Hi!
I haven’t talked with you about the secondary market in a while. So let’s take a look at a few things in the secondary market right now.
Thanks for reading Talking Tickets! ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Subscribed
At the bottom, my next webinar is about helping you work with the secondary market more effectively.
Join me for:
- Business Winning Strategies in London.
- The Online Pricing For Profits Workshop.
- Kickstart 2024 Strategy Session.
To the Tickets!
Arsenal focuses on limiting BOTS and touts with a ballot system:
I’d be curious about the tech on this because a lot of the balloting systems and other ideas used in the States have been easily circumnavigated by brokers.
What is interesting here is the willingness to adapt to changes in demand.
One thing that teams in the UK do that I like is that tickets go on-sale for matches with a much shorter window for sales.
Meaning: they don’t just dump tons of tickets on-sale at the start of July and let the inventory sell or not sell like we do in the States.
Why do I prefer this?
- You have the opportunity to build demand on a game to game basis.
- You have the chance to adjust your strategy due to performance, schedule, or other outside forces.
- You don’t end up with inventory just sitting on Ticketmaster or your other partners sites with thousands of other tickets, undercutting the brand equity of your inventory.
This kind of plan also helps with the financial burden on some buyers since they might not have to commit to a purchase until much closer to the match.
Teams like Arsenal still offer season tickets, but they manage their other inventory more actively.
Is there something in this approach that is appealing to you?
Protect Ticket Rights study shows fans save on concerts!
The Good:
- Fans saved money on the shows that Protect Ticket Rights and Automatiq used in their survey.
- The report highlights issues that fans state in individual talks, focus groups, and surveys like the unreliability of the on-sale process, the challenge of purchasing tickets, and buying tickets so far in advance and not being able to get a refund, make an exchange, or transfer the tickets.
The Bad:
- It is only 25 shows and 10 tours. So, limited in the scope.
- “Average” savings can be misleading.
Make Take:
- Customers are frustrated with the on-sale process, the buying process, and the hoops that sometimes have to be jumped through for digital tickets.
- Fans might be saving on some tickets, but they are also spending a lot more on others. Average ticket price means little. Elon Musk comes over to my house and the average of our two households in hundreds of billions. Means nothing.
- A survey like this highlights the benefits of waiting or buying from the secondary. The downside of waiting is that it turns the ticket into a commodity. My belief is that nothing has to be a commodity.
- We also gain no insight into the nature of the customers. Are these heavy ticket buyers? Light buyers? Context matters.
- If the on-sale price is so high…this means that someone is paying that initial on-sale price in many cases. Depending on the reason for the ticket being resold, it pays to consider what the circumstances for the resale were.
Consider:
- Scan rate. Tickets sold, but no one uses them. Teams and organizations might view that as a win because they’ve got the revenue, but there is a brand cost to the empty seat. As Protect Ticket Rights says, a filled seat is better than an empty seat.
- Customer information: you need to know the context.
- Brand Equity: What does waiting cost your brand? Are high prices a help or a harm? What brand associations are people holding about you and the performances you put on?
Because this is a popular topic that people ask me about, I’m going to do my next webinar on the topic:
7 Ways to Make the Secondary Market Work For You.
- October 19th at 1230 Eastern Time
- Do you want to work with the secondary market, but you have a question: send them to me. I’ll work some of the best questions into the webinar.
Do you know someone that has struggled in dealing with the secondary market?
Share this edition of ‘Talking Tickets’ with them.