Legends are defined by their ability to inspire, transform, and leave a lasting impact. In this feature, INTIX celebrates three ticketing legends we profiled in 2024, each of whom has made outstanding contributions to the industry. Dan DeMato transformed ticketing at the New York Mets and later through FutureTix. Roger Tomlinson has accomplished so much with such passion that he is viewed with legendary status. And Angus Watson is renowned as a star performer in the ticket office and marketing.
Dan DeMato
For Dan, a serendipitous call in 1985 from a friend at the New York Mets shifted his career from pharmaceutical production to ticketing. Initially brought in to help part time with hard tickets during the team’s push for post-season play, Dan soon became instrumental in modernizing operations with computerized ticketing. Over 23 seasons with the Mets, he oversaw ticketing for historic events, including the 1986 World Series, National League Championship baseball games, numerous concerts by artists including the Rolling Stones, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, among others, and even a game that became a poignant symbol of resilience after Sept. 11, 2001.
Dan DeMato.
“Those are things you don’t forget,” he says. “For the Rolling Stones’ Steel Wheels Tour, we had 60,000+ people for six days … For baseball there were times we would sell 7,000 to 10,000 tickets as walk-ups on game day. That doesn’t exist anywhere anymore … but [I remember] lines of thousands of people at your ticket windows to purchase for that night's game or that day's game. That kind of stuff was incredible.”
One of Dan’s most significant memories is when Shea Stadium became an emergency command center after the attacks on the World Trade Center. Ten days later, an unscheduled Mets versus Braves game was held.
“President Bush and the Commissioner of Baseball decided that America needed baseball again,” he says. “We had to create and sell tickets for a new event while we were doing a whole bunch of other things to help the cause. It was quite an undertaking, selling out 55,000 seats quickly, implementing new security, and preparing for the post-season again. We were in a race for post-season, which would happen in a few weeks, but that game was as memorable as anything in my career. It was a very impactful game that the city needed. We won on a late-inning home run by Mike Piazza, but it was about much more than baseball. It was all about recognizing those who had fallen.”
Later, as the founder of FutureTix, Dan began leveraging his expertise to help clients across multiple verticals, showing that ticketing innovation and an eye for the future know no boundaries.
Of the many success stories at FutureTix over the years, Dan really enjoyed working with Medieval Times. “It was the first time ever that we were talking about how you sold tickets to a castle, as opposed to an arena or a theater,” Dan recalls. “They had nine castles across North America, and at the time, they were selling two million tickets per year, which was quite surprising to me. They were looking to get into more technology and had been doing many things manually. We had a lot of knowledge about things they wanted to do. That was a fun engagement.”
Learn more about Dan’s remarkable career, his contributions to INTIX, the invaluable lessons he gained from his mentors and more in our feature story, “Ticketing Legends: Dan DeMato Hit a Home Run in Ticketing and Consulting.”
Dan speaking at INTIX after receiving the 2015 Patricia G. Spira Lifetime Achievement Award.
Roger Tomlinson
After more than half a century in ticketing, Roger is “mostly retired,” but he still talks to arts organizations of various sizes on a pro-bono basis. These organizations are fortunate to have the ear of a legend who has accomplished so much over so many years and with such enthusiasm.
“When organizations are in a bit of difficulty and need some independent advice, I’m more than willing to help,” Roger says. “The awful thing is that it's very often when they are in a very difficult situation, and very often, they don't realize how difficult it is. And then you actually find you're trying to talk to and help people who, in a sense, don't know what they don't know. It's very challenging.”
Roger at INTIX 2016 in Anaheim.
After beginning his career in marketing at the Victoria Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent, Roger would go on to great success in roles at the newly opened Leeds Playhouse, the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, and the Aberystwyth Arts Centre, on which he focused time and attention in his post-secondary school days.
“During my time as a student at Aberystwyth University, David Tinker, the Director of Visual Arts, and I developed a design brief for an arts center that included a concert hall, theater, art gallery, studio theater, etc. When I was in Stratford, I got phoned by the university, and they said, ‘Hello Roger, we've built it. Do you want to come and run it?’ It was an amazing opportunity.”
In 1975, after his time with the Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Roger set up and ran Theatr Clwyd in North Wales, one of the largest producing theatres in the United Kingdom. He moved on when he felt he couldn’t take the organization any further. Roger shares, “I was already heavily involved in organizing the emerging circuit of new venues in Wales and wanted to do more.”
From there, Roger spent six-and-a-half years with the Arts Council of Wales, which funds theaters and companies in Wales. Then, he decided to set out on his own. It was the beginning of a journey in consulting that would skyrocket his name and reputation around the world.
“I had a lot of experience and a body of knowledge that I could take into a consultancy,” he says. “And the timing was right. Because Margaret Thatcher’s government was cutting funding to the arts, a lot of organizations were struggling and needed help. I thought, right, if I become a consultant, there’s a lot I can do to help.”
In 1988, he founded A.R.T.S., which stood for Administration, Research, Training Services, and featured Roger’s initials in the middle of the acronym by design. The consultancy was immediately successful, completing feasibility studies and economic impact analyses, developing cultural strategies, preparing business plans, developing training, providing skills development and more.
Read about Roger’s growth as an industry visionary and how he shaped ticketing in the U.K. and beyond in our feature story, “Ticketing Legends: Roger Tomlinson’s Lifetime of Influence in Consulting and the Arts.”
Roger speaking on a panel at the 35th Annual INTIX Conference & Exhibition in Chicago in 2014.
Angus Watson
Angus launched his career straight out of college with an internship in the ticket office at the renowned Oxford Playhouse, a venue that evokes legends such as Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, John Gielgud, Judy Dench, Rowan Atkinson and Dudley Moore.
At the time, Angus had no way of knowing that this brief stint in the ticket office would be the start of a career spanning nearly half a century — one in which he would earn his place as a star performer, not on the marquee, but behind the scenes.
“[The internship] led to an interview at English National Opera (ENO), initially as marketing assistant and then head of marketing after a year. From there, I went to the Barbican as head of marketing [and was also directly responsible for the ticket office], which would have been in 1979. I went from there to Space Time Systems, [which had] the BOCS ticketing product, as product director ... That would have been 1988. Then, in 1993, I moved to the United States and did a very brief stint at a company called Ticket Connections in Louisville, Kentucky. Then, almost 30 years ago, I started at Ravinia.”
Angus opens INTIX 2014.
This brief summary barely scratches the surface of Angus’ achievements, including his pivotal role in marketing at the Barbican, one of London’s premier venues for the performing arts, including theatre, dance, music and film.
For Angus and his colleagues, the Barbican offered a unique opportunity to build something exceptional from the ground up.
“It was a very rare opportunity … to take ideas that you might have had elsewhere and were unable to pursue and put them into operation. For example, it gave me the opportunity to make the box office part of the marketing team, which generally wasn't considered at that time in most places. To combine what had previously been planned as two separate ticket offices, one for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the other for the concert hall with the London Symphony, into one operation was logistically complicated. The Royal Shakespeare Company already had a box office team in place who would be moving with them, but we managed to make that work. And then putting the first in-house computerized system installed in London into operation.”
At the time, the Box Office Computer System (BOCS) had only been implemented in two other venues in the U.K., in Glasgow and Manchester. Angus recalls the challenges of integrating it into a theater that had not been designed to accommodate such technology.
“To start with, the building was not wired for something like that,” he says. “Then, learning how to deal with a brand-new piece of software, which, as always, comes with its challenges and problems. But at the other end of the scale of then being able to process ticket sales from any point in the building, and there were multiple places in the building, different venue ticket offices, simultaneously, which was exciting and something that would have been extremely hard to do with any kind of hard ticket system.”
BOCS quickly became the way of the future for the industry — and, for a time, for Angus’ future as well. In 1988, he joined Space Time Systems, the company responsible for developing and selling the groundbreaking software. In addition to marketing the product in the U.S., the Far East and Australia, Angus would provide the marketing experience for the product.
Discover how BOCS set Angus on a path to spend over two decades at Ravinia, the renowned outdoor music venue located just outside of Chicago, what he recalls as his greatest career accomplishment, his involvement with BOMI and later INTIX, and more in our feature story, “Ticketing Legends: Angus Watson Has Crossed Oceans for Love, Life and Live Event Ticketing.”
Angus and his wife Chloe Watson (left) with Patricia Spira (center) at INTIX 2016.
Editor’s Note: Learn more about some of the incredible professionals who have shaped our industry in the INTIX “Ticketing Legends” series.
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