Ticketing professionals from my past

I just wrapped up another year at the Ticketing Professionals Conference. It was nice to be back, after I skipped the 2025 conference (which was only the third TPC I've ever missed, I think). The rhythm of TPC from year to year is almost comforting in its consistency: there I was at the opening night party again; there I was lurking around the exhibitors hall, speaking to old colleagues; there I was in the keynote, watching Andrew Thomas give away the annual mug; there I was panicking that my own presentation was all fluff, and wondering why I keep on submitting proposals every year.

And finally, there I was, thankfully, getting a round of applause and a few congratulatory handshakes after my presentation. (The closing keynote speaker, James Charrington, even called me his "conference hero," a compliment I was very happy to take.)

What was especially lovely, though, about the people who came up to say hello after my presentation, was how many of them I used to employ. Five different people in the audience had all worked at some point in the box offices I managed for Underbelly over the years. (One of them still does; she has my old job as head of ticketing.) Three of them, I think, I gave their first job in ticketing — and now here they still are, ten years later, not only working in ticketing, still, but working at big name organisations like Sonia Friedman Productions and Sadler's Wells.

Thinking about it on the train home afterwards, too, I realised I could count quite a few more people who I hired to work at an Underbelly box office once, and who still work in ticketing. It's easily into double digits, and that's just the ones I know about.

This is not to imply I have anything to do with their success. They were already all brilliant back when I hired them — that's why I hired them — and it's entirely their own brilliance that has kept them climbing the ladder since then. I doubt very much they learned anything useful from me, because towards the end of my time at Underbelly, I was stretched across so many different things that I barely had time to talk to the counter staff, most days, never mind attempt to impart professional wisdom. But I do take just a tiny bit of pride in knowing that, at the very least, they didn't have such a horrible time in the box offices I managed that they ran from ticketing and never came back; that they saw my name on the conference schedule and thought, hey, sure, I'd like to hear what he has to say.

On that train home, though, I did also wonder if this sort of thing will still happen in another ten years. Part of the reason I can think of so many past employees who still work in ticketing is that the Underbelly box offices used to require huge numbers of employees. At the Fringe, especially, we needed a team of twenty or thirty each year to keep all the box offices ticking over. Even with a team that size, there was almost always a queue on the weekends, serving the hundreds and thousands of people who turned up in person wanting to ask about the programme and buy their tickets.

Nowadays when I go to the Fringe, the box office is much quieter by comparison, and the number of staffed windows much smaller. That's because all the customers are sitting somewhere else on their phones, browsing the programme and buying their tickets online. The Fringe doesn't even issue paper tickets anymore, so what's the point of going to a box office to buy them?

That might be more convenient for customers, and cheaper for the box offices, and more sustainable for the planet, and that's all great. But working a Fringe box office counter was how I first found an interest in ticketing, and where I learned a lot about how it works — and clearly, the same must be true of all those old faces who turned up at the end of my presentation. So if those jobs don't exist anymore, where are the ticketing professionals of tomorrow going to come from?

I'm sure there are new and more modern routes into the industry, but equally, the more things shift to online and automated systems — to say nothing of AI — the less there is for entry-level ticketing employees to actually do. And while we can all hope that a smaller pool of jobs will still collect the best talent, from a very basic statistical point of view, the chances are we're going to start missing people who might otherwise have found their way in. That'll be a shame for the people giving presentations in ten years, but it will be much worse for the industry as a whole.

I don't have a pithy answer or suggestion for how to change any of this, not yet, and maybe not ever. But if you come to TPC next year, perhaps you'll see me lurking around the exhibitors hall and wondering why I submitted a proposal on the topic. If you do, please come say hello.