As Ticketmaster (International)’s Chief Product Officer, Troy Suda is responsible for defining and implementing the company’s product strategy and development across 18 countries, including Australia and New Zealand. From HQ in London, he leads a team of more than 80 product and creative experts.
What is your role at Ticketmaster and how long have you been there? I’m Chief Product Officer (International) looking after the Product Management and Design function. I’m a former Melburnian but am now based at Ticketmaster International’s HQ in London where I’ve worked for the past five and a half years and have been living abroad for the past ten years. For what it’s worth, I still sound as Aussie as ever (no Kylie accent here.)
What do you love about working at Ticketmaster? The diverse and passionate people that make-up Ticketmaster around the world. We have high ambitions for constant innovation for both clients and fans, and to be able to wake up every day and collaborate with the smartest and most creative minds in ticketing is what drives me. Being at the world’s largest ticketing company means that I also get to experiment and test out different features and capabilities, and identify how we tweak these features to ensure operationally they can be adopted in the best way.
This is something unique to a company of our scale – our client partners in Australia benefit from all this global experimentation and testing. A good example of this is our new Fan Marketplace at ticketmaster.com.au. We have tested and constantly optimised the platform in 18 countries around the world to figure out what is the best path to providing fans with the right information, underpinned by a simple and clear user experience. Converting as many fans who come to browse into buyers is front and centre of our philosophy as it’s the reason many clients chose to partner with us.
What are you looking forward to the most at the VMA? Meeting so many of our client partners. We only exist to serve our clients and help them deliver these live event experiences. I’m also looking forward to being on the panel on Monday titled “The Future of Ticketing” and sharing thoughts on where I think we are heading as an industry.
What is the best thing about coming home to Australia for work? When I’m in my office in London, my day-to-day is mostly working with our Product and Development teams across the world to deliver on our core product development priorities. While I get to videoconference regularly with some of our local country teams – the true experts who know our clients and their needs – nothing beats being face-to-face and engaging with so many people in the Ticketmaster Australia team. I always come away from these trips more knowledgeable and more excited to take back opportunities and insight to our global Product Development teams and ensure what we build works optimally for the market here.
What is the most exciting thing about the future of our industry? We have an opportunity to help fans in Australia and around the world have unique and memorable experiences. As life for all of us continues to intensify, live entertainment provides us with those few hours of pure enjoyment and escapism, experiencing the performances of amazing talent, sharing the experience with friends and loved ones, and being lost in the moment. And I’m motivated every day to want to continually transform how we as a ticketing partner, together with venues and event organisers, can make this experience even more amazing.
