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If you haven’t yet heard of or used Eventful, you are missing out on a world of free promotion for your venue or event. Eventful is (according to their website) “the leading events website which enables its community of users to discover, promote, share and create events.”
Okay, anyone could say that. But the stats back up their story:
- 4 MILLION events posted online
- 600,000 monthly visitors (according to compete.com)
That’s a LOT of eyeballs, so merely posting your events to Eventful.com will increase ticket sales. BUT, Eventful has an even cooler feature that all promoters should know about. It’s called “Demand.” Again, from their site:
“Eventful’s unique Demand service empowers users to influence where their favorite performers, candidates and other celebrities appear by creating viral grass-roots campaigns to “Demand” them in their town. Tens of thousands of musicians, comedians and political candidates use Eventful Demand to engage with millions of their fans and supporters to find out where they are in Demand.”
How do you use it as a promoter?
1. Visit www. eventful.com
2. Use the button under the eventful logo on the top left to select your location
3. Click the “Demands” Button in the navigation bar at the top.
4. Select “Near You” under the “By Location” section on the left hand side.
A quick search of my hometown (Birmingham, AL) shows that Plies, Dane Cook, and Pretty Ricky are the hot acts. You can search by performer type (Business, Comedy, Music, etc) to hone down the results. Find the hot acts, schedule the hot acts. Post your event to Eventful so all of the demanding fans can see it, and sell mucho tickets. Make sure you have Promotozoa hooked up to yourTicketBiscuit account so all of the demanding fans can invite their friends as well.
But even if you don’t use the Demands feature, you should use event aggregators to promote your events. Eventful is just one type of these event aggregator services. It is definitely the largest and most techno-advanced, with myspace and youtube integration and even an iPhone application. Other similar services include upcoming.org (powered by Yahoo) and Going.com.
The bottom line: more eyeballs equals more tickets sold.
The new "About Us" page is linked in the upper right hand corner of TicketBiscuit.com.
Hey, it’s kind of a slow news day around here, we’re busy connecting with new clients and developing features to help them sell more tickets and make more money per ticket. I did want to let all of the readers know that we’ve posted a company info page to our TicketBiscuit website - so if you’ve ever wanted to know John’s background, or wondered what our corporate culture is like, you can find it there.
Check it out! Click the links on the left hand side of the page to see the details around each topic.
I love the Olympics. It’s partially the spectacle, partially the competition, but mostly the stories and legends that arise from Olympic competition. Like the one that unfolded last night.
Last night the 4×100 meter relay took place. If you missed it, here is the recap:
- The French team talked “smack” to the American team.
- Through three laps, it looked like the French team would win.
- On the last lap, Jason Lesak pulled off one of the most impressive comeback wins of all time, effectively quieting the Frenchies. Check out the video:
That guy cheering and screaming at the end? That’s Michael Phelps, who, thanks to Lesak’s miracle, is still on track to make Olympic history. Well done, team.
Competition is invigorating, believe me. As TicketBiscuit competes daily with other ticketing providers, I feel like Lesak sometimes. Though it looks like we’re at a disadvantage due to scale or market penentration or some announcement of venture capital infusions, I know that we have the right stuff to win. Our ticketing system is intuitive. Our technology is bulletproof. Our service is unparalleled. And, we have a laser focus on helping our clients sell more tickets and helping them realize more per-ticket profit. Winning won’t happen overnight, but we are catching up daily.
Broadway Brett
John brought a great article to my attention today:
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/8/why-ebay-loves-the-brett-favre-trade-ebay-
Since Favre’s earthshaking trade to the Jets, Jet tickets have become THE must have item. The article cites StubHub data that shows over 7000 Jets tickets have moved within the last 24 hours (compared to 36 per week prior to the trade) and the average price has increased from $138 to $252. Probably almost as earthshaking as the Favre trade, though, is realizing that StubHub collects a 25% commission on all tickets sold.
Let me say that again. StubHub collects a 25% commission on all tickets sold - 10% from the buyer, 15% from the seller. Wow.
For yesterday’s action, Peter K (author of the linked article) estimated StubHub’s take to be about $400,000. Now, your venue or organization may not be giving up that kind of coin to the secondary market, but if you are hosting high demand or limited supply events, then you are giving up some.
This is why Dynamic Pricing will be important to the future of the ticketing industry. While no computer algorithm could have foreseen this kind of development (with Favre), we can tell with pretty close accuracy what the optimum price of an event should be. We use historical data from ticket sales, type of artist, geographical area, and venue, then we combine that with real time ticket sales. The result is a price that moves fluidly, approaching market willingness to pay. In short, you get to keep more of that profit being lost to ticket scalpers.
The Favre situation also illustrates a scenario in which the secondary market will still be necessary - if demand for an event suddenly shifts due to new or additional information surfacing after the sale. An analogous scenario is the escalating price of pre-sold tickets (season tickets) to college or pro football games, which increase in value the better that team does through the season. While computers will be able to predict to some extent this uncertainty, they will never do a perfect job due to the human factor involved.
As dynamic pricing becomes the status quo in the future, it will be interesting to see if the secondary market influences after-sale information release for events other than sports in order to preserve its profits.
When I got home last night from “MMA 101″ class at Spartan Fitness, my wife told me I had something on my eyebrow. Turns out, it was a piece of leather from my training partner’s glove, left there when he landed a stiff jab during the “live sparring” we do at the end of class. As we prepare to launch BattlePass.com, the first and only ticketing system built for combat sports, my MMA training is much more than just a tough workout:
1. It gives me intimate knowledge of - and respect for - the country’s fastest growing sport, something that will prove invaluable as we approach the many promoters who regularly sell out MMA, Boxing, Jiu-Jitsu, and Muay Thai fights in town halls and community centers across the country. I expect this knowledge will come in very handy as we fight for the belt of “fastest growing ticketing company in the country”.
2. It strengthens my resolve and competitiveness in the business world. There’s nothing like learning to weather punches to the face, knees to the ribcage, neck cranks, and arm bars to put things in perspective when you’re trying to convince a prospective client of the value of your software.
3. It reminds me that size doesn’t matter – at least not in fighting or business. In the early days of modern civilization, David brought down Goliath; in the early days of the UFC, Royce Gracie brought down countless bigger fighters who, on paper, should have crushed him; and call it post-fight euphoria if you want, but I have a feeling that ticket buyers and sellers alike will one day tell stories of how “scrappy little TicketBiscuit” took down the ticketing behemoths of their day by out-thinking, out-maneuvering, and out-executing them.
Tickets for this years summer Olympics in Beijing are arguably the hottest tickets of the year, if not the decade. So it really should surprise no one that fraudsters have jumped in trying to make a quick dime:
Online ticket fraud being fought at Beijing Olympics
Apparently, TicketCity is the culprit, although they are still listing tickets on their website as of this morning. But what about the TicketCity 200% guarantee, you ask? Sorry Charlie, those are only good for events that occur within the US. Hopefully TicketCity will do the right thing, because there is no faster way to sink a secondary ticketing company quicker than selling your customers counterfeit tickets.
Quick Update: I saw this article on the Olympics website about the Chinese government cracking down on ticket scalpers:
http://en.beijing2008.cn/tickets/news/n214485354.shtml
My favorite line:
“Only 26 of the suspects were detained, while the rest were released after they had been fined, warned and “educated,” the report said.”
I love the quotation marks around “educated.”
Battlepass.com
Today is a pretty cool day for us. We’re taking the wraps off of BattlePass – the first and only ticketing system custom built for mixed martial arts events. MMA is one of the fastest growing sports nationwide, with pay per view audiences rivaling those of boxing and professional wrestling. But in addition to the handful of elite leagues like UFC and Elite XC, there are multiple farm league promoters hosting events nationwide.
When we began discussing the concept for BattlePass a few months ago, we discovered that promoting an MMA or combat sport event is an incredibly complex undertaking. Not only do these promoters have to secure fighters and a place to fight, but also have to worry about getting the word out, processing payments, and above all, selling tickets. BattlePass was built for them – it takes all of the challenge out of the administrative side of event promotion.
We’ll be releasing this news to the press later this week, along with news of an alliance agreement with one of the nation’s premier farm league promoters.
BattlePass is cool, no doubt. I think even more than the benefits attached to the features though, it represents a different way of thinking about ticketing. Ticketing can no longer be about processing transactions, it has to be about adding real value to clients and their businesses, integrating systems and functionality to make the whole business better, not just handle the stubs of paper granting admission. We’re focused on the future of ticketing, and we’re making it happen on a daily basis.
How much money do you make per customer? If you can’t answer this question, stop what you’re doing and go figure it out. You can’t run your business without this key metric.
There’s a lot of talk these days about the secondary market (ticket reselling). The only reason the secondary market exists is because tickets aren’t price correctly in the primary market. Our industry seems to be the last to adopt modern economic principles surrounding revenue and yield management (I like the term profit management as it doesn’t matter how much money you bring in if you’re not making a profit). The airlines were the first to leverage revenue management back in the early 80’s. They learned to manage perishable inventory (e.g. the revenue from an empty seat can’t be recovered in the future).
So why hasn’t the ticketing industry caught on to this concept? This question has baffled me for many years. The only conclusion I’ve come to is that the supply chain remains disjointed and is filled with mistrust. Unfortunately, the lack of transparency over the years has allowed everyone in the supply chain to take advantage of each other: ticketing vendors charge fans exorbitant fees and lock ticket sellers into long-term contracts; promoters earn additional profit with hidden fees using cost plus contracts; artists require price caps on tickets and then resell their own tickets in the secondary market; venues allow fans without tickets into the venue to earn profit on food and beverages; ticket brokers grab the best seats before real fans have a chance to buy tickets, the stories go on and on…
This is all going to change soon as dynamic pricing becomes commonplace, the primary and secondary markets merge, and tools from companies like TicketBiscuit provide transparency in the marketplace.
What should you do? Understanding your profit per customer metric is the first step. I’m not just talking about ticketing. How much profit (not revenue) do you make on ticketing, food and beverages, merchandise, etc. per customer. With this information, you can then determine how to price tickets, how much to pay for talent, how much marketing you need to do, etc. Don’t let the history of this industry dictate how we approach the future. Just because it’s always been done this way doesn’t mean it will continue to be done the same way in the future. The Times They Are A-Changin’…
Those of you who follow the blog will remember a couple of weeks ago when I cited Marianne Jennings, ticket industry expert and former professor of mine, who, during her keynote at the NATB conference in July, said that Ticketmaster ought to be kicked out of the secondary market. That topic got the most press but it was the broader topic of the presentation that got my attention: The Seven Principles of the Ticketing Industry and What They Mean for its Future.
At the Biscuit, we strive on a daily basis to create innovations to help shape the future of the ticketing industry. We look at the REAL DATA behind ticket sales, and through the identification of trends like increasing percentages of online purchases, or the relative power of purchase suggestion through viral networks, we’re able to innovate and create products to help our clients sell more tickets. So, the insight provided by these principles is very useful to us, as I think it should be for anyone who sells tickets. They address not only the nature of the industry, but also some psychological factors that must influence the way we do business as ticket sellers.
The Seven Principles of the Ticketing Industry (Source: Professor Marianne Jennings and Dr. Stephen Happel):
- Tickets for High-Demand and / or Limited Supply Events are Underpriced
- Underpriced High Demand and /or Low-Price Events Produce Queues
- Time is a cost
- Where There are Nuisances, There are Regulators
- Price Controls Don’t Work
- Allowing Market Participants to Structure Regulation of Their Market Adds Vertical Integration and/or Monopolies to Markets
- Regulation Without Full Information Will Thwart a National Ticket Market
What do these seven principles mean to you, and to the industry as a whole? I’ll share my thoughts on this, as well as the insights provided by Professor Jennings, in future posts. Stay tuned.
What You Don’t Know About Hurricanes
August 27, 2008 in Commentary, Musings, Uncategorized | Tags: Commentary, hurricane gustav | by ehoush | No comments
BUT- there are many things you DON’T know about hurricanes. For example, did you know that this Gustav is actually the fifth tropical cyclone to share that name? Look it up.
Find out what else you don’t know about hurricanes – check out the quiz hosted by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. You just might learn something.
Speaking of learning something- we occasionally post ticket selling tips on this blog, like last week’s post on event aggregator sites. We’re interested in your thoughts on these tips. Are they helpful? Do you have tips to share? Let us know.