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The eternal quest for great seats

Ryan Doran

Aug-21-09, 01:53 PM

3 Votes

Topics: Entertainment

US Ticket Search in Weston is surviving against industry giants by applying a call-on-me strategy in an industry typified by facelessness.

“The slowdown has been all year long,” said Tom Stevenson, founder and president of US Ticket Search. “It started with the baseball season in the spring and is showing signs of continuing into tennis. Broadway’s also been very off.” The football season – “about to start soon” – then hockey and basketball are likewise looking lean.

Stevenson, a 15-year veteran of the industry and former banker (for 20 years), said he’s encouraged by the fact that people are still calling.

“We’re continuing to pick up new clients every day,” said Stevenson. “Our industry is clearly one that is discretionary so our job right now is to survive. There’s no question that business is off, but it has been gradual. Last year was the best year we’ve ever had, in spite of the economy. The nature of our business is different; it took a while for my clients who were still working through their budgets for the last year to react.
“Of course this year everybody’s budgets are different and they’re cutting back,” he said. “Our challenge is to show people how they can use our service to economize. People make assumptions that tickets are expensive, that’s not necessarily so.”

With the U.S. Tennis Open coming up, Stevenson has put together options he hopes will help people exchange their tickets if they can’t use them or, for those who’ve watched the stormy skies all summer, will offer them the opportunity to purchase rain insurance for their tennis package.

“What we tried to do when we started this business is build a following that’s relationship based, as opposed to just being a service with a supply of tickets,” said Stevenson.

Service, Stevenson said, distinguishes his company from the big players in the industry.

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