This weekend I had the pleasure of seeing Seinfeld live (my apologies for the lousy picture as it was the best I could snap without being caught).  How did I get front row center seats at face value?  Piece of cake – as long as the ticketing vendor uses ticket outlets.  Simply show up at the outlet 10 minutes before tickets go on sale (it takes 10 minutes to get someone at the store to come over to the ticket register, dust off the keyboard, remember how to place an order, etc.) – don’t worry, nobody else will be in line as no one else buys tickets at outlets.  Two minutes after the tickets go on sale you’ll walk out with the best seats in the house.

Perhaps this post will reunite the pre-Internet ticket outlet fervor of the ’80s and ’90s, but I doubt it.  Why?

The use of ticket outlets is bad economics for EVERYONE!

  • Ticket buyers pay the same fees at outlets as they pay for buying tickets over the phone and web.  Here’s what I paid:  $75 per tix plus a $10.80 per tix convenience charge – that’s 14.4% in convenience fees for buying at the outlet!
  • Establishing and maintaining ticket outlets cost ticket sellers a lot of money, time, and resources.
  • The outlet (i.e. grocery store chains, etc.) sell so few tickets that it can’t be worth the time and energy to train their staff on how to place orders.
  • When was the last time you were in the check out line with your box of Ho Ho’s and said “let me walk over to the unmanned ticket counter, wait 10 minutes for someone to show up, and grab some tix to an event?”  How inconvenient!  Why not call and buy the tix using your cell phone on the way home?
  • Has anyone seen any hard data that shows that ticket outlets increase profitability for anyone?  Your doctored sales report from your ticketing vendor doesn’t count.
  • Cross sale?  I think not.  Does anyone ever go to a store to buy their groceries because they can also buy tickets to an event?

Why do old school ticketing companies still use/promote brick-and-mortar ticket outlets?

  • Sunk costs – they’ve invested heavily in ticket outlets and try to justify their past investment decisions.
  • It seems logical that the more places tix are on sale, the more tix you’ll sell.  WRONG!  It’s about overall profit, not top line revenue.  It’s about getting the message to the people that’ll most likely purchase tickets and buy a bunch of stuff while at the event.  Why not send a targeted email to likely buyers FOR FREE with a couple of clicks of the mouse or use viral event promotion tools like Promotozoa – one of our newest product offerings (check out some of our beta clients:  Comedy Club Stardome, Exit/In, The BottleTree)?
  • But I’ll lose the customers that’ll only pay with cash?  You think you actually make any money off the tightwad that only uses cash?  The 0.0001% of the population that only uses cash is not your ideal customer – trust me.

At TicketBiscuit, we’d rather invest in building better tools that are proven to sell more tickets and increase everyone’s bottom line.  Call us old fashion, but we like having a profitable business model that is flexibile, low cost, and high value to all parties in the supply chain.