Knowing Your Market

sponsored by Choctaw Casino Resort/Choctaw Grand Theater

Panelists:

Adam Armit, Scotiabank Arena

Cari Baker, St. Augustine Amphitheatre

Brittany Johnston, The Orion

Michael Owens, Moody Center

Moderated by:

Andrew Farwell, Outback Presents

What Is Unique About Your Market?

“Toronto is arguably the most diverse city in the world,” answered Adam Armit. “You've got a market for every type of show possible. Our biggest challenge is not enough dates on the calendar to get enough of every type of genre. With 9M people from every walk of life, it's a great test market. With Scotiabank, we think of ourselves as the heartbeat of Toronto. We're downtown — right in the core — attached to our biggest train station and transit hub. If a tour goes into Canada, there are typically 1-2 stops – Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal.  The population in & around Toronto, as well as the rest of Canada, looks to our building and our market to make sure we're bringing in the top shows.” 

“Texas is its own country,” replied Michael Owens. “There are more than 23M people within a 5-hour drive of Austin. What makes Austin so unique is that it hasn't been on most major arena tour routings. But with Austin’s recent population explosion, we're now the 10th largest city in U.S.  And we have a brand-new world-class arena that was built for music and is now seeing over 100-120 shows a year. Austin is one of the most culturally significant cities in the country. It's a destination for live events (with major festivals like South by Southwest and Austin City Limits Music Festival) and a Formula 1 race.  There is literally a major event or concert happening every day of the week.” 

“St. Augustine is a massive tourist city,” noted Cari Baker. “We also have a local college. So we see people from all over. About 60% of our ticket purchasers are from over 250 miles away. We have a unique opportunity for diverse programming between our two venues – the 4,800-cap outdoor amphitheater in a state park and our smaller 900-cap concert hall. We also have a summer music festival that takes place over the whole month of September and includes local & regional programs. It culminates with a 20,000-person, two-day festival.  Our other project is a February jazz & blues series. We try to host something for everybody and meet all the needs of our community”

“Huntsville is ranked one of the smartest cities in the U.S.,” Brittany Johnston shared. “One of the FBI headquarters is based in Huntsville – as well as NASA headquarters – and now 300+ tech companies. Huntsville is a booming market. It’s now the largest city in Alabama. We're seeing a lot of transplants come in for new jobs and also a lot of generational history.”

What It Means to Know Your Market

“Let’s talk about synergy within your market,” said moderator Andrew Farwell. “What systematic actions do you take to work with your CVB, other events & venues, universities, etc.? And what have you done to understand your market personally and professionally?” Owens began by discussing his CVBs and stakeholders, “Before we even opened the doors, we took a seat at the table with Visit Austin and the state of Texas to find out what resources they had available and how they could help us solicit not just concert events but major events that draw global and regional tourism.  For example, we were successful in getting the CMT Music Awards to leave Nashville for the first time in their awards show history. The conversations we had with the city of Austin and the state of Texas where a big part of that. They have very robust incentive funds to help attract major events. Being able to leverage those resources is critical.  Having those relationships early on – when the building was still being built – played a big role.” Owens also leaned on partners from C3 early on. “Austin's changed so much in the past decade. In a lot of ways, it’s a very new city to a lot of people.” Owens keeps an eye on trends outside his arena walls. “The arena sits in the Red River Cultural District. A venue for every stage of an artist's career is literally on our street. And we watch what’s happening on our street. If an artist is playing a sold out show at Stubbs, then she’ll play a sold out show at Moody Amphitheater next year. She's probably going to do a night or two at Moody Center the next run or so.”

Johnston also partners with the city. “We have almost 80 community & cultural events a year. Our marketing team does a great job combing through our Reddits, listening to feedback, and sending surveys out. Listening to actual fans matters.”

“It's a group effort,” Armit replied. “Everybody has a different cultural background so we’re pulling the right people into specific conversations and also making sure that everybody's entrenched into the community.” Although not from Toronto, Armit has been there for about 15 years. If changing markets, he advises, “Entrench yourself in the culture, into everything that that city represents. Be open to everything that it's presenting. Dive into everything – the food culture to the live music culture.” Over the past 5 years, he’s seen his arena’s show count go from 50 to 100 concerts a year. He noted, “New venues are coming online, but that hasn’t affected our show counts or ticket sales. Live Nation has opened a new 2,000-cap club space, which is something Toronto didn’t really have. We have a lot of small rooms. We have a lot of big rooms. But we were missing something in that 2,500-cap range. We’ve seen that space book 200 shows a year.” He also noted that Live Nation recently announced they’re opening a 50,000-cap stadium in Toronto in June 2025. “That’s a testament to the strength of the market.”

Baker shared, “We used to be a part of St. John's County government. Last year, we became a public-private partnership. So, we're very in tune with the local government. They give us insight into the area, including economic impact studies. We work very closely with our CVB, getting hotel data to know when people are coming in and what those age groups are so we can program accordingly. I work with many people who have lived in our area for a very long time. We have staff from 20 to 50 years old. That's really helpful in knowing what people want and what they've experience in our town.” She added that her market is growing as well. “When the amphitheater first started, we had 5-10 shows a year. Now we're over 60. We're over 100 shows a year in our concert hall. This growth led to the renovation, and we're going to increase our capacity by 20%.  Jacksonville added another music venue a few years ago which is very comparable in size. And it turns out there is enough business for both of us to coexist even though we're only 45 minutes apart.”

Who Is Your Ticket Buyer?

At the Orion, Johnston sees 50% out-of-state buyers or buyers driving 3+ hours to attend events. “We do about a $1.50 per head higher than tour average on merch. I think that says a lot about our demographic – they have the disposal income.”

The majority of ticket buyers at Scotiabank Arena are from the city of Toronto. Armit added, “But we also see a lot from Buffalo and northern New York. Our market does really well with merch. We've recently started using At Venue, and it has been a game-changer in the merch space. It gives us a POS system that allows us to charge tax on top so there's already a huge bump in revenue. Since we brought on At Venue, we've seen a 25% increase in merch sales. Part of it is inventory management, but the biggest piece is unlocking mobile merch ordering. At about noon on show days, we're unlocking merch in our venue mobile app. You can see photos of all of the merch and order it. We've seen five shows – recently Billie Eilish – doing $100,000 in merch on mobile order only. Going back to knowing your demo, we change our food offerings based on the audience demo. A K-pop show doesn't sell much F&B, but when we offer different items – we have a bubble tea stand – we're selling a lot of bubble tea. We let fans know about these special offerings in the Know-Before-You-Go email and on social media. We’ve also placed QR codes on armrests with a fan text line and a few different pieces of information in the dashboard. For certain seats, ordering food direct to your seat is an option. But the biggest one is our Fan Assist text line. If there's an issue with your seat – maybe it’s broken – or somebody behind you is too rowdy, we try to push people to text us. It's something that they can do immediately without having to leave their seat. There's really good feedback on that.”

For event marketing, Armit relies on social media content. “We’ve built a really large, engaged following who are sharing our content. We don't do eblasts for every show. All of our pre-sales are Wednesday mornings at 10am, and we've trained our fan base to know that. We see a very small number of unsubscribes.”

“Austin is still very much a college town. There are over 175,000 students in our region, so we're pulling a lot of ticket buyers from that audience,” shared Owens. “Deep dives into our email database revealed all these .edu addresses. So, we came up with a creative way to tap into that audience via a partnership with University of Texas called the UT Concert Club. We talk directly to those students — we send concert announcements, ticket promotions & discounts, and we capture that audience in a more direct way. Austin has a large Hispanic population – roughly 35%. We have a female-led, Spanish-speaking marketing department. They created a unique way to speak directly to our Hispanic audience through a program called LaLista, which has about 80,000 subscribers. We reach these consumers in their language, through platforms and mediums in places where they are. We also take guest surveys after every show, and we take a deep dive into the comments. We highlight the wins and highlight the pain points and look for the opportunities where we can do better based on the guest’s perspective.”

Baker’s concert hall is located in one of the richest zip codes in Florida, with an older demographic of 55+.” She added, “We operate almost year-round, but we have very heavy tourist seasons with peaks and valleys. Our email marketing database is very strong. We've transitioned to editorial-style content that highlights artists, local partners, our vendors and our business partners. That has generated more leads and ticket sales than the transactional emails. We started utilizing local F&B vendors. That's really increased sales despite the genre. We no longer do print advertising, unless it's very specific and very targeted. Same with radio. Certain demographics like country still listen to radio and those tend to work, but we don't do widespread radio or print ads any longer – plus it's not friendly to the environment.”

Trends: What Worked and What Didn’t

“I'm going to date myself, but I love seeing late 90s/early 2000s rock bands selling out arenas again,” Owens shared. “Incubus. Weezer. Creed. But in general, ticket sales have been genre-specific.” He also noted the unique trajectory of meteoric young artists like Melanie Martinez, Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter. “On the ticketing front, things like verified fan registrations are working and obviously legislation is a big part of it. And the election has an impact on the entire month of November.”

“We’ve become known as a market that supports K-pop,” Armit said. “We’ll continue to grow that, and we’ll see more South Asian acts in the next 12-18 months. There are only so many pop acts and Billie Eilishes. In general, sales are still strong. Being a major market, people think we automatically sell out. For all the shows we have on sale right this moment, we’re at 62%. We typically get there and most shows end up wrapping well, but it’s more of a slow-burn than it used to be.”

“Like Michael said, our successes have been genre-specific,” Baker shared. “We've been going after more underplays. With the size of our venue, those multi-night plays have been amazing for us.” Regarding scalpers and bots, she said, “It’s tricky. Dynamic pricing and platinum offer ways to kind of get around that. And you do everything you can to make sure there's enough inventory at your box office for on-sale to give our locals the chance to buy a ticket. But legislation has to change in order to stop it.”

Farwell noted sales patterns on most shows have been hit or miss. Johnston agreed that the last few weeks are important. “For us, it’s related to the heat. People must decide if they want to go to an amphitheater when it’s 92 degrees. When the weather is cooler, sales skyrocket.” Regarding trends, she also noted more multi-night runs and mini-festivals for 2025.

Armit discussed “the Toronto concert curse” – “If we’re the only Canadian market on the tour, we’ll see border issues and the show will be delayed, cancelled or postponed. For whatever reasons, we’ve seen this a lot more in the last year or two. With these cancellations, people are hesitant to buy tickets. It doesn’t really happen that often, but it makes the news when it does. The result is last minute walk-up.” 

Farwell thanked his panelists and concluded by sharing, “I think we covered a lot: how to identify your market; how to communicate that to your partners, to locals, to promoters and to agents; how to share data about your market including sales patterns; how to track trends; and more.”

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