PHILADELPHIA, PA (September 25, 2025) – Penn Live Arts, the University of Pennsylvania’s home for the performing arts, today announced a new partnership with True Tickets, a leading digital ticket delivery service for arts and cultural venues, to enhance its patron experience with secure, mobile-first ticketing.
Beginning with the 2025/26 season, Penn Live Arts audiences will experience secure ticket delivery with password-less access and easy sharing. The partnership also gives Penn Live Arts visibility into its shadow audience, as attendees who came as part of a group of friends or family were previously unknown. With this newly revealed audience data, Penn Live Arts can deepen engagement, cultivate new donor relationships, and strengthen long-term loyalty.
“Penn Live Arts has always been a crossroads for transformative performance and community connection,” said Christopher A. Gruits, Executive & Artistic Director of Penn Live Arts. “This partnership with True Tickets enhances our ability to welcome audiences with a swift and seamless entry experience while helping us better connect with each person in our seats. With these insights, we can strengthen ties to both our campus community and the greater Philadelphia region.”
How the partnership enhances the Penn Live Arts experience:
- Swift, accessible entry through password-less mobile ticket access, making arrival effortless for every audience member.
- Turns every ticket into an engagement opportunity with customized messaging includingpre-show reminders, directions, accessibility updates, or other timely communications.
- Protection against fraud with dynamic QR codes that refresh continuously, eliminating invalid or duplicate tickets at the door.
- Actionable audience data via deep CRM integration that records every ticket delivery, share, or scan to help Penn Live Arts assist and re-engage attendees.
“As one of Philadelphia’s most storied cultural institutions, Penn Live Arts is committed to creating accessible, world-class performing arts experiences,” said Ken Lesnik, Head of Business Development at True Tickets. “We’re proud to help them protect their ticketing experience, build direct patron relationships, and surface new audiences who can be welcomed back for seasons to come.”
The partnership reflects Penn Live Arts’ continued dedication to innovation, inclusion, and excellence, bringing its more than 50-year legacy of presenting visionary artists into a new era of audience engagement and ticketing transparency.
About True Tickets
True Tickets is a secure contactless digital ticket service that puts venues and event organizers in control of their tickets and in communication with their true audience. To date, True Tickets has delivered 20.7 million digital tickets worth USD $1.4 billion and enabled 2.5 million secure shares across 90+ arts organizations worldwide. Available to Tessitura Network members, True Tickets' business-to-business solution seamlessly integrates with primary ticketing systems, empowering its partners to leverage the advantages of digital-native tickets to ensure extraordinary live experiences for their guests. With True Tickets, ticket issuers can set rules and track ticket custody, limit the excesses of the secondary market, and restore direct relationships between their audiences and the live events they love. For additional information, please visit True-Tickets.com or follow True Tickets on Twitter or LinkedIn.
About Penn Live Arts
Penn Live Arts (PLA), headquartered at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, is the leading presenter of innovative and transformative performing arts experiences in Philadelphia. A vital resource for the performing arts at the University of Pennsylvania, PLA is an artistic crossroads joining Penn and the greater Philadelphia region through world-class music, dance and theatre on campus and at venues throughout the city, serving an annual audience of over 80,000. Penn Live Arts emphasizes artistic and intellectual excellence and extensive variety in its offerings; prioritizes broad inclusiveness in the artists, audiences and groups it serves; and expands arts access by actively engaging a wide range of audiences and inclusive communities from campus, the West Philadelphia neighborhood and the surrounding region.
Media Inquiries:
True Tickets
Crystal Henderson
crystal@thepresshouse.com
Penn Live Arts
Katherine Blodgett
katherineblodgett@gmail.com