ProArts services about 30 small and midsized venues and, according to Remby, some audiences are not as likely to look to the Web for ticket sales. Even at larger venues like the San Francisco Symphony, this demo trend can be detected. According to Walter, the online sales for the Symphony are regularly between 12 to 15 percent of the overall total sales. O nline non-movie ticketing is further challenged by the fact that tickets are all different. They must be sold by a specific date and, if oversold, a vendor cannot rely on a back-order system to replace them the way a seller can with consumer goods.
People have no conception of how difficult online ticketing really is.
The internet was not designed for such high-level inventory processing. It was developed simply as an informational tool. These sites force patrons into a specific purchasing path that is unnatural for the site. By next year, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra hopes to abandon its ticket allocation system altogether, thereby allowing patrons to receive all possible ticketing options online. When only a specific amount of tickets have been allocated to the web, a patron's choices are unnaturally limited.