Don't Forget Your Tickets Academy

The Complete Ticketing Solution Get an overview of how TicketCo drives revenue and enhances fan experiences.

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The days of falling into ticketing are over

Don't Forget Your Tickets Academy is ten practical lectures for the people running ticketing at professional clubs, each led by a hand-picked industry expert covering everything from fan data and dynamic pricing to matchday operations and long-term growth.

Register today, and get instant access to every lecture so far, plus each new one as it goes live. It's completely free.

Complete the series, and you'll earn a certification to showcase on your LinkedIn profile.

About the speakers

Topic: Data, segmentation and fan journeys
📅 When: 10 September | 13:00 CET/12:00 UK time

Background
David Tavares Pansbo is Founding Partner at Playmakers, a fan growth company that describes its role as clubs' fan journey operator, the commercial link between fan data and revenue. He founded Playmakers in January 2025, after two years as Chief Executive of Above Sports, where he led the shift from a consultancy model to a technology driven sponsorship analytics business. He also judges the European Sponsorship Awards and advises Volleyball Danmark and Innovation Fund Denmark on digital strategy. At Playmakers he has built his career around one problem, that most clubs still communicate with fans as if they were all the same, helping clubs combine fan data, segmentation and automation to build more relevant experiences, stronger relationships and sustainable commercial growth.

What you will learn
Fan journey is the phrase everyone in the industry is using right now, but few clubs actually act on it. This session moves you from theory to practice, showing you how to turn fan data into real, sustainable revenue rather than a folder of unused reports.

How to map a fan's journey, from discovering your club for the first time, to attending their first match, becoming a regular, buying merchandise, renewing a season ticket and becoming an advocate
How to use segmentation to send the right message to the right fan at the right moment, instead of treating every fan the same
How automation lets you turn fan insight into action, since activating your data, not collecting it, is where the real advantage lies
How smarter segmentation helps you sell more seats and build longer lasting fan relationships

Topic: Revenue strategy in major sports events
📅 When: 17 September | 13:00 CET/12:00 UK time

Background
As Director of Ticketing for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Paul Williamson oversaw the sale of nearly 11 million tickets worth 1 billion US dollars across 950 sessions. As Director of Ticketing for England Rugby 2015, he built a ticketing operation from scratch to 274 million pounds in sales, setting world records for attendances and revenue. He then ran his own consultancy, Sports Ink, for eight years, advising the International Olympic Committee, the Paris 2024 Olympics, the Rugby World Cup, the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, the Commonwealth Games and many other major events, before joining Two Circles, three times named Sports Industry Agency of the Year. He also sits on the board of the Tour de France Grand Depart 2027.

What you will learn
A major event is a startup. You begin with a blank sheet of paper, build a strategy, sell as hard as you can, deliver the event, and then close down, with no next season and no renewal campaign. Paul will show you what it actually takes to drive revenue under those conditions, drawing on a career built at the very top of the industry.

How to build a ticketing strategy from nothing, with no existing fan base or season ticket holders to fall back on
How to sell a dream rather than a sport, and why that mindset changes how you market an event
How to use pricing creatively to fill venues and generate atmosphere, not just revenue
Why a full stadium is not just a commercial outcome but the foundation of the broadcast, the atmosphere and the event's legacy
How to get fans to commit early, so you can plan, staff, price and deliver with real certainty

Topic: Ticketing through a commercial lens
📅 When: 24 September | 13:00 CET/12:00 UK time

Background
Phil Carling has led the football practice at Octagon Worldwide since 2000, advising major brands on sponsorship and commercial strategy in football for the past 26 years. Before Octagon, he was Commercial Director at the Football Association from 1996 to 2000, Marketing Director at Arsenal Football Club from 1989 to 1996, and Group Head at ITV from 1981 to 1989. For close to twenty five years he has also lectured on the Football Industries MBA at the University of Liverpool, and many of his former students now hold senior positions across the sport and commercial world.

What you will learn
This session takes you inside ticketing from a commercial and sponsorship point of view, an angle most ticketing training never covers. You will leave understanding why money is moving towards sport, music and entertainment, and how to use that shift in your own role.

Why brands are now paying more for attention and for experiences, and what that means for sport
How to see ticketing as part of the wider commercial and sponsorship model, not a separate function
Why live experience assets, including tickets, are valued more highly than ever before
How to use this trend to make a stronger case for ticketing when you talk to commercial and sponsorship colleagues

Topic: Crowd density management
📅 When: 1 October | 13:00 CET/12:00 UK time

Background
Morten Therkildsen has worked in safety and crowd management at Roskilde Festival, one of Europe's largest music festivals with 135,000 attendees a day, since 2011, and has led the festival's safety and guest relations as director since 2024. Through the festival's commercial enterprise RFX, he has taken that expertise to some of the most demanding events in the world, including UEFA Champions League and Europa League finals, the Eurovision Song Contest, WorldPride and Formula 1 at Silverstone. He sits on the steering committee of the Yourope Event Safety Group and on the committee of the Institute of Venue Safety and Security, and he has appeared twice on the Don't Forget Your Tickets podcast, including its 50th episode anniversary special.

What you will learn
Crowd density management is not a back office concern at the events Morten works on, it is a central operational discipline where the margin for error is zero. This session gives you tools that matter at every scale of event, whether you run a 500 seat theatre or a 90,000 seat stadium.

How arrival profiles shape the risk environment before a single person has entered the venue
How crowd psychology determines what happens when space runs out
How deploying the right resources outside the venue can prevent problems that are much harder to solve once people are inside
How AI is increasingly used for people counting and real time crowd monitoring, and what that means for how you think about safety

Topic:
📅 When: 8 October | 13:00 CET/12:00 UK time

Background
Fredrik Söderberg has spent eight years at AIK Fotboll, one of Sweden's biggest football clubs, and made a rare climb inside it: from Head of Ticketing and Marketing from 2018 to 2020, to Deputy CEO from 2020 to 2023, to CEO and Club Director from 2023. Before AIK, he spent six years in event development at Friends Arena and Stockholm Live, and earlier still ran the commercial side of a Swedish trade publication. He has recently announced he is stepping down as CEO of AIK. He has previously appeared as a guest on the Don't Forget Your Tickets podcast.

What you will learn

Fredrik is one of the few people in the industry who has made the climb from ticketing manager to club CEO. This session shows you what the view looks like from both sides of that table, and gives you the tools to make ticketing's case at board level.

What a CEO actually needs from a ticketing manager, and how to give it to them
What a ticketing manager needs a CEO to understand, and how to make that case effectively
How to reframe ticketing as a commercial function that shapes revenue, fan relationships and data, rather than an operational back office task
How to build the credibility to be heard at board level, drawing on a career that went from ticketing manager to club CEO

Topic: Running ticketing for a multi purpose national stadium
📅 When: 15. October | 13:00 CET/12:00 UK time

Background
Daniel Cook has led ticketing at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff since March 2025, one of the largest and busiest multi purpose stadiums in Europe. He worked his way up through ticketing and customer service roles at the Welsh Rugby Union from 2019, after almost twelve years at SSE, starting as a customer service representative and rising to strategy and performance manager. Alongside his stadium role, he has been Chief Operating Officer at Different Breed since August 2025, a company building technology that makes live events more accessible. He joined that company's advisory board two years before taking on the top role.

What you will learn
Few venues switch between such different events as Principality Stadium. This session takes you behind the scenes of how one of Europe's busiest multi purpose stadiums makes it work.

How to adapt your ticketing strategy across completely different events, from a regular sporting fixture to an international concert
How to structure, resource and scale a ticketing operation to match the size and complexity of any event
How to balance commercial goals, such as revenue and inventory, with a fair and frictionless experience for the customer
How to design a customer journey where ticketing, access control, communications, accessibility, CRM and support all work together for tens of thousands of customers
How to build a ticketing operation that can adapt when things do not go to plan, from late changes to demand spikes and cancellations

Dominik Schreyer, speaker in Don't Forget Your Tickets Academy

Topic: The economics of empty seats
📅 When: 22. October | 13:00 CET/12:00 UK time

Background
Dominik Schreyer is a Professor of Sports Economics at WHU, Otto Beisheim School of Management, where he also directs the Center for Sports and Management, having worked his way up there since 2015. He is one of the most recognised academic voices in the business of sport, bringing rigorous research to questions the industry often answers with gut feel, and he is an active, generous contributor to stadium economics discussions on LinkedIn. He also advises businesses as a project leader at SLS Advisors, and has been a visiting scholar at Queensland University of Technology in Australia. He is a familiar face to the Don't Forget Your Tickets community, having spoken at TicketCo's event at Emirates Stadium and appeared on the podcast episode recorded there.

What you will learn
Ticketed fans who do not show up are one of the most talked about and least solved problems in the industry. Dominik brings rigorous academic research to a question most clubs still answer with gut feel, and shows you what actually works to bring fans back.

Why fans who hold a ticket do not always show up, and what the research says is really driving it
What no shows actually cost your club commercially, beyond the empty seat itself
How behavioural science can shape pricing and communication that gets more ticket holders through the door
How to turn academic research into practical decisions you can apply at your own club or venue

Topic: Club Brugge's digital and data transformation
📅 When: 29 October | 13:00 CET/12:00 UK time

Background
Thomas Rypens has been Innovation and Insights Director at Club Brugge since February 2025, driving innovation across data and fan experience to build a connected football ecosystem. He joined the club in 2022 as Direct to Consumer Director, responsible for all fan facing products and services, including ticketing. Before Club Brugge, he held digital and operations leadership roles at Made Design and Innovation, and co-founded MyPitch, a football focused self tracking app. He is also a board member at ENT.A, Entertainment Associatie.

What you will learn
You will see how one of Belgium's biggest clubs turned data from a technical afterthought into a genuine competitive advantage, and take away a method you can apply at your own club or venue. The lecture shows that this is, at its core, a story about organisation and culture rather than technology, and it leaves you with one central idea: competitive advantage comes from using your resources more intelligently, not from having more of them.

How to move your organisation from fragmented data ownership to one integrated, data first mindset
A practical method for turning strategy into action: start with the problem, then find where data and automation add value, then bring in AI
How to introduce AI and automation gradually, with clear governance and human oversight
How Club Brugge built a single, unified view of the fan and used it to power personalised matchday journeys
How Club Brugge uses AI and multimodal data to strengthen scouting and recruitment decisions

Topic: Building a career on contract work in ticketing
📅 When: 5 November | 13:00 CET/12:00 UK time

Background
Brooke Arthur has spent close to twenty years working on contract across some of the largest events in the world, rather than holding a single permanent role. Her ticketing project work includes the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the FIFA Women's World Cup Australia and New Zealand 2023, the ICC Women's T20 World Cup, the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games, the Invictus Games Sydney 2018, the FIFA Women's World Cup Canada 2015, the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and the Vancouver 2010 and Paralympic Games. She is currently studying for an MBA and has recently co-founded a ticketing consulting business. She has appeared on the Don't Forget Your Tickets podcast twice, and her first episode is the most downloaded in the podcast's history.

What you will learn
Brooke has built an entire career on contract work, moving from one major global event to the next rather than staying in a single permanent role. This session tackles the fear that keeps many ticketing professionals from making that leap, and shows you what a career built entirely on contract work can actually look like.

Your reputation is your currency. How to build a long, successful career in ticketing without ever holding a permanent position

Leaving ego at the door. What it actually takes to move from one major global event to the next, from the Olympics to FIFA World Cups to regional festivals
It's not always easy or fun but it's never boring. How to manage the practical realities of contract work, including gaps between contracts, building a reputation, and staying employable
Learnings and second chances. Why contract work can be a strength rather than a risk, and how to make that case to yourself and to anyone considering the same path

Topic: Headless ticketing and the value of building your own fan journey
📅 When: 12 November | 13:00 CET/12:00 UK time

Background
Mark Stephenson joined TicketCo as Chief Technology Officer after a career scaling technology companies and solving complex data problems. He started out managing the season ticket database at Darlington Football Club, then built and sold a web and events analytics business. He later held senior roles at Teradata, helping brands including HSBC and Sports Direct implement AI-driven solutions, and has since scaled two more companies, Intelligence Fusion and Clixifix, to acquisition. Based in the north of England, he is a UEFA-qualified coach and lifelong football fan who joined TicketCo to blend that passion with the challenge of scaling a platform business.

What you will learn

Headless ticketing is science fiction for some, already implemented for others, and will soon be everyday business for all of us. Mark, who is building TicketCo's Flex platform, explains why owning the ticket buyer on your own domain throughout the whole shopping journey pays off, and shows how to make it happen. This ownership gives the ticket buyer a smoother, more frictionless experience, and gives the organiser a treasure chest of customer data to work with.

What headless ticketing actually means, and why it is already live at some clubs while much of the industry is still catching up
How keeping the ticket buyer on your own domain removes the friction of redirects and third-party pages
Why owning that journey turns every transaction into a source of first-party customer data, rather than handing it to someone else's platform
How a smoother buying journey wins more completed sales and builds stronger fan relationships
What TicketCo is building with Flex, and how clubs can start preparing for a headless future today