The Big Story: The Stage asks, “Where is the ticket business now?”:
Big Ideas:
- The pandemic has brought changes to the ticket business, a business that has been slow to change.
- The pandemic created an environment where how tickets are distributed, marketed, and sold has evolved and changed.
- Getting customers back to shows and events is a long-term program, not a quick hit.
I’ve been thinking how to address this and I think the best way from my POV is to list off 25 things I have noticed about the ticket business now.
- There isn’t a “new normal”, there is just “now”. So if you are waiting for a pattern, you are going to be in trouble.
- In too many places, folks are running around with their fingers crossed so that they can go back to “normal”. And, that ain’t a good bet either.
- Marketing is still the number one challenge facing organizations’ ability to sell tickets, get back their fans, and renew their businesses.
- Most businesses don’t have a strategy. Period.
- There hasn’t been enough attention paid to finding new ways to generate revenue. Remember my 101 ways to market, sell, and promote your live events…I shared it a while back and you can still use that energy now.
- Most premium sales teams have huge untapped segments.
- Most businesses haven’t touched their market research in 5-7 years.
- There is plenty of data, but not enough insights.
- Big events are selling well, but the less prime events are struggling.
- Even within one market, you’ll see a great variance in events like I will go to a hockey game that has 85% sold and a basketball game that is attended at around 30%.
- The biggest challenge in every organization I’ve seen struggling is a lack of dedication to strategy.
- Pricing needs to be revisited.
- The secondary market has changed in the States and just hoping that a broker is going to make a deal to “win” the inventory isn’t a good bet.
- The long and short of marketing isn’t being done in a lot of places. This means you need to focus on long-term brand building and short-term sales activation to maximize your sales over time.
- The Super League will make another go in Europe, but it will fail even more spectacularly than the first time.
- College athletics will continue to highlight some of the worst practices of the sports business because there still has been no punishment for failure.
- To learn about innovation, look to Southeast Asia. They have a large, growing middle class that is getting the chance to experience live entertainment for the first time.
- I wouldn’t hold my breath for any sort of antitrust enforcement on Live Nation in the US this year. And, depending on the midterm elections, we might see that antitrust enforcement missed its moment period.
- In Australia, saturation of the market is continuing and the winners will be the organizations that spend the time needed to understand their market and not fall into the old “AFL and everyone else” POV. The AFLW is already showing that this idea isn’t really valid anyway.
- Broadway will continue to be up and down since so much of the ticket-buying happens due to tourism and consumers are starting to get stretched thin. Also, a lot of the savings that people had from early in the pandemic have been spent.
- Keep an eye on the number of folks attending an event…not just the revenue numbers.
- In Sydney, the idea of creating a theatre district could make one of my favorite cities in the world an even bigger destination and give the country a chance to expand its power in touring productions even more.
- We will continue to see the Chinese market evolve with more emphasis put on their domestic leagues and the development of domestic players.
- The private equity era in team ownership is likely to end up having many unintended consequences that negatively impact fans.
- Wherever the economy is volatile, look for the expansion of the secondary market. Secondary markets seem to follow volatility.