It is almost a year since Citizen Ticket began a partnership with Heriot’s Rugby Club as primary ticketing provider.
The digital ticketing platform was used by fans at Goldenacre for the first time during the 2019/2020 season, which was the inaugural season for the FOSROC Super6 franchise.
Despite the challenges due to the coronavirus pandemic, Citizen Ticket co-founder and former Heriot’s winger Harry Boisseau remains optimistic.
‘‘The events industry has clearly been heavily affected. Citizen Ticket is quite lucky because our business is essentially an online digital platform,’’ he said.
During a normal year Citizen Ticket would be busy taking bookings for tens of thousands of tickets for multiple large-scale events. However recently developers at Citizen Ticket are using this time to enhance the features and functionalities offered via their platform. One of these new features helps event organisers run online and or live streamed events.
‘‘The work of many of our employees is not affected and they are getting through a lot of the backlog of development work and have been building some really exciting and innovative features,’’ Harry said.
He anticipates the recovery for the live events industry will take many months, but in the interim online events will allow customers to stay connected and entertained, while also keeping those who are most at risk safe.
‘‘I think it will be difficult for a year or two at least, but what is great about the new streaming functionality is that in the future customers will have the option to attend in person, or stream the event at home,’’ Harry said.
‘‘I can defiantly envisage people who support Heriots and now live away from Edinburgh paying to stream games if they can’t attend. This gives clubs and event organisers like Heriot’s a truly global reach for their events and ticket sales, which is a very exciting prospect!’’
Harry believes the new FOSROC Super6 competition brings new opportunities for young players and the business community.
‘‘The FOSROC Super6 has huge potential, the Premiership in my day was always crying out for this level of professionalism. I think the standard has gone up, there seem to be tons of new and genuinely exciting players coming through,’’ he said.
Harry began Citizen Ticket after hanging up his boots as a winger in the Premiership for a successful Heriot’s team, from 2010 to 2016.
‘‘I know it sounds really cliché, but I do think a lot of what I learnt at Heriot’s through rugby has been transferable into building a business,’’ he said.
‘‘There was always a huge emphasis on our culture at Heriots, I think ultimately that is why we had such a successful period. The team was really close, and we had a lot of fun, but standards were always set high and we made sure we got the best out of each other. I am always trying to replicate this within our team at Citizen Ticket”.