Tom Halltappit, a leading cashless experience specialist for sports events, festivals and other global entertainment venues, today announced the appointment of former director of business development at Eventbrite, Duco Smit, as its chief commercial officer.
Duco has a rack record in the live event space, starting as ticketscript’s first employee, supporting the company in disrupting the European ticketing market with its services.
Working at ticketscript for more than a decade, he played a key role in building the company’s sales machine, resulting in him managing the sales teams in five European countries. When ticketscript was sold to US event management company, Eventbrite, in 2017, Duco became director of business development for Continental Europe. Previously, he worked at PepsiCo and at Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam.
In his new role, Duco will be based in the Netherlands, targeting the rapid growth of tappit’s international expansion plans and supporting the company in exporting its vision of seamless cashless events. Festivals, sport clubs, stadiums and music gigs are seeing rising demand for cashless payments.
“The growth of tappit is clear, as they are rapidly becoming a leader in the live event space,” said Duco. “It’s a great time to become involved, as businesses realise they can constantly improve their customer offer – and event safety – by analysing spend and footfall data throughout their venues.”
tappit provides cashless experiences all around the world, including Birmingham City FC, Creamfields in Hong Kong, Zando Cape Town 10s in South Africa and Emirates Airline Dubai Rugby 7s in UAE. The cashless experience company recently announced a three-year partnership with Bestival that will see fans’ able to pay for food and drink with the cashless payment card.
Jason Thomas, CEO of tappit added: “We’re extremely excited about Duco joining our global team. He brings invaluable experience from one of the largest event companies in the world and will play a key role in the company continuing to increase its global presence. Duco shares our passion for live events and he joins at a very exciting time for the business, as the global events market increasingly continues to embrace cashless solutions”