Ticketmaster announced that they have teamed up with Amazon Alexa to make purchasing tickets way easier. It’s a great addition to existing conveniences and life hacks already offered by the voice controlled Amazon assistant.
In the past few years, Ticketmaster, the global leader in ticketing has been integrating with different streaming services, social media platforms, and e-commerce sites. Adding Amazon Alexa to its list of partners has made it even better. Both Ticketmaster fans and Alexa users can now effortlessly look for tickets and buy them through this new partnership.
So, what makes the whole thing tick? Read on.
All About Alexa
Amazon Alexa or only “Alexa” is a popular cloud-based voice service initially released in November 2014. It started as a virtual assistant doing voice interactions, playing music and audiobooks, setting alarms, and streaming podcasts, among other cool features. It has come a long way in the past four years, with more than 5,000 skills or functions in over 100 million Alexa-enabled devices, such as the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot.
Alexa offers a delightful voice-activated experience. It provides its users with a more intuitive way of using technology, and it helps businesses to deliver enhanced services to their customers. For some users, it is already a significant part of their everyday lives. We can expect to hear many more updates and developments for this fantastic piece of technology in the years to come.
The tasks that Alexa can do are varied and can range from being extremely useful to just plain amusing. For example, you can ask the AI assistant to order food, stream music, provide weather updates, and do a countdown to the next season of your favorite TV show. You can even use it for smart home automation and, as of the Ticketmaster partnership, search for and buy tickets to concerts and events.
How to Order Ticketmaster Tickets Using Amazon Alexa
To order tickets, users can say “Alexa, open Ticketmaster” or “Alexa, ask Ticketmaster to find events this weekend.” Fans can also look for specific artists, team names, or date ranges such as “find concerts in New York” or “find Taylor Swift concerts for this year.” You will need to integrate your Ticketmaster account with Alexa to finalize your ticket purchase.
Ticketmaster has continuously expanded in recent years, and it now has the most extensive ticket inventory in the world. According to Dan Armstrong, the company’s SVP and GM of Distributed Commerce, their team is always looking to leverage their services with open platforms to reach new fans. He also stated that they are excited to be working with Amazon Alexa, and they look forward to seeing customers utilize it to see artists and events they love the most.
Competitor No More
The large e-commerce giant, Amazon, was once thought to be a potential rival of Ticketmaster and its owner, Live Nation Entertainment. In 2017, Amazon tried but failed to secure a ticket distribution deal with Live Nation. It then went on by partnering with US venue owners to sell event tickets on the Amazon site, directly competing with Ticketmaster.
But in 2018, Amazon reportedly abandoned plans of ticket-selling in the US and also in the UK. There were limited opportunities for the company to sell tickets because of Ticketmaster’s venue contracts and exclusivity system. Hence, with this latest announcement from Ticketmaster, it seems both giants have found the ground to work together. Imagine, fans can now effortlessly browse through Ticketmaster’s hundreds of thousands of live events with this new Alexa function.
Finding and buying tickets using the Ticketmaster Alexa skill is currently available everywhere in the US. This functionality is expected to expand to other countries very soon. So, will this be a revolution in the event industry or just a slightly more convenient way to secure tickets?
