A new ticketing portal for live events is now available to Central Coast residents. The recently launched My805Tix owned by New Times Media Group (the Sun’s parent company) promises to provide a one-stop shop for locals to find and purchase tickets to local concerts, events, and shows.
The media group, which also includes the New Times in SLO, is partnering with Michigan-based My North Media, which provides software to run the new ticketing portal.
“For more than 31 years New Times has been gathering and promoting a variety of events in SLO County (18 years for the Sun in Northern Santa Barbara County),” Alex Zuniga, art director and publisher for New Times Media Group, said in an email. “We’ve created a huge readership of over 150,000 that look each week to see what and where events are happening locally. When you couple that with the tens of thousands that follow our websites and social media outlets, that’s over 200,000 viewers. Yet, when users found what to do within our calendars, we sent them off to fend for themselves to find tickets for the events. Often the experience was challenging and in some cases impossible.”
National ticketing and event services are available, Zuniga added, but usually offer minimal logistics and zero marketing support to the companies that use them. Additionally, any fees from tickets sold using the national services (such as Eventbrite or Brown Paper Tickets) were pulling dollars out of local communities and “into their pockets,” he said.
Enter My North Media, which created a special software called Geo Tix to compete with the national ticketing services.
“They decided a few years ago to create their own ticketing solution to meet the needs of all the organizations already using their outlet for promoting their events,” Zuniga said, adding that the effort created a “one-stop hub” for all of their clients that “not only made it easier for the organizations and their events to be more visible, but any fees were managed locally and kept within the community.”
Businesses that use the service will have full access to manage their own portals, events, venues, and tickets like most other services, he explained. There is no charge to join, and companies or nonprofits pay only a 1.9 percent credit card processing fee, which make the ticket fees the lowest on the market.
“The big advantage with My805Tix is the large amount of media support to promote organizations and their events,” Zuniga said, explaining that in addition to the promotional tools individual organization homepages clients will have on the site, there will also be print ads, web ads, social media posts, newsletters, giveaways, and online calendar entries with “buy tickets” links in both the New Times and Sun to consistently promote events.
“This platform will expose each of the organizations’ events to diverse audiences not typically reached,” Zuniga said.
For more information or a free demonstration, contact info@my805tix.com.
Highlights:
• The Housing Trust Fund of Santa Barbara County announced on March 21 that it received a $5,000 grant from the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians Foundation. The grant will support the operations of the Housing Trust Fund’s new South Coast Workforce Homebuyer Program, which provides low-cost down payment loans up to $100,000 to help first-time low-to-middle income homebuyers buy an entry-level home in the community where they work.
• French Hospital Medical Center (FHMC) revealed on March 22 plans to develop a brand new, technologically advanced hospital campus that “focuses on understanding patient experiences,” according to external communications manager Sara San Juan. She said the state-of-the-art French Hospital transformation project will “redefine the standard of health care for the county.” Members of the media and public are invited to attend the FHMC Hospital Transformation Unveiling event on Thursday, March 29, from 10:30 to 11 a.m. in the Auditorium of the Copeland Health Education Pavilion, located on the FHMC campus at 1911 Johnson Ave., San Luis Obispo.
Staff Writer Spencer Cole wrote this week’s Biz Spotlight. Information should be sent to the Sun via fax, mail, or email at spotlight@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 29 – Apr 5, 2018.