Your ticketing bill grows with every good season
A club sells more tickets, hires another sales rep, adds a few thousand fans to the list, and the software bill rises in step with all three. None of that extra money bought you a better system.
What a club or venue usually rents
Most of the stack is priced on something that moves with attendance or headcount, which is why the total is hard to see until you add a season up.
A fee per ticket is a tax on attendance
Think about what triggers the charge. A family promotion that fills the stand raises the ticketing bill that night. A cup run adds home fixtures nobody budgeted for, and every one of them carries the fee. The platform did no extra work that the first fixture of the season did not already need.
The CRM moves the other way, with payroll. Ticket sales teams are seasonal and they turn over, so clubs routinely pay for seats assigned to people who left in the spring. Sponsorship, hospitality and community staff need to see the same fan records, and each of them is another seat.
Then there is the join between the two. When ticketing and the CRM come from different vendors, somebody on your staff exports buyers from one and imports them into the other. That job is not on any invoice, but it is part of what the software costs you.
What we rebuild for a club
- Checkout under your own nameSeat or section selection, ticket types, promo codes and family bundles, on your domain, with the fee policy decided by you.
- Season ticket renewalsLast season's seat held for its owner, a renewal window, reminders, payment in instalments, and unrenewed seats released to general sale on the date you choose.
- One fan listEvery buyer with their purchase history in the same place the sales team works, so there is nothing to export and re-import.
- Group, hospitality and sponsor trackingWho is owed what inventory, what has been delivered, and what is coming up for renewal.
- Scanning at the gateStaff phones as scanners, with a live count of who is in.
What stays exactly where it is
- Card processingThe processor's charge applies whichever system takes the order. We connect to the processor you already use.
- League or venue mandated ticketingIf your league, governing body or landlord requires a specific platform for some or all inventory, that contract wins and we build around it.
- Resale marketplacesA marketplace is a network of buyers. It is useful because other people are on it, and nobody can rebuild that for you.
Game day is the test
A ticketing system is judged on the forty minutes before kick-off. That is the reason we do not ask a club to switch over on faith. The new system runs beside the current one on real fixtures, starting with low-risk inventory such as a single stand, a friendly or a junior fixture, and the old one is switched off only when your own staff have watched it hold up at the gate.
It also means the move can be timed around your calendar. The close season is when renewals go out, so a club that wants its renewal run on the new system needs it proven before then. You get a date with your quote, before you commit to anything.
A 70-person professional rugby club replaced its CRM and its ticketing system with its own app in four months, cutting software spend by about $100,000 a year.
Questions clubs and venues ask us
Can a small club really run its own ticketing?
Running it does not mean looking after servers. Hosting, fixes and changes are part of one flat monthly price and we do that work. What changes for the club is who owns the system and the fan data, and that the price no longer moves with attendance or headcount.
Do fans still pay a booking fee?
That becomes your decision. You can show one price with nothing added at checkout, or keep a fee and keep the money. The card processor's charge still exists either way, because that is the cost of taking a card payment, not of the ticketing software.
What happens to our season ticket holder records?
We move them across for you, including seat assignments and purchase history where your current platform lets you export it. Before anything else we check what your platform will actually hand over, because that decides how much history comes with you.
We are tied into a contract for another season. Is it too early to talk?
No. Check the notice window in the contract first, since many agreements renew automatically unless you give notice well before the end date. A build that runs beside your current platform through the final season of a contract is the low-risk way to do it.
From the blog, for sports teams and venues
- What maintaining custom software actually involvesSeptember 27, 2026 · Hosting, backups, security updates, monitoring, small changes and someone to call. What maintaining custom software involves and what to agree up front.
- How much do ticketing fees cost a small venue?September 21, 2026 · Work out what ticketing fees cost your venue: per-ticket charges, percentage components, payment processing, and what to pull from settlement reports.
Keep reading
Send us your ticketing and CRM bill
Tell us what you pay per ticket and per seat. We will send back a number.
Hiro costs about a tenth of what you pay now, quoted against your own bill. Hosting, fixes and changes included, and no per-seat fees.