Why a white-label app & website was right for Rockstar Promotions

How did Rockstar Promotions start?
I was President of the Student Union at the University of Leicester and worked on partnerships with city centre venues. A venue asked me to work with them on their student night. The night went from strength to strength and it became clear there was an opportunity to create a business out of what I was doing.

How has Rockstar Promotions grown?
We started with one event in one night club on a Monday night. The big change came when O2 Academy came to Leicester. They had a partnership with the university to do an on-campus venue and we ran the student club events in that venue. Now, we run all of the official University of Leicester events and put on events in other venues like sports and retail.

When did you realise you needed to build a new website and app?
The FIXR platform has a lot of great features which we are pleased to be able to utilise, but it was the chance to create a whitelabel, bespoke app that really drew us to FIXR.

We wanted to bring Leicester students into our own branded, secure ecosystem - our app - without them being exposed to competitor products.

The user experience on the app and website built by FIXR is great. In-app, payment can be made in a few taps and on the website, customers don’t get taken off our website so the experience is seamless.

What challenge has having an app built helped you to solve?
The problem to solve was how do we make our customers feel like they were only interacting with us directly. We would rather have a completely branded solution, than take people onto a platform which we didn’t have complete control over.

The app is a one-stop solution for ticket purchase and ticket storage. It gives us a branded presence on our customers’ phones which they will interact with several times a week. On a device which they use for several hours a day. That's huge.

Why did you choose FIXR?
The benefit of working with FIXR is that rather than just going off and trying to develop it yourself, you get the best of both worlds. You know it is going to be a robust backend system that is going to work, because it’s been tried and tested and lots of people are using it. You also get the benefit of creating a branded experience specifically for your customer.

How did you find the process of designing and building an app?
Building an app was a new experience for us. The process has been really good. The team has been really helpful and I felt comfortable asking for this or that to be added as the team was always willing to try to do it. It felt very collaborative.

If you had to pick one big win, what would it be?
Now we have an app, we made the decision to go completely paperless with all our ticketing. The timing to go digital is right because we have a branded experience to offer our customers and it is a more sustainable choice.

Going paperless with our ticketing has given us a cost saving on design and printing and we don’t have to think about the logistics of handling cash and tickets. We work in the university events space where universities in the UK are prioritising going carbon neutral and digital ticketing is part of that strategy.

What has been the initial reaction to the new website and app?
We’ve had 1500 downloads of the app in the first few weeks of it being live and that's before Freshers Week. We're on track to hit 4000 app downloads soon.

What are your plans for 2021/22?
Re-establishing the market and our position in the market is a priority, with two years’ worth of students coming to university to enjoy Freshers Week!

After Freshers Week, we will roll into our weekly events schedule and we have a few different events and partnerships with retail and sports venues. We created a seated event concept during Covid (when standing events weren’t allowed) which was really popular so we’re planning to continue to run that. People will be allowed to get up and dance now though so it will be be even better!

How would you summarise your experience?
The process was collaborative and every member of the team that I interacted with was helpful and knowledgeable.

I'm excited to see the growth that comes as a result of the new website and app!

Download the Rockstar Promotions app on the App Store or Google Play.

Want to design and create your own app or website? Or both? Get in touch!