The Biggest Ticketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Panelists:
Justin Atkins, Ticketmaster
ArinMichelle Casey, SeatGeek
Dan Cleff, AEG Presents
Tabitha Sechrist, ASM Global
Moderated by:
Todd Hunt, Venue Coalition
Navigating the complexities of ticketing requires vigilance and adaptation. This panel examined tools and practices that help mitigate mistakes: evaluating demand, utilizing sales data, pricing to market & dynamic pricing strategies, local market expertise, collaboration, and more. Moderator Todd Hunt opened the session by noting that everyone has made ticketing mistakes and that, with ticketing, getting it right begins with pricing. Dan Cleff kicked off the conversation, “We are constantly evaluating ticket prices, starting with the booking teams and artist teams to set the initial pricing. Then, as everybody knows, we use dynamic pricing across the board on every show now. There’s no set it & forget it price anymore. We use all our tools – preregistration numbers, who’s in the queues and what demand is. We use all that information at the on-sale and follow it through the life of the event to increase/decrease as needed and sell tickets.”
Pricing to Market
ArinMichelle Casey emphasized the importance of pricing to the market, “When we sell a ticket at market price, we sell a ticket to a fan that’s gonna show up.” From the venue perspective, knowing the specific market is essential. Tabitha Sechrist highlighted the need for local expertise, as promoters often rely on venue feedback to set appropriate prices. Collaborative efforts between promoters and venues can lead to more accurate initial pricing and appropriate adjustments. She said, “Promoters ask us about buying habits. Maybe the presale or on-sale wasn’t as strong as other markets, and they’ll ask us ‘Is this normal?’ And we can advise them.” Cleff agreed, “On the touring side, we could be in 40, 60, 80 markets on a tour and that’s tough. We look to the venue teams and ticketing systems to come to us with pricing suggestions. We rely on local knowledge. Different markets sell differently based on genre or where the artist is from, etc. It’s a constant back and forth.”
Regarding buying habits, Casey added, “We’re seeing 38% of buyers purchasing in the last week. That’s a trend that’s steadily increased since the pandemic. 17% are buying on the day of the event. So much has changed in the last 4-5 even 10 years, and it’s important that we’re all working together to understand those trends.”
Justin Atkins moved the focus to seat-level pricing, “We work really hard to provide a lot of tools and insights to the artists, promoters and venues we work with. When you can get to seat-level pricing, you can capture market value very specifically. Market pricing the best seats in the house allows you to offset funds.” This strategy aligns with the artist's branding and financial goals, making tickets accessible to a broader audience. He continued, “I think there are some misconceptions about dynamic pricing in general. Everyone here knows that not every show sells out. After the on-sale, you’re looking at where the demand signals are, and many times dynamic pricing can be pricing down to move inventory. Dynamic pricing is also a human decision. These are decisions that promoters, artists and venues are making collectively, working with the tools and programs they have to price effectively depending on goals. There are a lot of different ways you can aggregate demand ahead of the first presale and the on-sale to tell what the forecasted sell through will be in any given market. This helps inform pricing – and also marketing. We have the tools to help us make effective and informed decisions about number of shows, marketing, and of course pricing that’s most effective for the artists and for the fans as well.”
Data is a cornerstone of modern ticketing practices. It informs decisions, predicts trends, and helps stakeholders respond to market behaviors quickly and effectively. Hunt asked his panelists, “How do we access data to make better decisions?” Collaboration was a key component in every response. Sechrist said, “Everyone on our team is watching the numbers every day. Box office, marketing, and me as the GM. We’re keeping an eye on the forecast. We’re looking at all the clicks – from the time they enter the website to the cart. And we share what we’re noticing with the promoters. We have new signals and historical data that helps empower promoter teams and artist teams.”
Cleff added, “From the go, we’re trying to get tickets into the fans’ hands. When we price to the market, we’re trying to end up with less tickets on the secondary and into the fans’ hands from the beginning. If we underprice the show and all the tickets end up on the secondary, that’s not ideal for the fans.”
“Pricing to market is how we keep tickets in the hands of fans,” Casey restated. “It reduces the opportunity for arbitrage by other sellers. We want to make the dollars work while giving the fans the best experience.”
The Ticketing Letter
Hunt turned the conversation to focus on the importance of the ticketing letter. “If we get ticketing wrong from the start,” he said, “There’s not much we can do to fix it especially on a high demand show. Let’s talk about the importance of a ticketing letter that’s clear and communicated early.”
“Everyone wants enough time to build events,” Cleff acknowledged. “As a promoter, I promise we’re not withholding information. We’re working with the ticketing companies to put together good specs. We want everything consistent across the tour so everyone doesn’t have to customize by venue. We want to get in front of things like delivery delays and transfer delays – tools that allow us to hit pause in case we need to do sweeps to see who bought the tickets. We need these tools that give us wiggle room. There are lots of hands in the pot and we want to be clear and consistent so there are no questions when we go on sale.”
Comprehensive pre-sale planning includes addressing all operational details upfront, including production elements that may impact seating. Cleff emphasized the importance of updating as changes occur, ensuring the final product matches what was sold. Venues should collaborate closely with promoters to explain venue-specific requirements, like local taxes and seating configurations. Tabitha Sechrist recommended using the ticketing letter phase to clear up any misunderstandings and avoid surprises at settlement.
Selling Tickets Throughout the Life Cycle
From the on-sale date to the event date, getting the right message to the right fan at the right time is critical. Venues like Tabitha's employ digital marketing techniques, such as programmatic ad campaigns that follow users across different platforms. Customizing messages based on audience segments and past buying behavior can significantly boost sales. Continuous monitoring of click-to-cart conversion rates and other online behaviors helps adjust marketing strategies in real-time. This data-driven approach ensures that marketing efforts remain effective throughout the event’s lifecycle. “These investments help our promoters, and we hope they will attract more promoters to do business with us,” said Sechrist. “Our marketing team can also offer out-of-the-box, unique ideas to engage our market and our patrons. We know our market. And we have that venue branding that boosts all events.”
Cleff is in constant contact with artist teams. “From the beginning, we are setting the tentpoles for the sales cycle,” he said. “We’re picking the on-sale date for a specific reason. After that, we’re looking for what’s in the artist’s plan that’s not necessarily tied to the tour, like a SNL appearance or an awards show. And we want to make sure we are priced correctly at these times when there’s lots of eyeballs on the artist.”
“We are obsessed with how easy and comfortable our site is to navigate,” said Casey. “We want to remove any barrier in the fan experience.” Once a fan has a ticket, Seat Geek engages with that ticketholder to offer other opportunities at the venue, share new music, upsell merchandise, and more. “Seat Geek’s Rally platform offers endless possibilities for a custom event experience, all on one screen,” said Casey. “We have these customized widgets. On a game day, for example, you might see Weather & Wayfinding. For Luke Combs, we were streaming new music. For George Strait, we were featuring the Jennifer Strait Foundation. We offer opportunities to keep fans engaged with your artists throughout.”
“Reaching fans where they are is really impactful,” added Justin Atkins. Ticketmaster has a distributed commerce team that partners with the world’s more innovative brands to make it easy for fans to discover and purchase tickets where they are most active – on their favorite platforms like TikTok, Shazam, and Snapchat. Utilizing these partnerships can attract fans who may not have been reached through traditional marketing channels and may not have otherwise known about the event. “When you think about selling tickets throughout the life cycle, you’re looking for the most avenues you have to reach the various fans. All of us know what it’s like to hear ‘Oh, I didn’t know about that show. I would have gone.’ Using all the platforms to reach fans where they are and making sure they are informed can be key.” Cleff agreed and added, “Ticketing platforms have really huge toolboxes. There are a lot of organizations you guys have APIs with where we can move full-priced tickets. It’s additional marketing beyond the primary marketing initiatives.”
Hunt asked his panelists about segmenting databases to get the right message to the right fan at the right time. “The last thing we want to do is send a VIP offer to someone who only buys cheap seats or, conversely, send a 4 for 1 offer to a VIP. Is this driven from the ticketing side? The promoter? The venue?” Atkins agreed, “The more you understand your data – the better insights you can garner – the better you interact.” Casey added, “We use affinity-based marketing and that’s really effective to find potential buyers based on their past purchase behavior, what they’re listening to, etc.” Sechrist does the same with the database her venues have built over many, many years. “We also look at how far they got into a timeline for a show. Maybe they would transfer that interest into another show. It’s important to build that database any way you can … and retain it, which has been very difficult lately. We try to keep engagement without losing the email subscribers we have. Same with social media. It’s been difficult and challenging but we’re finding ways. Maybe it’s fewer posts. Or specific targeting for a specific show instead of a venue eblast. We actually discontinued an email blast because the clicks weren’t there. We felt like we were bombarding them constantly with a weekly email that no one was opening or reading. So, we put resources into very specificized emails about specific shows.” Casey and Hunt agreed that tracking engagement and avoiding noise is key.
The Next Technological Steps
Dynamic pricing tools will continue to evolve and improve. “Like Justin said, we are pricing more seats at a granular lever and extracting market value out of every seat,” said Casey. “At Seat Geek, we will continue to invest in our hallmark features like view-from-seat maps and other cool things that just make the experience better. My favorite is seat recommendations. If Justin and I are shopping at the same time in a high-demand on-sale and he beats me to the tickets, I won’t get an error message to try again. Instead, Seat Geek will actually offer me a comparable set of tickets, that we’ve carted on the backend, and allow me to go immediately to check out. As a fan, that really improves the ticket buying experience.”
On the topic of fan-first opportunities to innovate, Justin Atkins discussed the Ticketmaster Request platform where fans request tickets to popular shows, so they don’t have to compete in a first-come, first-served sale. Ticketmaster used that platform and partnered with Avenged Sevenfold to use a token-gated sale that incorporating NFTs in the ticketing process to provide exclusive access to dedicated fans. “We were able to utilize utility within the NFT space, which was very important for this artist, and service an experience for a fan base that was incredibly successful. The more we look at artist goals and initiatives, the better we can enhance the artist-to-fan experience.”
Sechrist shares patron feedback with her ticketing providers. “We hear it firsthand as a venue operator,” she said. “I work in an historic theater with key cultural institutions like the Richmond Symphony, Richmond Ballet, and Virginia Opera. They’re all doing different things like ‘pay what you can’ programs. We collaborate, and we make it a better process from start to finish.”
Atkins added, “There’s a lot of emotion involved with buying a ticket to see your favorite artist. When we can manage expectations and guide fans through the process with information and transparency, we can help guarantee that the experience is what the artists want it to be. The goal is always the most friction-less experience.”
Ticketing Legislation
Hunt asked his panel, “What ticketing legislation is needed most?” All panelists agreed on the need for all-in pricing, where ticket prices include all fees upfront. Moving towards federally mandated all-in pricing could standardize practices across states, improving the overall ticket-buying experience and allow fans to make informed decisions. Sechrist encouraged everyone in the industry to be aware of legislation in any state they work in. Casey added, “When we see all-in pricing across the board, we’ll be able to do better as an industry.” Cleff agreed, “With all-in pricing, fans don’t abandon their cart when they see $30 fees. And on our side, we’re seeing more artist teams who are aware of venue fees.” Adkins acknowledged that this transparency allows artists & promoters to make more informed decisions around face value, “By understanding fees, the artist team sees the price that fans will ultimately pay. I really feel like that’s been the theme of this conversation – when we collaborate and work together, we lower the risk of making mistakes and we collectively find solutions.”