The Ticketmaster Developer Experience
July 15th marked my one year anniversary here at Ticketmaster. Shortly after joining the team, I shared our vision for an open platform rooted in accessible APIs developers love. Our core belief is that an open platform creates the best ticketing platform, and that leads to a better experience for everyone who loves live events — from artists to venues to fans. The innovations we’ve seen recently at Ticketmaster — across many consumer platforms and channels — are a direct result of our open APIs.
The first thing we did was relaunch developer.ticketmaster.com in early January with a self-service portal and full API documentation, examples and tutorials. If you haven’t already, check it out and get your API key instantly. The self-service account registration process creates a default app for you and an API key that you can start using against the Discovery and Commerce APIs right away.
The response from developers, clients, and partners has been overwhelmingly positive. Here’s some highlights:
- API engagement by external developers increased by 8x!
- Partners like Facebook, BandsinTown, Goldstar, Experience, and the exciting new AI startup, Viv, have already integrated with our APIs
- More than 500 API live integrations
- 7 Devjams across the US and Canada with 4 more coming down the pike, including one in London
- Some of my favorite quotes from developers:
“The Ticketmaster API is really easy to use!” — ArJun Madan, API developer
“The API Explorer is great. It helps me identify if the error is in the API or in my code. Very helpful.” — Ryan Zhou, API developer
Our Global API and Developer Ecosystem
Our strategy focuses on creating a comprehensive global ecosystem for developers to learn and engage with our capabilities. The Developer Portal, as mentioned earlier, is a one-stop shop for anyone that wants to learn about what APIs we offer, who’s using those APIs, what can be done with those APIs, and what tools and widgets are available to expedite the building of innovative experiences for fans. Detailed and thorough documentation is provided throughout the portal.
Upon registration and obtaining an API Key, any developer can access our Discovery and Commerce APIs. The Discovery API gives access to list of available events from Ticketmaster, Universe, FrontGate Tickets and TicketsNow platforms covering North America, UK, Ireland and Australia and New Zealand. Very soon, we’ll have events covering all of Europe as well.
In addition to the ability to build event discovery experiences, developers can get a list of available ticket types for some of those events. We’re working on increasing the coverage of those offers right now.
If the developer is pressed for time or doesn’t have the capacity to integrate directly with our APIs, we’ve built several widgets to help those developers provide a customized experience to their fans without much coding! Check out the Event Search widget (below) and others in the Widgets section (beta) of the portal.
Developers can also access our Partner API once they’re approved into our Partner program. In our attempt to ensure quality of the fan experience integration, we don’t give a default access to this particular API.
The developer portal offers a ton of materials to developers interested in Ticketmaster tech and events. Check it out.
What’s Next?
We’re working hard on providing the best developer exprience in the marketplace. A lot of exciting new APIs and capabilities will be announced soon. To stay abreast of our journey, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and here on Medium.
Here’s to an amazing developer experience, one API at a time :)
