Telstra Partners With New Premium Live Music Ticket Service

Telecommunications giant Telstra has today announced a partnership with new music ticket service BangTango as the company looks to get a foothold into the premium ticket marketing.

Launched today alongside the offer of a reserved ticket allocation for British pop-star Olly Murs' tour later this year, the company is in line with Telstra's 'Thanks' loyalty program.

Telstra came on board with BangTango as a “start-up” partner as early as July last year, but today the company's Founder and Director Daniel Popic told theMusic.com.au that it was very much a separate company.

Popic, who has a background in ticketing and loyalty marketing, has previously worked at Ticketek, where he was the Alliances Marketing Manager, and had before that launched HMV and Sanity's loyalty programs.

He described the company as a “Hybrid between a ticketing platform and sponsorship business” and said that Telstra had been involved with the development since coming on as partners. The commercial and business backing of a company as large as Telstra will allow BangTango to become an influential option to primary ticket providers and promoters.

As part of the partnership familiar exclusive ticketing opportunities, such as pre-sales, soundcheck access, after parties and exclusive events would “be offered to Telstra customers, whether it be Bon Jovi or Jonsi at the Enmore [Theatre, Sydney].”

“There's a strong pipeline of upcoming tours and for the ones we're working on the level of support from Telstra is significant,” he said.

The service is currently only open to Telstra customers, but they plan to open it up to the rest of the public in the future.

Popic denied that Telstra were angling to be a promoter themselves.

“We work with the promoters and that's very much their space. As far as I'm concerned they're the ones that take the risk to bring out this great music and we'll work with them to reward Telstra customers.”

The exclusive Telstra pre-sale to Olly Murs will begin at 9am Wednesday 10 April through BangTango's website.

Editor's note: Article updated at 5pm to alter incorrect reference due to bad phone line