In this interview, host Bob London talks with Jon Romm, co‑founder of Venuetize, about how the COVID‑19 pandemic forced a rapid digital transformation in the live‑venue industry. Romm explains that technologies once considered "nice‑to‑have"—mobile ticketing, contact‑less payments, and digital guest experiences—have become mission‑critical for getting patrons back into venues safely. He uses the analogy that digital tools moved from being a vitamin to being penicillin, essential for health and safety. Romm details how Venuetize’s platform now requires mobile wallets for ticket access and point‑of‑sale transactions, delivers push notifications for food readiness, employs gamification and heat‑mapping to manage social distancing, and reduces turnstile processing time from 25 minutes to five. These capabilities improve the overall user experience, increase per‑customer spend, and give venues a competitive edge as consumers begin to choose locations based on the quality of the digital, touchless journey.
Chapters
So this notion that some have said, maybe it was the CEO of Microsoft who said the pandemic kind of forced industries to go through 2 years of digital transformation in 2 weeks kind of thing. Is that what helped you guys? Is it come under digital transformation or is that just too much of a buzzword?
No, I think that's what exactly, I mean, I want to find out who said that now and I want to go give him a hug.
I think it was Satya Nadella from Microsoft.
Yeah, he's right. I mean, you know, all the things that we have been developing and we have been working on You know, I think our customers for a period of time, they were viewing it as, hey, that's kind of neat, that would be nice to have. And I think from VenuTi's perspective, we moved from a nice-to-have proposition to a mission-critical, need-to-have proposition. I need you in-house, and we got to get people back in our venues, got to get them back in our casinos. And so yeah, I think there was an enormous accelerator put to technology that is sensible and logical and aids and abets getting people back into places.
So, so one way that I might think about it is before it was the cool, the cool convenience of being digital and, you know, everything's done by the fan on their phone, which is kind of the vitamin. But now the— it's, it's penicillin. They need that touchless journey because of concerns about health and safety. Is that, is that a way to think about it?
Yeah, that's, that's, that, that is as good analogy as any. I mean, what I would tell you is, you know, you know, I used to go, when I used to go raise money, as you brought it up, because it's obviously a big part of the jobs we all do. I'd sit around the room and, you know, I always laugh a little bit because half the people in the room still had flip phones. And I was thinking to myself, how are you going to make a decision that mobile-first technology is the right answer? But, you know, we talked about really, because how many people are going to really download that mobile application? And is that really that? And it's probably for the younger generations, but it's really not here yet. Now we're in the world where the only way you can gain access to your tickets is through your mobile wallet. The only way you're transacting through, you know, your point of sale that's in place is through your mobile wallet. You're getting push notifications when your food is ready so that it's done in a safe and available way. Gamification is an immersive experience so that people know where they're sitting, how they're social distanced. What the heat mapping is, what area they should go to, when they shouldn't. If it used to take 25 minutes to get through turnstiles, we now get them through turnstiles in 5 minutes. All of those things have a safety wellness aspect to it, but it's really a better user experience, and it's always been there. People just hadn't prioritized it.
I'm looking at your website, you've got phenomenal logos there in terms of organizations that are, you know, big sports and sports management teams and organizations that They're thinking, well, people are going to come. We're a monopoly. We're a branded monopoly in our town. People are going to come see us regardless. If they have to wait 25 minutes, that's not a horrible thing for us. It doesn't really hurt us. But then when people start deciding where to open up their wallets in the future, they are going to base it on the user experience.
If somebody would normally wait in line for food and beverage for a minute and 20-some-odd seconds, but using technology, mobile wallet, faster point-of-sale services gets them through that line in 34 seconds, Why should we not deploy that? And if the psychology of buying is such that when you touch your cash, on average you're going to spend $16 an evening, but if our data and analytics say if you use mobile wallet, you're more inclined to spend $36.
