Talking Tickets 1 April 2022: State of Tickets! Audience Breakdowns! Where Was Dave? And, More!
Number 129
Hi!
I’m back. And, I missed last week due to some complications from my “mild” Covid case.
Anyway, I spent 8 days in the ICU and cardiac care unit at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda. The staff was great and after being really freaked out on Monday and into Tuesday, the stay was as pleasant as you could hope for when you are in the hospital getting pumped full of drugs and trying to take care of “many, many clots” like my cardiologist told me.
I only go in-depth here today because in the Slack group, someone asked about the symptoms and for a lot of the time I was asymptomatic. Until the last few days when I had a pretty severe problem with my stomach that felt like someone was pumping me full of air.
With the clots, the symptoms were shortness of breath when I was sleeping because the clots were limiting my lung capacity and what felt like a knot in my calf which I didn’t think much of since I walk and run every day.
There was a heart issue that bubbled up as well that I was symptomatic for as well.
So, a lot of clots and issues that I wasn’t aware of until I got really sick.
My cardiologist called it a “Covid cascade” and it meant that despite being recovered and vaccinated, I still found myself dealing with a suite of symptoms and challenges that can feel pretty random and were working away with little knowledge from me.
In other words, not really like the flu at all.
My doctor gave me some simple advice to share to help keep an eye on my health. I don’t know if all of them apply to you, but they are probably good no matter what you are up to:
Use an Apple Watch or some sort of heart rate tracker to monitor your heart rate or take an EKG.
Weigh yourself and if you are gaining more than a pound or two a day or 5 pounds a week, see your doctor.
Be careful with the clots, people that have had minor COVID cases have had their clot activities changed by the virus. And, they can be all over the place with no sign or warning.
I’m lucky. I’ve got great doctors and caught everything early-ish, but be careful because even when you’ve been fully vaccinated there can be complications that go beyond the initial infection.
To the Tickets!
1. 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.
2. The Road to Recovery: COVID changed audience makeup:
Big Ideas:
This study is about the arts, but in doing this kind of research around the globe and in different parts of the ticket business, I know that there have been changes in demographics as people return to shows.
Beware of demographic segmentation, behavioral segmentation is where it is at.
A consistent theme is there is a huge audience of new buyers.
I have been talking with y’all a lot about the need to do your research, revisit your market segmentation, and do some new targeting and positioning that reflects the world you are dealing with now.
This survey gives you a good opportunity to see how this could work for your organization.
Let’s go through a quick primer on the foundations of marketing strategy today as a way to see what this report means and how you can apply these ideas to your organization.
First, we begin with the concept of customer orientation, research, and segmentation of the market.
Customer orientation is all about the recognition that you can’t really know what your market wants because you are too close to the situation, but knowing this enables you to perform research that will give you the answer.
With a good set of research, you can create a good segmentation built on behavior segmentation, not demographics.
Remember the example I use of Prince Charles and Ozzy Osbourne, demographically, they are the same. Action wise, I’m sure they are way different. To try and reach them to sell something do you think one is going to work better than the other?
Second, building off of the segmentation you are going to target.
One thing that is important to recognize here is the number of folks that are new to buying theatre tickets.
This should mean that you’ve identified a juicy target segment where you can capture the behaviors that drive action and turn them towards the theatre.
This is great stuff to keep in mind.
So you target based on the size of the opportunity and based on behavior.
Third, you position to draw a distinction between you and the other choices that are available to your target segment.
You can position about you or against the competition, but the best positions do a little bit of both.
Now this study is focused on the theatre, but this idea applies everywhere and in every instance. Not just theatre. Not just in the UK.
The key that folks have to keep in mind is that you have to do research consistently and if you haven’t done some now, you are likely missing opportunities.
3. How-To: StubHub and Viagogo focus on Rebuilding the StubHub brand:
Big Ideas:
A direct listing at a valuation of $13B is a hard no for me.
In preparing for the sale of StubHub, they did tremendous damage to their brand.
Brand Building is the accumulation of all of the good and bad touches your brand has with your audience over time. The good stuff adds up much more slowly than the bad stuff tears things down.
Interesting stuff here because the road forward for StubHub is challenging.
The first thing is that the hold-up by the CMA caused real damage to the business because they were cash-poor, struggling with the pandemic, and unable to be aggressive.
This came after the set-up for the sale of StubHub when the business definitely took some hits to their brand equity as they were getting as lean as possible including things like poorer customer service, weakened broker relations, and a struggle to retain good staff.
The first thing that StubHub is going to have to do is to close the gap between their primary competition in the market Ticketmaster and Vivid Seats because both have more money, more staff, and have been able to invest in their brands.
Second, keep in mind the idea of brand building.
Brand building is about the accumulation of the good and bad interactions your market has with you over time. The good stuff adds up slowly and the bad stuff tears you down rapidly.
I don’t make the rules. This is just life.
In this new brand-building phase, customers are going to want some assurances about refunds or changes due to events getting postponed, canceled, or altered.
Full stop.
The pandemic put people in positions where they screwed their customers over, even if they didn’t want to or intend to. Or, they may have been completely fair with folks and the customer still felt pissed off.
Again, life isn’t fair and just because you think something is okay doesn’t mean that the customer does…and their opinion is the only one that matters.
At the same time, brokers are going to need some massaging as well.
In my view, having access to more unique or specific inventory is going to be one way that brokers are able to control the relationship more and they are going to demand more from their partnership because I think there will be fewer professional brokers around that have the kinds of inventory to make these relationships hum.
So, keep an eye on how the brokers are dealt with.
Finally, the idea of a SPAC or direct listing is still floating around, but the charm has fallen away from these things in a lot of places.
In this case, I’d really need to see some numbers to back up the $13B valuation.
This was a business that was losing market share before the pandemic, has brand issues now, and has a pretty significant debt load to current revenues.
But, again, maybe I’m missing something that the books would show otherwise.
4. Tech/Tools/Profile: Capital One Entertainment Portal Opens:
Big Ideas:
In my experience, these things are good additional ways to elevate brand awareness but don’t often lead to many sales.
Elevating programs like this is difficult work and requires lots of staff, exclusive deals, and unique content.
Paying with points always seemed like a bigger opportunity than it ever came out to be.
I always take a look at these things because I’ve been involved in so many of them over the years that I keep waiting for a new one to really take off. The biggest, most successful program that I was involved with and that is still the gold standard is the Centurion Card.
That’s just a hat tip to share a few ideas about this new program with Vivid Seats and Capital One.
Back in the days when I was involved with my own secondary market company, we started up one of these affiliate type/direct log-in programs with a baseball website and I’ve been an advisor in other areas where these things have been used.
What I’ve found is that in many cases these programs end up being good for helping you with impressions as the biggest win, you get a little bounce on brand awareness, and the sales lag.
That’s not guaranteed, but it is the nature of my experience across 4 or 5 of these things.
Not a complete bust, but you have to weigh your expectations appropriately.
Why does this happen?
I think a lot of it is because it is really hard to put the proper resources behind something like this because the likelihood of success can feel a bit iffy. To really get one of these to hum, you’d need the kinds of staffing levels that the Centurion Cardmembers program receives, combined with the special inventory that AmEx has negotiated, and unique experiences like you might get from a concierge or small group event company.
Again, not impossible, but difficult to pull off.
Finally, I remain curious because I would have thought that buying tickets with points would have become a bigger thing at some point like hotels or airline tickets. The fact that it hasn’t caught on is amazing to me.
As we watch this program take shape and evolve, seeing how the part of the program that enables points redemption to pay for tickets is the biggest space of opportunity because I think with redemption you see an opportunity with good potential that hasn’t been tapped.
5. Links and Blurbs:
RIP Taylor Hawkins: I saw this in the hospital and it hit pretty hard because as we’ve discussed, I rock with the Foo Fighters. We don’t know the causes of death yet, but what we do know is that the pandemic has been hard on folks and if you need someone to talk with…I’m here for you.
Teams Have Tons of Data, But How Are There Insights? Building off of a previous write-up, teams have tons of data but are often lacking in insights. You can cut the numbers, twist them, spin them, and manipulate them all you want. Part of being successful at marketing and selling is knowing the market, knowing the data, and making guesses based on the future. An upcoming webinar or session I’m going to put together is about the two eyes you need to see and create modern strategies, the analyst and the architect.
SecuTix and The Ticket Factory Team Up on Blockchain Ticketing: Two of my favorites coming together to offer Blockchain ticketing to the UK.
Scott’s takes with Kerry Bubolz: Scott does a great job booking guests and getting good conversations going. Here’s another one from his taking his video show on the road to Las Vegas.
A deep dive into the finance and raising of Project Admission: The Project Admission team has been promoting this pretty hard. I never get this kind of love when I write about them?! WTF?! You know I think highly of the company and this is a pretty good primer on the way that money gets raised and how potential investors do due diligence on a company. So this is a really interesting piece to look into.
Chris Rock’s Ticket Prices Spike After His “Smack” Down with Will Smith: Ask me how ridiculous stuff like this is after the last week and I will tell you. But I’m not sold that the whole thing wasn’t staged.
Ticket sales are past pre-pandemic levels in Europe: It is YOLO in Europe! I was in the middle of a packed Stamford Bridge. I also was going to go to a packed Craven Cottage until the game was moved due to the FA Cup. Maybe, I’ll go back to London to see Pearl Jam at Hyde Park. Who knows?! Tickets and events are back in Europe though…this much seems true.
Private Equity and club ownership don’t fit hand-in-hand: There will be unintended consequences, no doubt. And, there’s no guarantee that the era of perpetual valuation growth will continue into the next few decades. At some point, we are likely to see challenges arise in the PE ownership of teams model, maybe beginning with Chelsea.
True Tickets aims to connect the real universe and the Metaverse: I’m not entirely sold on the Metaverse concept, NFTs, or all of this Web 3 stuff because in too many instances tickets is still stuck in the 90s as it is. At the same time, with emerging markets growing and the need to update practices and technologies brought on by the pandemic, customer demands, and to have functioning technology, I’m not completely against it either. That’s why I share this because Matt’s jumping-off point is value. That should be everyone’s jumping-off point. You don’t determine the value, your customer does. Then we move on.
I was in Sportico with Simon Mabb a few weeks back talking about Booking Protect, refund protection, and what customers want and need now. Give it a read.
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Be a part of the ‘Talking Tickets’ Slack community.
Check out my friends at Booking Protect!
Thanks again to the Ticketing Professionals Team. They’ve put together a great event and just announced the new event for 2023. See y’all in Birmingham!
I had my buddy, Simon Severino, back on the podcast this week. We talked about marketing, strategy, and long-term planning. Hit some of the previous episodes. All of the ones from 2022 have been bangers: Ruth Hartt, Hannah Grannemann, Lyndsey Jackson, and, now, MK Lever. I’ve got some more good stuff coming up!
Let me know who you’d like to hear from by sharing your ideas with me here.