O.C. Ticket Firm Hits a Homer in N.Y.

COSTA MESA â€”  Following the lead of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the New York Mets have signed a deal with a budding Orange County company to sell the team’s tickets through electronic kiosks in grocery stores and shopping malls.

The three-year contract represents a strategic victory for ETM Entertainment Network Inc., a small Costa Mesa firm, over Ticketmaster, the nation’s leading ticket company. ETM is best known for handling ticket sales for the Dodgers, the USC football and basketball home games, and the rock act Pearl Jam’s 1995 concert tour.

ETM “has worked for the Dodgers. So it makes sense that it can work for us,� said Bill Ianniciello, vice president of ticket sales and services for the Mets.

ETM officials declined to comment on the contract’s financial details.

Analysts say that sports contracts usually aren’t as lucrative as entertainment deals, where service charges can be much higher. But the Mets deal could help the Orange County firm establish credibility--and a physical presence--in the New York market and cement other agreements.

ETM is in discussions with the Schubert Theatre in New York City, according to industry sources. The firm hopes to sign a deal to sell tickets to all the venue’s musical and entertainment events, as well as seats for traveling shows.

ETM officials admitted they are in talks with a “prominent New York theater,� but would not confirm if the venue was the Schubert.

“Our technology will be visible and used by the public, so that other players such as the theaters and local tourist attractions can consider whether they’d like to use our machines to market their tickets,� said Peter Schniedermeier, president of ETM. “We think this is a great position for us to be in.�

Yet industry sources question whether ETM, which moves such smaller numbers of tickets than Ticketmaster, can grow by relying only on sales from its kiosks. Ticketmaster officials note that phone transactions account for nearly 50% of its overall ticket sales.

“Phone sales are crucial,� said one industry insider. He stressed the need for an integrated system of outlets, phones and the Internet.

ETM’s deal with the Mets, signed last week, does not include advance phone sales or the estimated 13,000 season tickets the ballclub sells itself. But it does cover in-person ticket sales and those on game day, Mets officials said.

The company’s kiosks let customers browse through diagrams of Shea Stadium, locate their seat, then slide a credit card into the kiosk to pay for the ticket. The New York ballclub expects to have 40 machines running in New York by the season opener on March 31. Each ticket will include a surcharge of $2 to $3, Ianniciello said.

Last year, ETM landed that deal with the Dodgers, luring the team away from Ticketmaster after a 14-year relationship. Starting with only seven machines on Opening Day, the company has installed about 80 kiosks throughout Southern California.

Many of the machines that sell Dodger tickets have been customized to provide sales information in Spanish and Korean. That’s an option the Mets hope to incorporate into their kiosks, as part of an ongoing effort to bolster ticket sales in the Asian and Latino communities, said team officials.

Though Dodger staff say they were pleased with ETM’s first-year performance, officials acknowledge that ticket sales through the kiosks were initially slow--about 50,000 seats for the 1996 season.

Excluding season ticket holders, the club sold a total of 1.5 million seats last year, Dodger officials said.

“It took time to get the machines up and it took more time to get people used to using them,� said Debra Kay Duncan, director of ticket operations for the Dodgers. “But if you add in all of the online ticket sales--about another 100,000 last season--we’re already ahead of where we were with other ticketing partners.�

ETM also began selling Dodger seats on the Internet in December.

On Monday, the Ticketmaster Group announced that its online ticket sales are booming in the United States and Canada.

The company sold nearly 400,000 tickets--or $16.7 million--over the Internet for the fourth quarter ending Jan. 31. The online venture, which began in November 1996, sold just over a million tickets in the last year, according to company officials.