Roboticket Works with Tenesys to Develop Flexible, Scalable and Globally Available Ticketing Platform on AWS

Roboticket provides a ticketing platform for sports-related events for teams in Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Poland, and the UK. To allow it to scale and achieve global growth, it migrated its software-as-a-service (Saas) solution to Amazon Web Services (AWS) with the support of AWS Partner Tenesys. Using AWS, the company has reduced cloud costs by 75 percent and cut its per-customer cost by 80 percent. It has also expanded its customer base from six to 75 soccer clubs and is able to onboard new customers in just 2 weeks. To support global growth, it is using AWS Regions and Availability Zones, allowing it to set up in-country services and comply with data privacy laws in hours.

Events ticketing company Roboticket wants to shake up the sports ticketing market. The company’s software-as-a-service platform is aimed at ticketing managers in top-league soccer clubs in countries including Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Poland, and the UK.

The company’s aim is to automate as many ticketing processes as possible. This includes the allocation of supporter and soccer sponsor tickets to allow venue staff to focus on tasks that deliver the most benefits for fans.

However, by 2015, the company realized that its on-premises infrastructure was a barrier to its growth plans. It believed that moving to the cloud would allow it to scale, increase availability, and add functionality that would help it become a market leader. Roboticket chose to build its system on AWS and began work on a lift-and-shift migration with Tenesys, an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner.

After the initial migration, it has continued to work with Tenesys to optimize its infrastructure, cutting costs by 75 percent and its per-customer cost by 80 percent. In the 4 years since migrating to AWS, Roboticket has expanded its customer base from six to 75 soccer clubs and is now able to onboard new customers in just 2 weeks, over the 4 weeks it took previously.

In addition, to support its global growth plans, Roboticket is using AWS Regions and Availability Zones to set up in-country services in hours and comply with local data privacy laws.

The Polish company’s solution is primarily for soccer matches and sports events. Its customers use the system to sell season tickets, single tickets, and subscriptions. That in turn helps the soccer clubs to build fan databases to increase their ability to promote sales, build loyalty, and create long-term relationships with fans. The company also offers customers the ability to rebrand its platform as their own.

Because Roboticket’s prospects rely on hard-to-change legacy software or use no software at all, the company wanted to build an agile service that customers would find easy to customize and use. This helps it to offer new business models and to incorporate external customer applications, such as payment gateways or business intelligence tools.

Tenesys helped Roboticket with an initial lift-and-shift migration, and has been continually optimizing the cloud setup over the past 6 years. Working with Tenesys provides Roboticket with help in deciding which AWS services meet its ongoing product development needs.

After the migration, Tenesys focused on cloud costs and reduced them by 75 percent. It also eliminated Roboticket’s need to pay for expensive Windows licenses. “For us, AWS is a cloud provider pioneer,” says Michal Pyda, chief executive officer (CEO) at Roboticket. “We knew that Tenesys could get us on the road with AWS services and help us create a truly responsive ticketing software platform.”

One of Roboticket’s key issues was being able to handle surges in traffic before and during sporting events when the majority of event tickets are sold. Because of the fixed nature of its on-premises servers, it was unable to scale to meet sudden spikes in demand.

Roboticket can now automate scaling to easily manage surges in demand for tickets, using the Amazon Aurora database, which is designed for unparalleled high performance and availability at global scale. “Dealing with traffic spikes before had been a challenge,” says Pyda. “Now, when there are increases in demand before a big sports event, we can simply add compute power to our infrastructure. We don’t have to worry about maintaining our own equipment or adding new hardware. That’s peace of mind for us and our customers.”

In addition, using AWS means that new customers can be onboarded in just 2 weeks. And Roboticket has cut the per-user cost of its platform by 80 percent. Roboticket uses Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) to run highly secure, reliable, and scalable containers for its customer ticketing and access control. “If we hadn’t built on AWS, it would have been impossible to grow at the rate we have,” says Pyda.

Using AWS Regions and Availability Zones, Roboticket can easily expand into new markets using infrastructure as code—this allows it to be up and running in a new territory in just 2 hours. With these capabilities, Roboticket can also manage compliance, such as for the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). “Many of our customers need their data to stay in-country, which previously would have meant installing on-premises equipment each time we enter a new market,” says Pyda. “Using AWS is a big benefit to us, because there is no limitation on geography or resources.”

Building on AWS meant that the company was able to minimize the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic—when lockdowns meant games didn’t take place, it could manage lower levels of demand for servers. It was also able to quickly release a new social-distancing feature within just 1 month. Using the feature, fans could choose their seats from a seating plan, with a spacing buffer applied around them that adhered to local pandemic rules. “We were able to develop a fast response to restrictive rules during the pandemic,” says Pyda. “We survived with no major issues by reducing server usage levels to keep costs to a minimum, and focused on product innovation.”

Because it no longer has to worry about managing infrastructure on AWS, Roboticket has more time for software development. “We can now add in new functionality easily,” says Pyda. “We benefit from practically unlimited resources and can easily respond to new customer needs. We only pay for what we use and have no additional hardware costs.”

Roboticket also worked to develop a monthly subscription model for soccer matches. The new ticketing approach makes it easier for fans to choose the matches they want to see while avoiding the expense of an annual season ticket.

The feature was introduced in response to customer demand in Denmark, for clubs managed by Roboticket partner NewC Sport, to offer more flexible ticket purchasing options to attract and retain younger fans. “Building on AWS gives Roboticket the flexibility to respond to customers’ changing needs and quickly implement new business models,” says Maciej Marczynski, chief operating officer and co-owner at Tenesys. “Expanding digital payment options helps football clubs to reach a new generation of supporter, and we’re proud to have been part of that.”

Roboticket aims to extend its subscription model and wants to introduce new payment methods such as cryptocurrency and to enable its customers to offer non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for sports fans. “Using AWS, we don’t have to worry if our cloud setup works and can focus on making our platform the best it can be,” says Pyda. “Working with Tenesys and AWS has been fundamental in supporting growth on the company’s cloud journey, as well as for R&D. Tenesys helped us from the start to understand the potential of AWS. We consider them part of the team and a big contributor to our success.”