How Trinity Ents ran two to three nights a week without worrying about tickets
Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union puts on two to three events a week, run by one Ents Officer and a committee of around 25. For 2025/26 Ents Officer Orla Norton, Scope took ticketing off the worry list: changes made on the spot, answers at any hour, a door run from the committee’s phones, and a second opinion whenever a night needed a push.
Orla NortonTrinity College Dublin Students’ Union
- 2–3
- events a week
- 25
- or so on the Ents committee
- 24/7
- support, “pretty much”
Two to three events a week
“The Ents Officer is the person responsible for every event that Trinity College Students’ Union would be organising, which ends up being around two to three per week,” says Orla Norton, who held the role in 2025/26.
The job is the back end of every night: admin, venue bookings, and a committee of around 25 people who need to know what they’re doing and where they need to be.
From a ticketing platform, Orla needed two things. The first was room to change things late. “Things will come up last minute that you need to change, maybe sometimes when you’re even at the venue. That kind of stuff is really important for a ticketing platform.” The second was customer service, “for attendees, but also for me as event organiser.”
“The ticketing side of things is something that I never had to worry about.”
Orla NortonEnts Officer 2025/26
Venue, graphic, tickets, price
Setting up a night on Scope comes down to four things. “Once you have your venue, your graphic, how many tickets you want to put up and the price, you’re pretty much good to go,” Orla says. Tickets can be set to go on sale “later, earlier, whenever you want,” and from there Orla could keep an eye on sales as they came in.
It all happened in the app. Being able to change things there easily “was the easiest part of it,” Orla says. The interface matters most when you’re setting up or editing a ticket link, and for the students buying, it’s “a massive added bonus that it’s so easy to use.”
Answers at genuinely any time
“It was pretty much 24/7, which was great. Any issue I had was dealt with straight away.”
Most of Orla’s requests were last-minute ideas, like adding a discount code, and those were sorted straight away too. Any question “was answered pretty much immediately.” From the people buying tickets, Orla heard very little, which was the point: “If I was hearing stuff, that would be that there were issues, and there were none.”
“You guys were very quick to respond at genuinely any time at all.”
Orla NortonEnts Officer 2025/26Priced for students
Trinity Ents competes with every other night out in Dublin, and its crowd is students. “Because we’re doing events for students, it’s really important to keep the prices down,” Orla says. “It’s something that we try and do for every single event, pretty much.” A lower booking fee is part of that: “When the fee is lower, it’s cheaper in general, which is good.”
The door, on the committee’s phones
Most of the committee had the app on their own phones, and anyone who didn’t was handed one to scan with. If a student couldn’t find their QR code, the team could find them by name instead. “It was good to be able to look up someone’s name and admit them manually as well, if they didn’t have their QR code.”
Another set of brains
What Orla comes back to most is how personal it felt: an account manager, regular meetups, and being able to text in whenever there was something to add.
That help went beyond support. “When we’ve ever had doubts about if an event was going to sell, you were always helpful in that. And the giveaway was great and helped massively.”
“It was nice to have another set of brains. If I had any doubts about an event selling, it was nice to have you guys there.”
Orla NortonEnts Officer 2025/26Scope also filmed video content for Trinity Ents, something the union hadn’t done much of before. “Being able to have you guys come in and shoot more video content was really beneficial,” Orla says. “We can use that and show it to people in the future, when we’re talking to brands.”
Next: one place for everything
Trinity Ents and Scope also built a new website together in 2025/26. It arrived partway through the year, and moving students over mid-year would have been hard, so Orla sees it as the foundation for next year.
“From the beginning, when you’re getting new people arriving in college and all the freshers, if the website is something that’s normal for them, and that’s where they learn to go, then they’ll be using that for all four years of college.”
Until now, students have pieced together what’s on from Instagram posts and the link in bio. “It’s just easier to have everything in one place.”
Orla’s advice
Orla NortonEnts Officer 2025/26I would say definitely talk to you guys about it.
“Once we had spoken to each other, I had a really good feel for how the year would go,” Orla says, “and it went the way I thought it would, which was well.”
Ready when your committee is.