Colleen Coil Moriarity is the Ticket Office Manager for the FARGODOME, an indoor athletic stadium and convention center on the campus of North Dakota State University in Fargo. And, yes, it’s spelled with all capital letters. The capitalization is a deliberate part of how the facility presents itself, much like companies that use all-capital names for visual impact and brand recognition. But to hear Moriarity speak of it, the venue should also end with an exclamation point.
Colleen Coil Moriarity
“We say our flexibility is a blessing and a curse!” she states. “We are a multi-use rental facility, so one of my duties is working with our event coordinator and the promoter of a show to choose the right configuration size for their event. We can go from 26,000-plus for a full house concert in the round to a Broadway theatre set for 3,500 people to a north-end 8,500-seat ‘basketball’ set to a south-end 10,000-seat half house show. We have a riser section that can be moved to any stairwell in the venue. We can offer several different configurations for any type of event.”
She continues, “It is much easier to work with promoters that have been here before because of our various sets. My main duties consist of scaling, building events and putting them on sale. I am involved from the time the promoter sends scaling requests to show day and final ticket office reports.”
The Job
Moriarity says the favorite part of her job is walking in during any event and seeing thousands of people having — hopefully — a once-in-a-lifetime experience. “It makes me emotional and happy to do what I do!” she declares.
Still, the challenges are many. She says, “I am sure I have the same struggles all ticket offices have and that is the challenge of assisting guests that purchased from third-party sellers. Show days were relatively simple before Internet sales! When a guest is standing there upset or in tears and they have invested a lot of money in their ticket purchase and you have to deny them entry or ask them to purchase new tickets — it hurts my heart.”
Moriarity confesses that she wishes she could let them all in with relocate tickets. But she can’t, of course. She adds, “It also is hard when I know the original buyer paid, for example, $100 for a ticket and resells it for $700 to a mother purchasing a Taylor Swift ticket for her daughter. Luckily, I was able to find a seat for this mother at regular price in the stands so she too could attend the concert.”
Moriarity says she also finds staffing for weekday event days like trade shows or high school events difficult. “Most of our part-time ticket office staff have full-time jobs and are only available nights and weekends,” she notes.
But then there are those moments that make all of the hard times worth it. One of the most heartwarming memories she has is the time she assisted two young women with purchasing tickets for Green Day, their first-ever concert at the FARGODOME. She recalls, “They were so appreciative that they returned with a corsage and a ‘Thank you’ card. How sweet! Then again, this was 2009. How old did they think I was? Their grandmother’s age? [laughing] But really, it was very thoughtful!”
Experience and Advice
Moriarity came to the ticketing profession from a retail background. When she was growing up, she and her family moved from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to Fargo where her mother opened a gift shop, Cloud Nine. When she was 13, she started working there every day after school and Saturdays for $10 a week. “The school bus would drop me off at the mall!” she chuckled at the memory.
Eventually, she managed her own store — Paperweight, a greeting card shop. She started working at the FARGODOME selling merchandise for shows when it opened in 1992. “I had a little practice selling tickets at a Blockbuster Record Store in 1997-98 in Greenville, S.C.,” she states. “After housesitting in Greenville, I moved back to Fargo and continued working part-time selling merchandise while managing a couple different departments at Media Play. I became ticket office manager here in August 2000.”
She remembers the best advice ever given to her in those younger years was to “treat people with kindness. Think how excited you have been in the past for an event and understand how our guests feel. We sell FUN, and we should enjoy our jobs!”
This being our Women in Ticketing series, what advice would Moriarity give to any young woman reading this article just starting out in the ticketing/live event business? She answered, “Communication is paramount! Network and nurture the friendships you make when attending conferences. Cultivate trusted relationships with staff at venues in your area. Share your knowledge willingly, and do not be afraid to ask for help or for another ticket office’s best practices. There’s no need to ‘reinvent the wheel’ as they say. If someone else has a great plan, you can borrow/use it!”
She also lives by the CYA rule . . or, uh, Cover Your Ass. “Get every request in writing and keep a paper trail. Your emails and notes will be a life saver! I build shows frequently a year in advance and finance doesn’t have questions until pre-settlement or the night of the show, and I have every note about the show build saved for reference. There is no such thing as being too detailed.
What’s Next?
I had the good fortune of interviewing Moriarity right before the beginning of 2026’s fourth quarter. So, at this time, is she generally optimistic, pessimistic or mixed about these waning days of the current year and what’s next in 2027? She acknowledged that she and her staff are coming off a nearly sold-out Foo Fighters concert back on Sept. 12. “I am feeling pretty optimistic about live events and our industry,” she declared. “Saying that, with the economic times we are in, we need to accept that live events are susceptible to becoming only a luxury. The arts, though, will always be a vital part of our communal society!”
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