When I first became interested in working in ticketing, I thought the job was mostly about sales.
Around the time I graduated from Louisiana Tech, the Aspire Group had been hired to run an outbound sales office for the athletics department. Their purpose was to create a group focused exclusively on increasing revenue through ticket sales.
I interviewed for a position with them. My expectation was that this was what ticket people did. They called fans, encouraged them to attend games, and tried to convince them to buy tickets.
I did not get the job.
What I did get was a referral to the Assistant AD of Ticket Operations at Louisiana Tech. He hired me as the Ticket Operations Associate.
That was where I really started to blossom.
Becoming the Person Who Knew the System
I quickly learned that ticketing was much more than sales. The operational side required a significant amount of technical knowledge. Someone had to build the events, manage the inventory, maintain the accounts, and make sure the system was easy enough for fans and staff to use.
Not long after I started, I noticed a binder in one of my desk drawers labeled the Ticketmaster Archtics Training Guide .
My supervisor taught me the basics of the system, but my thirst for knowledge was still there. I wanted to get up to speed as quickly as possible, so I spent my spare time studying the guide.
Archtics was the primary software we used in the office. The guide helped me learn how to search accounts, find information, and handle more of our everyday needs.
What really caught my attention was another system we used mostly on game days.
It went by several names depending on who you asked: TMWIN, Ticketmaster Classic, or simply the host.
When you opened it, it looked like an old MS-DOS program. You were staring at a large blue screen with a flashing cursor waiting for your first command.
There were no modern menus guiding you through the process. You had to know the commands required to complete each task.
I asked my supervisor if he had any tips for learning the software. He told me we mostly used it on game days and that he did not know much about it himself.
I later found the guide for that system. The Archtics guide may have been around 100 pages. This one was significantly larger.
Knowing my supervisor did not know much about the software meant one thing to me: I was going to make it my new priority to become the expert in the office at using it.
I began learning how to complete more tasks in the host. It was an older version of Ticketmaster, so it had many of the same capabilities as Archtics, but it was more directly connected to Ticketmaster.com. Certain tasks had to be completed there before tickets could be sold online.
I found myself progressing quickly in my understanding of the system. Before long, I started wondering what my next opportunity might be.
When I saw an opening for Ticket Manager with the Gator Bowl Association, I did not believe I had enough experience to get the job. I still wanted to apply and see what came from it.
A few months later, I was shocked to learn that I had been hired.
Leaving Ruston was difficult but exciting. I was born and raised there, and moving away from home was intimidating. The Gator Bowl was also a much larger operation than anything I had experienced.
Once I started, the Director of Ticketing tested me on some of my system knowledge.
I still had room to improve when it came to building things on the account-management side, but I quickly realized that my knowledge of the Ticketmaster host exceeded his.
That felt significant to me.
Selling tickets through Ticketmaster.com was much more important to the Gator Bowl because of the volume of tickets being sold. I knew I could contribute immediately in that area while continuing to improve the parts of Archtics where I had less experience.
I set out to become a Ticketmaster expert.
I wanted to be able to solve any problem I could with the tools available to me. Any time I found a skill I did not have, I used Ticketmaster’s support resources to learn it.
For a while, I believed that was what made someone great at ticketing: knowing the software well enough to do almost anything inside it.
The Software Was Only the Beginning
The problem is that software cannot give you every skill you need to be good at the work.
That was when I started digging deeper into reports.
Ticketmaster had a strong collection of standard reports, and my first goal was to learn how to use each of them. But I eventually learned that a report only gives you useful answers when you are asking the right question.
Sometimes the filter you need is not available in the system. Sometimes the information you need is spread across several reports. Sometimes you have to create your own way to connect the data.
I had always considered myself solid in Excel. Working in a position where I regularly exported CSV files from Archtics and needed to decipher the information forced me to become much better.
I needed to build filters that did not exist in the ticketing system. I needed to create mapping points that allowed me to combine several reports. I needed to understand the data well enough to know which pieces belonged together.
That became my life.
My workbooks started containing nested formulas with multiple lookups and layers of IF statements. I was building processes that could evaluate different conditions and return the result I needed.
Honestly, I wish ChatGPT or another AI tool had existed then. It would have made my life much easier.
I did not realize it at the time, but I was learning to think like a software developer before I ever typed my first line of code.
When I Couldn’t Explain What We Needed
The next major problem came from an effort to improve how the Gator Bowl managed its membership information.
Our contacts were spread across Ticketmaster, fundraising software, Excel files, and an Access database. We were relying on several different sources just to communicate with the people connected to our organization.
We started exploring customer relationship management systems that could bring everything together. Several options offered direct integrations with our ticketing platform, but the cost was more than we believed our board would approve.
We found a less expensive solution by hiring a local company to write code that would connect the CRM to our ticket database.
The project became frustrating.
The developers understood code, but they did not understand the ticketing system. I understood the ticketing system, but I did not know enough about programming to explain exactly what the integration needed to do in technical terms.
The process took entirely too long. We eventually reached a point where we did not receive everything we wanted, but we had enough to end the project and move forward.
The CRM allowed us to bring our contacts into one place, but the ticketing integration never worked the way we had envisioned.
Once the programmers were off the project, I started digging through the administrative tools available to me. Using my knowledge of our ticket database and some simple field mapping, I was able to manually upload ticket information into the CRM.
It was not the automatic connection we had been promised, but it was better than nothing.
That project stayed with me.
It bothered me that we had depended on an outside company to build something and that I had not been able to communicate our needs well enough to help them get it right.
My role later transitioned to the Jacksonville Jaguars. Working with the Jaguars allowed me to remain involved with the Gator Bowl while becoming part of an NFL ticket office.
My time there sometimes feels like a blip on the radar, but I learned a great deal. The NFL works closely with Ticketmaster and constantly pushes the boundaries of what the technology can do. I enjoyed seeing what was coming next and being on the ground floor of learning new tools.
Unfortunately, I started working with the Jaguars in 2019.
In 2020, COVID shut down events and eliminated my position. The entire world was closed, and I was out of work. No ticket offices were hiring because no events were taking place.
Learning to Code
That was what finally brought me to coding.
I kept thinking about the CRM project at the Gator Bowl. It still bothered me that I had not understood enough to help get the system built the way I wanted.
I decided that while I was out of work, I was going to give myself at least a baseline understanding of programming.
I chose The Odin Project and treated it like a job. I would leave my house and work from my parents’ home so I would not let the normal distractions of home get in the way.
I spent eight hours a day completing lessons, writing code, and building projects.
I loved it.
I loved the problem-solving side of it. Dots started connecting in my head between the code I was writing and everything I had already been doing with data and complex Excel formulas.
It felt natural and familiar.
Still, something was missing.
I never pictured myself becoming a software developer. I still saw myself working in athletics.
When events started returning, my next problem was figuring out how to get back into the industry. I had been away for a couple of years, and I was not even sure whether I would remember how to use the Ticketmaster software I had once known so well.
I found an opening for a Director of Ticketing and Technology position with an NBA franchise.
Honestly, I did not think I was good enough.
I applied anyway.
To my surprise, I received an interview. Then another. Eventually, they wanted to test more of my technical knowledge.
The challenge was that Ticketmaster’s support materials were only available to current partners. I was unemployed, so I no longer had access.
I was back in Ruston, and Louisiana Tech was still a Ticketmaster partner. I called the ticket office and asked if I could come in and look at the software again.
Normally, that might be a strange request, but they knew me and understood why I was asking. I am thankful the staff allowed me to come back.
Once I was in the system, everything started returning. I remembered where things were. I could picture myself doing the work again. I even helped them solve a few issues while I was there.
More than anything, it restored my confidence.
I completed the technical interview and did very well. The questions ended up being heavily focused on the Ticketmaster host, the same system I had once taught myself from a massive guide.
That led to another interview and eventually a phone call.
The call was not good news.
I had been a finalist, but they were selecting someone else.
The hiring manager did something I did not expect, though. He told me that he genuinely liked me for the role. He explained that I had been competing against someone with more than 20 years of experience and had held my own.
He encouraged me to keep applying and to get back into ticketing.
Shortly afterward, I received an email from a company where I had never applied: the Dallas Stars.
They invited me to apply for a Ticket Manager role overseeing events at the Comerica Center.
One interview led to another. Eventually, they brought me to Dallas for an in-person interview and a Stars game.
During that visit, I learned that the hiring manager from the NBA position knew several people with the Stars. He had called and told them they should hire me before I even knew the position existed.
I had gone from believing I was not good enough to get back into ticketing to being actively recruited by an NHL organization.
I accepted the position and moved to Dallas.
At the Comerica Center, I used the host more than ever before. The venue hosted more than athletics, including events such as Disney on Ice and Cirque du Soleil. Those events relied heavily on the host system and required me to learn tasks I may never have needed in a ticket office focused only on sports.
I loved my time with the Stars. Hockey, a sport I had known very little about, became one of my favorite sports to be around. The people in the organization were also some of the best I had worked with.
But it was not college athletics, and that was where I continued to feel called.
Bringing the Skills Back Together
When the Assistant AD of Ticket Operations position opened at Louisiana Tech, I applied and returned home.
I knew before I was hired that the department was preparing to transition from Ticketmaster to Paciolan.
The first 18 months of my return included nearly daily conversations with Paciolan as we planned the conversion.
I needed to understand all the data inside Ticketmaster and determine how it would map into the new system. I did not want to lose our historical information.
We were not using all of that data effectively at the time, but I fully intended for us to become better at using data to make decisions. I knew we might need information later that did not seem important during the conversion.
After roughly 18 of the longest months of my life, we launched Paciolan.
The new system helped solve one of the major problems we were facing. Fans consistently struggled to log into the Ticketmaster side.
Ticketmaster’s unified-account model worked better in larger markets with several Ticketmaster venues. In Ruston, where Louisiana Tech was the only major property using the platform, it often created more friction for our fans.
Changing systems helped, but the larger challenge facing us was not only the ticketing platform.
We needed to grow and reengage our fan base. As a Group of Five school in a smaller city, there are natural limits to our reach. Other factors had also caused some of the fans we already had to become less connected.
I am not claiming those are problems I can solve on my own. They are much bigger than one person or one department.
But I knew our approach had to change.
We needed to improve how we used data. We needed to communicate more effectively. We needed to become better storytellers.
That is when my role began shifting again.
Today, I oversee more of Louisiana Tech’s digital storytelling. My purpose has increasingly become communicating the right message to the right person at the right time.
The data is what helps us get there.
We are using the information I worked so hard to preserve during the system conversion to build messages based on the relationship each fan has had with us over the past several years.
I am also using what I learned through The Odin Project as we rethink parts of LATechSports.com.
The goal is not to prove I can write code.
The goal is to look at the website from the fan’s perspective.
What do they actually need to know?
What is making that information difficult to find?
How can we take the large amount of information we already have and present it in a way that gives fans a clearer path?
When I started my career, I believed ticketing was one job.
I thought it meant calling people and convincing them to buy tickets.
I never set out to collect a group of unrelated skills. I kept encountering problems that required me to learn something new. Each skill changed what I was capable of solving.
I am still learning what the work requires.