LivingSocial and Ticketfly have partnered to make purchasing concert tickets easier via mobile.

Both companies already have a large mobile presence, but they hope to expand their audiences and mobile reach with the partnership. The partnership will start in the following pilot markets: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Washington/Baltimore.

“We encourage people to get beyond their screen and do things,” said Doug Miller, senior vice president of new business development at LivingSocial, Washington. “Increasingly that buying is happening in the flow of everyday life. That means on their mobile screen as well as PC.

“Ticketing is a complicated process,” he said. “Many of these companies have legacy systems or specialized systems.

“Our partnership with Ticketfly is about really meeting our customers where they want to be met and allowing them to continue to purchase and fulfill using mobile devices as much as possible. This is early stages of specializing in a category that we care about which is a live event.”

Teaming up
The new partnership will give music fans access to Ticketfly venues via the LivingSocial mobile application.

Since artists and promoters are increasingly offering short periods of time for buying discounted tickets to events, fans can use the mobile application on-the-go and make sure they do not miss a deal.

The app also lets users store tickets on their phones,  so that way there is no chance of forgetting a paper ticket at home.

Ryan O’Connor, director of business development at Ticketfly, San Francisco, said that the partnership with LivingSocial was a perfect fit.

“For us it made a lot of sense, [LivingSocial’s] expertise in the category,” he said. “They already partner with some of the biggest companies out there. This seemed like a natural match.

“It seemed like the LivingSocial team understood what it meant to be a partner, they really had a grip around what our customers use as marketing tools, so that made the partnership compelling to us.”

Mobile tickets
Both LivingSocial and Ticketfly have already seen much success on mobile.

LivingSocial sold 300,472 mobile tickets for live events in the first half of 2013, which was more than the company sold in all of 2012 — 255,979.

According to Mr. Miller, 35 percent of LivingSocial vouchers are purchased on mobile devices.

Ticketfly is also seeing an increase in mobile transactions, with purchases doubling from nine percent to 18 percent in the last year alone. Additionally, 30 percent of Ticketfly’s overall traffic stems from mobile devices.

LivingSocial has also integrated social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook with its mobile applications (See story).

“We’re partnering with LivingSocial because of their presence in mobile,” Mr. O’Connor said.

“The first chapter of this story is that we’re partnering together to market these events because we believe our audiences have a big overlap,” he said. “The next step is building towards a more seamless process in the day of operations of people getting to the door.”

Final Take
Rebecca Borison is editorial assistant on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York