Ben Baker, operations and revenue leader based in Jacksonville, FL

I’ve spent 12+ years filling seats and running the systems behind them.

Most recently I was Head of Ticketing at Live Nation, leading operations for 150+ venues that accounted for $1B+ in annual ticket sales and 50M+ fans a year.

The work was pricing, operations and getting technology to work at scale. That travels.

Looking for operations, revenue strategy, implementation or ticketing leadership roles, including at AI and tech companies. Remote, or open to relocating.

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2026 Pollstar Ticketing Star Award for excellence in live event ticketing operations

What I do

Three things I’ve done at every level, from box office coordinator to running the national portfolio.

Operations

I write the playbook and get 150 venues to run it the same way.

Wrote and rolled out SOPs across 150+ venues, raising internal audit scores from 94% to 98%.
Led a 15-person national team supporting 100+ box office managers and assistant managers.
Built an Asana workflow that took seat upgrade requests from a 3-day turnaround to same day, saving about 10 hours a week.

Revenue strategy

Pricing inventory that’s worth nothing once the show starts.

Helped grow Live Nation’s ancillary revenue from $80M to $100M+ with pricing playbooks, tiered bundles and A/B tests.
Drove 28% year-over-year ancillary growth in my region. The approach became the national standard.
Owned Lawn Pass, a $20M season pass that grew from about 60,000 to 80,000 passes sold.

Implementation and partners

Getting new technology live without breaking the show.

Rolled out Fortress scanning across 30+ venues and 700+ devices in under three months.
Ran the national Ticketmaster relationship, and was launch client for its merchandising tool.
Opened Daily’s Place for the Jacksonville Jaguars from scratch, mobile-only from day one.

Revenue, partners and automation

Rebuilding seat upgrades after our partner went under

A new partner, a custom upgrade flow, and an AI workflow that took turnaround from 3 days to same day.

Seat upgrades are a huge revenue opportunity in concerts. Before COVID we had a smooth operation with a great partner. Then that partner shut down during COVID.

We ran upgrades internally for a while. I’m proud of what we pulled off, but it wasn’t as smooth as it used to be.

So I sourced a new partner and worked with them on a custom upgrade flow with three ways in: buy by text, scan a QR code, or go to the website. They built the web flow with us, and that let us scale upgrades fast.

The back end needed fixing too. Requests used to come in by email, one at a time. I moved intake and status tracking into an Asana AI workflow that routed each request to get built and closed it out with sign-off. Turnaround went from 3 days to same day, across about 500 requests a season.

It’s one of the things I’m proudest of.

Where it fits elsewhere: replacing a vendor that failed, building a new sales channel, and using AI to take manual work out of operations.

Operations

Opening a venue from a CAD drawing

Putting shows on sale for an amphitheater that only existed on paper, then running 42 events in year one.

I took the job at Daily’s Place because I wanted to open a venue. I got my wish.

The hardest part came first. We put shows on sale with nothing but a CAD drawing. As opening night got close, we were still counting and verifying seats the night before the show, and the first count had me climbing scaffolding to reach some sections.

It’s a roughly 5,000-capacity venue attached to an NFL stadium, so we were also working through NFL security requirements and team and sponsor needs. Our box office that first season was a portable trailer outside the security perimeter. We made it work, and ran 42 events in year one.

We had a strong team, and I’m proudest of setting them up to succeed without me. When I left, we promoted an assistant into my role.

Where it fits elsewhere: launching a new location on a hard deadline, before everything is finished.

Implementation

Replacing the front gate at our biggest amphitheaters

A pilot in Tampa, then 30+ venues and 700+ devices in under three months.

After COVID we moved from handheld scanners to pedestals. Pedestals are quicker and a better experience for fans. The ones we picked weren’t. They had a lot of problems, they were bulky and hard to move, and they didn’t give fans or our operations teams the experience we wanted.

We brought in Fortress, a top-quality product. We piloted it in Tampa, then rolled it out at our largest amphitheaters: 30+ venues and 700+ devices in under three months. Every venue had its own first show, so there was no single launch day. My team and I hopped around the country to make sure each launch went smoothly and every staff got trained.

Fortress ended up doing more than scanning. It replaced an added-value partner whose integration had frustrated F&B, operations and fans. Fortress worked seamlessly.

Where it fits elsewhere: piloting new technology, then rolling it out across dozens of sites with staggered go-live dates.

Revenue

Taking the barcode off 80,000 season passes

A $20M season pass that grew from about 60,000 to 80,000, and the fixes that made it work behind the scenes.

Lawn Pass was already running when I took it over. It was a newer program, but it had quickly become a staple, and it grew from about 60,000 to 80,000 passes while I oversaw it. It was a massive team effort. Ticketing operations and execution fell on me and my team, and our marketing team played a huge role, working with us on the onsale, quantities, fulfillment and everything after.

The tricky part was behind the scenes. Passes sold on a partner’s ticketing site, so we had to manually import the data, de-dupe it, and bring it into our own system. That’s how we captured customer information and generated the barcode file.

Then we got rid of the barcode. To cut down on bad actors, we moved to NFC-only hard passes. With no barcode anywhere on the pass, educating fans was a challenge. We also worked with Fortress to make sure the NFC coding would read at the gate. It did, and it worked well.

Where it fits elsewhere: subscription and membership products, and cutting fraud without making things harder for honest customers.

I’ve spent 12+ years filling seats and running the systems behind them.

What I do

Operations

Revenue strategy

Implementation and partners

My experience, in your industry’s terms

Stories

Rebuilding seat upgrades after our partner went under

Opening a venue from a CAD drawing

Replacing the front gate at our biggest amphitheaters

Taking the barcode off 80,000 season passes

Experience

Founding Partner

Head of Ticketing

VP, Ticketing Revenue Strategy & Operations

Regional Director of Ticketing

Manager of Concert Ticketing

Box Office Manager

Box Office Coordinator

Director of Sales

Ticket sales and box office

Ticketing platforms

Data and reporting

Workflow and AI

Outside work

Teams

Hemmy

Craft beer

On the water

Best show I’ve worked

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