Rob Greig talks to Computicket founder Percy Tucker about the special business he started
PERCY Tucker, MD and founder of Computicket, retired this week at 65 amid plaudits from the leisure industry and show business. He was uniquely able to justify the ways of Mammon to the Muses and vice versa: in this lay much of the success of Computicket. It had credibility with capitalist cinema mogul and populist theatre director alike.
As he retired, his successor Graham Victor announced plans to sell tickets through ATM-style vending machines, continuing the technological innovation which has marked the company.
But Computicket’s singular achievement was — and is — to relieve theatre managements of the onerous burdens of marketing, ticket-selling and information management. Started 23 years ago, it allowed them to get on with what they were best qualified to do: running theatres and staging plays. Few other theatre managements elsewhere in the world have had that luxury.
Because it is so much a part of our landscape — and has helped create it — it is easy to take Computicket for granted. Worldwide, it is without parallel. It is difficult for a Londoner to book, electronically, seats for an Edinburgh production, or a New Yorker to book seats for Boston.
Few Western theatre booking agencies would also be able to offer seats on a bus or at the rugby, let alone seats at the cinema.
Tucker’s position as father-confessor and counsellor supreme to generations of theatre managements is an illustration of the dictum that information is power. Information is the by-product of the business of taking bookings.
Computicket sells convenience to the public, and information and management support to its client industries in the leisure sector. It is a back-to-back operation with the management support a by-product of the information from the booking end.
For arts and sporting organisations, Computicket also operates as a collections agency. It has undertaken the onerous and often dangerous business of collecting and banking funds, and refunding. Part of its revenues come from quasi-banking and bookkeeping operations.
The information by-product takes two forms: formal data assembled by the Computicket system and informal insights accumulated by Tucker through years of experience in the business.
The database of Computicket is invaluable and it has been closely guarded, mainly because it is Computicket’s chief asset, apart from Tucker himself.
Anyone interested in the sociology of culture or sport would need access to Computicket’s figures — and would be unlikely to get them. The system has data about where theatre or cinema-goers book, when they make their bookings, what kind of events are successful and at what time of year, and what the effects of political violence and emigration have been on different forms of entertainment.
Sometimes Tucker’s reluctance to more than hint at such trends, especially to newspapers, has been infuriatingly tantalising. But Tucker has insisted that this information properly belongs to his clients, the industry, rather than the commentators.
The success of Computicket has been largely based on Tucker’s own talents and personality. Tucker, a sceptical but humane person with an air of unimpressionable lugubriousness, has unusual abilities.
Firstly, he has the rare ability to think in cultural and in business terms, respecting the differences between the two but also seeing where each can benefit from cross-referencing to the other.
Secondly, he is generous and discreet. He has shared his counsel and knowledge with a range of organisations and people.
Thirdly, he has vision and marketing skills. Early on, he recognised that the mystery and romance of an arts event could be built on hard-nosed business practices: the two were not antithetical.
South Africa, Tucker says, is too small for a business like Computicket. The cost of establishing a comparable organisation now would be prohibitive he says, because of the weak rand. Growing international entertainment traffic and more large venues will benefit Computicket in time.
Tucker will not disclose Computicket’s turnover profit figures.
He says, however, that the business works on a five percent gross margin but with the high fixed costs of 300 staff and a nationwide network of booking berths and computers — plus associated banking charges, refunds — and refundable service charges if an event is cancelled.
“People talk about the interest earned on booking money. But in most cases, the money comes in on Friday and has to be paid out to clients on the Monday.”
The business has the capacity to serve a customer a minute for 24 hours. But it operates in a unique environment.
“Where else but in the entertainment industry would one find businesspeople putting up their own money to import a product, then letting the media determine its success or failure?” Tucker asks.
The uniqueness is also in the degree of sensitivity of attendances to factors as various as weather, time of month, competing attractions, political unrest, venue and pricing.