I’m just back from Las Vegas and this year’s World Ticket Conference where I led a panel on the future of tickets.
While the panel seemed to go over pretty well with the audience and I am sure that I learned a lot by leading it, I wanted to take a moment to write up a few of the lessons I learned from my trip to Vegas.
1. Marketing Is An Issue For Everyone:
I’m often fond of citing the fact that the secondary market does a much better job of digital conversion than the primary market does.
But after seeing a number of the presentations, talking with some of the attendees, and checking out a lot of the marketing materials, marketing is still an issue for a lot of organizations in and around tickets.
I think the chief challenge can be summed up in 3 points:
- It isn’t about you, it is about the buyer.
- Demand doesn’t typically just pop up out of the ether.
- Despite all the data in the world, data isn’t likely to solve all of your problems and waiting for that to occur is just putting you further and further behind.
2. Pricing on the high end isn’t nearly as big of a problem as discounting:
We always hear about the exorbitant price on StubHub.
Which if you are a marketer is actually not a bad story to have.
“There’s so much demand and so much attention that people are willing to pay crazy prices to see my event.”
The bigger challenge is the discounting and race to the bottom that is going on.
Discounting destroys prices and when the teams and venues undercut the partners on the secondary market after they have made consolidation deals, that’s a dangerous drain circling problem.
3. Too much emphasis is placed on the commodity of tickets:
This goes along with data.
A commodity is something that is easily interchangeable.
In tickets, we shouldn’t be selling commodities. We should be offering once in a lifetime experiences.
That’s what a ticket buys you.
4. The primary side has a check the box, cookie cutter marketing problem:
I had a bunch of conversations with people on the primary side and they all mentioned the fact that what many people call marketing or advertising is really just check the box, cookie cutter crap that maybe worked or maybe didn’t work at some point, but which most definitely doesn’t work at this point.
5. There’s a lot of uncertainty about the path forward, despite high revenues:
This was universal across a number of people on both sides of the market.
The secondary has concerns about the health of the primary side when so many seats are unfilled, when so much inventory is bottomed out at discounts, and when too much consolidation leads to markets that aren’t really true or open.
The primary side is concerned with the health of their brands. They are concerned with the nature and type of their partners in the secondary market.
6. Control of the customer is touchy:
I’m on the record everywhere saying that control of the customer is key.
For a long time, I think the brokers on the secondary market missed the idea that they were losing customers to the organizations like StubHub and Vivid Seats. This was a touchy subject.
7. If you don’t control inventory, you better control the customer:
The exchanges that don’t own inventory are in a touchy situation because they don’t have customers without inventory.
So their business model is going to be constantly under attack unless they do.
8. Technology and distribution is a myth that only works to commoditize the industry even more:
Technology and distribution are great and might have been competitive advantages at one point, but today…not so much.
They are still being offered up as the only solution, but the effectiveness of a distribution and technology only situation is rapidly declining.
9. The future of tickets is in partnerships:
Duh!
I led the way scaling the American Express Black Card and their concierge program’s integration into the secondary market over 15 years ago.
The reason it has taken so long for this to be an accepted idea is unreal to me.
Better late than never.
10. Things are always changing:
And, if you are waiting for time to stop and roll back, you are likely going to be left behind.
The biggest thing I learned was that change is inevitable and that you have two choices: be proactive or wait.
The proactive are going to always be at an advantage.