Before the FTA was established in 2001, sports event organizers independently solved problems related to the implementation of ticketing programs, usually granting stadiums, sports complexes, etc. the right to sell tickets for events, often paying for the rent of the venue in this way. Ticket offices opened three to four days before the event. We were the first to note that revenues from the sale of tickets and season tickets account for up to 40% of the income budget of sports organizations. For example, the sale of season tickets and tickets at Manchester United accounts for more than half of the club's income, and worldwide, according to the Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF) for 2003, the turnover from the sale of rights to the production and distribution of television signals (TV rights) exceeded the turnover from the sale of rights to the production and distribution of television signals (TV rights) by $7 billion. We thought about the reasons for this discrepancy between international and domestic experience and created a company that was supposed to overcome this discrepancy.

As for the sale of tickets for sporting events, the main problem here, in our opinion, was that these tickets were simply unavailable. The consumer could not choose a convenient seat in advance, familiarize himself with the tariff plans, or obtain sufficient information about the event. In addition, he was forced, when purchasing tickets at the stadium on the day of the match, to essentially first decide to attend this match. Technological ticket sales systems capable of managing resources of tariffs, seats, and optimizing stadium loading did not exist at all, which also had a negative impact on the development of this area of sports marketing. As a result, sporting events were sold unsatisfactorily, i.e. either they were not fully loaded, or the management of ticket programs passed into the hands of street speculators.

Our know-how consisted in the fact that we developed our own system for managing resources of a sporting event, created the necessary software and technological base and managed to integrate our system into the global distribution system for air transportation sales “Sirena”. Having completed this work, we were able to widely pre-sell and book tickets for sporting events, if necessary, placing the resources of a sporting event in our own inventory center and granting the right to sell to thousands of points of sale of air tickets. I will give one example. Together with the RFU, we held the final of the Russian Football Cup in 2003. As you remember, Spartak (Moscow) and Rostov met. So Rostov fans did not have to go to Moscow for tickets, they calmly bought tickets at the air ticket offices of Rostov-on-Don and arrived at the Lokomotiv stadium with the tickets. More than 8,000 Rostov fans attended this final and provided support for their team. Overall, today we consider it an absolute success that we sell more than 60% of tickets through the pre-booking system 10 or more days before the sporting event of which we are a partner.

As a result, the income from the sale of ticket programs of the Russian Football Union during our cooperation with football clubs since 2002 has grown by 50%. If we talk specifically about the amounts collected, then for the tickets we sold for the Russian Cup final we collected $400,000. For the famous Russia-Wales match – $800,000.

PLAYERS: $800,000 per match