2023 Women Of Live: Amy Venable
Director of Ticketing | Greensboro Coliseum Complex and Tanger Center
At the center of Greensboro’s emergence as an important live market is the Greensboro Coliseum Complex and Tanger Center, which opened in September 2022.
Over the past 16 months, the city-owned and operated facilities have hosted 600-plus ticketed events. Highlights included sold-out dates for Elton John’s Farewell Tour (April 19), Justin Bieber’s Justice World Tour (April 5) and Paul McCartney’s “Got Back” stadium tour (May 21) at Truist Field in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. This March, the coliseum hosted three back-to-back college basketball tournaments including the ACC Women’s, ACC Men’s and NCAA first- and second-round games.
“We certainly have faced reduced staffing from COVID and the fact that our whole organization worked together day in and day out is amazing,” Amy Venable said. “I work with some of the most dedicated individuals not only in my department but across our organization. We all sacrifice family time, social lives and sometimes our mental health to keep everything moving along and keep promoters coming back.”
Looking ahead at another busy year, Venable is seeing improvement with pricing tickets based on market value. “I think that trend is here to stay,” she said. “We are all keeping our eyes on the inclusive ticket pricing issue and the government’s renewed interest in the ticketing industry. I think we face challenges as our industry is starting to experiment with tickets on multiple platforms. It is a challenge for the ticket office but more confusion for ticket buyers that already don’t understand the ticketing landscape.”
She also anticipates ticketing changes for their trade shows and amateur sporting events, which have traditionally been walk-up businesses. “We are in the process of adding Universe to our ticketing solutions to better and more efficiently ticket this segment,” she said. “We are also experimenting with having fans buy online onsite and not operating a box office at these types of events.”
She credits her early mentors Kris Faris, Terri Lambert and former business manager Laura Smith for setting a high bar for women in the ticketing field when she started working at the complex part-time as a college student in 1996. “I feel like women are the backbone in the live business,” she said. “Often, it is the women behind the scenes that are challenging the status quo and looking for new ways to do things.”
