in cross-selling ticketing solutions for festivals around the world.
“Red61 creates the largest ticketing network in the UK, with up to 71 sites ranging from collection kiosks to venues to large ticket agencies,” says Davey.
“Our clients are able to collaborate with other clients to create marketing and sales relationships, making tickets more accessible and helping to increase sales.”
As well as festivals, clients run year-round operations. Red61 facilitates the ability for clients with year-round business to collaborate with others when needed, or manage events independently as required.
Worldwide reach
It’s not only Edinburgh where Red61’s cross-selling capabilities have made an impact. Both Adelaide Fringe and Edmonton Fringe, as well as the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, have created their own connections with supporting organisations that already use Red61’s ticketing platform.
The Garden of Unearthly Delights, pictured above, connects with the Adelaide Fringe festival each year to cross-sell tickets for their programmed events.
In Adelaide, the Fringe connects with longstanding venues The Garden of Unearthly Delights and Holden Street Theatres, while their association also extends to arts organisation Country Arts SA, which includes Fringe events as part of their seasonal program spread across regional South Australian venues.
Edmonton venues Theatre Network and Northern Light Theatre are connected during the city’s Fringe season to its main box office, and in Melbourne, year-round comic club Comedy Republic leverages Red61’s cross-selling technology to connect with Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
Each connected Red61 organisation has the ability to run their normal year-round operations outside of festival season, then easily connect to any festival programming their events.
How does it all work?
“Red61 can easily enable a client’s instance of the Ticketing System to connect to the instances of other clients, in order to cross-sell ticket inventory,” Davey explains.
“The Edinburgh Fringe had 17 instances all talking to each other in 2024, allowing different groups of venues to work together in reaching more customers.
“The Fringe Society has access to all connected instances, creating a successful central sales operation where customers can buy a ticket for every event included in the festival program.”
The shift to digital ticketing with Apple and Google wallet pass functionality has made it even easier for customers to purchase and receive their tickets. Connected venues can quickly scan customers purchasing from the same pool of tickets using Red61’s Front of House access-control app.
Building a global ticketing network
Collaboration is at the heart of Red61’s ticketing platform, and is also evident in the connections that are made within box office staff across the world.
“An added bonus is the large staffing resource that’s been created over the last 15 years of experienced Red61 ticketing people who move around the world, to work on festivals in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada,” says Davey.
This staffing network, along with the highly-flexible cross-selling technology, places Red61 as the leaders in collaboration across the events and ticketing industry.
The network of Red61 users extends to festivals across the globe, including the Edmonton Fringe box office in Canada (above).
To find out more about how your box office can benefit from using Red61, you can read about our functionality in more detail, or get in touch with our Sales team below.
We would love to collaborate with you!