Ventity

[Phill]

I am building a model of ticket distribution for a sports ground. There is a variety of tickets, from simple standing-only tickets to a match, which nevertheless vary in price according to match status (local, major league, international) to tickets including hospitality, VIP boxes and so on. Ticket sales and prices are influenced by many variables, from the weather and the previous performance and rankings of the teams, to general economic factors and distribution channels. Having read the white paper on Entity-based System Dynamics, it seems that these ticket products might be better modelled as entities with specific attributes, as the identification of each throughout the model results should be easier, specific ticket attributes can easily be modified and entities can be exchanged between models for different venues. Is this the case? Might Ventity be a better tool for this type of model and could such a model be built initially in Vensim and then transferred to Ventity, with different ticket types (currently stocks in Vensim) being recast as entities?

And when might Ventity be available ?

[gwr]

Hi Phil,

I am just a bit curious: Are you sure that you are addressing a dynamic problem here? The ticket sales forcasting sounds rather like food for multivariate regression analysis or some fancy machine learning algorithm.

Best,
Guido

PS: I do find the question about Ventity's release date a very urgent one, indeed.

[LAUJJL]

Hi

Whether it is dynamical or not depends on two (or more) things.

One is whether or not the tickets are bought in advance.

The second is whether or not the matches are independent from one another.

Regards.

PS I am too wondering if Ventity is ever going to be launched and when if yes.

JJ

[Phill]

It's a good question Guido. The dynamic aspect is akin to revenue management procedures, in that tickets are offered through multiple channels well in advance of games and prices change according to 'pick up' (demand) over time. It's a bit like budget airline ticket sales, in that respect. There is also the point that a team's performance and standing from the time tickets go on sale for a future match influence demand, and therefore prices, over the period up to the match itself. It's those changing demand and price patterns that we want to model and understand and we have a lot of historical data for reliability testing.

[tomfid]

Presumably there are thousands of tickets for any one game?

Probably the one thing you wouldn't want to do is model literal individual tickets. Ventity isn't optimized for millions of lightweight entities with no dynamics, and I'm not sure it makes sense anyway.

However, I think two aspects of this would lend themselves to Ventity:
- It sounds like you have essentially a long list of ticket types, which might have different attributes (sitting/standing, location, whatever). If a lot of the permutations don't exist (no standing tickets at midfield?) you wouldn't want a structure like TicketPrice[ seat type, location ] because it would be full of 0s. Ventity would handle that more naturally, though you could also do it in Vensim by having a single array dimension with different subranges for relevant blocks of ticket attributes, at the price of a little convenience.
- Tickets might be on offer for a number of games or a whole season at once. But once a game happens, the dynamics for that particular ticket stop. Ventity would be good at that kind of dynamic creation/deletion of entities (where an entity represents a particular class of ticket x game combination).

The launch is a bit slower than we'd hoped, but it's in alpha with a few people. We'll say a bit more tomorrow.

[Phill]

The stadium has a capacity of around 80,000 and tickets are sold with a variety of combinations, such as entry only, with different prices for different locations (the stadium is all-seating) entry plus hospitality to varying degrees, entry plus hospitality plus behind the scenes tour, VIP, boxes, corporate entertainment and so on. We want to model each ticket class, not literal individual tickets, although tracking the demand and sales within each class would be important. Tickets are offered for sale through a variety of channels too, with discounts and commissions payable. Future pricing is affected by team performance to date, so that needs to be factored in too.

Thanks for the advice on using arrays in Vensim. That is what I plan to start with and it will give us the shape of the model, even if Ventity proves to be a better tool later on.

Good luck with the launch.

[tomfid]

Thanks. This sounds like a cool model, due to the real options angle - sell all the tickets up front and guarantee revenue? Or hold some for later in the season, and take your chances on the ups and downs of performance? Good luck with the model.

[gwr]

@Tom:

The launch is a bit slower than we'd hoped, but it's in alpha with a few people. We'll say a bit more tomorrow.

Did I miss something or have there really not been any annoucements with regard to Ventity since your announcement of an announcement?

Best,
Guido

[tomfid]

You missed something ... Did you put yourself on the list at ventity.biz? I'll check, but take a look in your spam folder perhaps.

[LAUJJL]

Hi

I put mysekf too on the ventity list for beta test, and I did not get any information.

Where is it possible to get information if any?

Regards.

JJ

[gwr]

Hello Tom,

I have put myself on the list but have not received any info so far including my spam folder. Should I be missing on your list of interested people for some reason I would greatly appreciate being listed.

Also please forward the message that I have missed.

Best regards,

Guido
mailto:gwr@bsl-support.de

[tomfid]

Strange. The server thinks the announcement went out. I'll check the details, and forward to both of you separately.

[tomfid]

It seems to have died for no reason before the last 26 mails went out, and you were among the unlucky. Sorry. Should come now.

[gwr]

Thank you, Tom, the message has come through.