Koobin on La Vanguardia!
Extracted news from La Vanguardia Girona, Friday 13th of January 2012 edition
The smart ticket
Koobin Event has ten sport clubs as clients, basketball clubs mainly, and more than twenty cultural institutions.
MARTÍ ARTALEJO
SÍLVIA OLLER
Girona
Attending to a basketball game or to a theatre play with a paper ticket may have its days numbered. Koobin Event, company located in Girona, with headquarters in the Parc Científic i Tecnològic de la Universitat de Girona (UdG), has created a system that allows being present at these kind of events without the necessity of bringing a physical ticket in your pocket. This will be possible because the ticket will be in your mobile device. The basketball Copa del Rey, which will be celebrated at the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona, from the 16th to 19th of February, will be a good chance to check the effectiveness of this mechanism, that converts your cellphone not only into a purchase channel but into an access channel to the premises. Users with smartphones will be able to download the code that will give them the right to access the Palau Sant Jordi and that will be read by other electronic specific devices. Such a revolution, as Fernando Martín, marketing manager, says: “It represents a small cultural change that will be hard to instill, but that will end up becoming rooted”. Other sport clubs and theatres are by this time interested in this new access system. Koobin Event is a ticket selling platform through Internet, born just a year and a half ago, that has already more than thirty clients. Ten out of eighteen of the ACB league clubs use Koobin Event’s application, such as: Assigna Manresa, Unicaja from Málaga, FIATC Joventut, Caja Laboral from Vitoria, Valencia Basket Club or Lagun Aro from Bilbao. It also manages the ticket sale for the basketball Copa del Rey and works with over twenty cultural premises. Among clients from the scenic arts stands out the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, the Teatre Auditori in Granollers, the Centre d’Arts Escèniques d’Osona, the Teatre l’Amistat from Premià de Mar, as well as the Fundació Cultural Unnim and several cultural centres from Manresa, such as the Kursaal and the conservatory. Koobin’s main goal for this year 2012 is to increase their clients in a 30% and their income in a 20%, which in 2011 reached approximately 2.5 million euros. One of their growing up routes will come along with the world of the scenic arts, which they pretend to strengthen. This January they will close agreements with region and Barcelona theatres, also they are currently in contact with other equipments. “For the short term we are willing to acquire a very important client from the scenic arts in Girona”, confirms Fernando Martín. It would be their first customer in the region of Girona.
Their growth will be also determined by the internationalization, with the creation of an affiliate in Istanbul, this year venue for the Euroleague Final Four. In fact, Koobin Event will manage this important sports event, as they did in the last year edition celebrated in Barcelona. “We take care of everything: the ticket sales webpage, the payment system, the seating, the ticket printing, the access control…”, confirms Koobin’s marketing manager. “In Turkey the ticketing market is quite monopolized by only one company, we believe there is an important business opportunity”, states Martín.
Koobin has also founded a subsidiary in the German city of Jena, although it is not still operative. Moreover, Koobin’s responsible personnel maintain contact with cultural entities and sport clubs in Germany, Poland, Lithuania or Israel, among others. They also want to get into different sports like football and they have already made a step forward with Alavés, second division B football team. Furthermore, they provide technological services to other distribution enterprises like Unnim Entrades and Telentrada (Catalunya Bank).
THE ORIGINS
A recent history
Koobin Event was born exclusively focusing on events managing technology, after the original enterprise, which in 2002 created the first version of this ticketing software, got absorbed by a big hotel holder company. The general manager and founding partner of this first business, Carles Arnal, along with the programmers Christian Dávila and Carlos Díaz, and the ex-responsible for the ACB marketing, Fernando Martín, acquired the software rights and refounded Koobin Event on June 2010. This company has four additional workers.
The four founding partners had to do an initial investment of 100.000 euros and they have just done a 100.000 euros capital increase. Koobin has its headquarters in Narcís Monturiol Building, inside the Scientific and Technological UdG Park, where most of Girona technologic and communication enterprises have their main offices.