Talking Tickets 15 April 2022: Reds' Fans Can Screw Off! Pricing is the Name of the Game! TPC in Australia Returns! And, More!
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Hey everyone!
The Dave recovery tour is still working its way through my house. I’m on the mend. The only limits I have currently is be careful on the sodium and don’t go to the gym. Like my buddy, Gary, said to me, “I can’t go to the gym on doctor’s orders?! I can handle that.”
So I’ll be doing more remote stuff which is something I should have embraced a while back anyway, but so it goes.
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To the Tickets!
1. The Big Story: Reds’ fans can “pound salt”!:
Big Ideas:
I’m not sure insulting your dwindling fan base is the right way to win them over.
This attitude towards fans comes through in a lot of actions in many businesses.
I’m reminded of the “How did the rich man go broke?” when I think about baseball.
Ahhh…baseball, you sweet beast.
You delayed the season, locked out the players, charged folks $17 for a Bud Light, and now this?!
I kid because jokes are how I make my points here, but this is pretty damning actually.
When I watch Billions, I always find myself thinking about A Bart Giammatti, the last commissioner of baseball that really had the good of the game at the heart of his mission.
Why during Billions?
His son plays Chuck Rhodes.
Since Bart left, we’ve had commissioners that have the POV the only constituency that matters is the owners.
The key thing is that despite having monopoly power, teams and sports don’t have monopoly power over entertainment.
This puts the ease of insulting your fans into a new light becasue the thing is that fans are already watching on TV more than they are going to the ballpark, meaning you are missing money from tickets, merch, F&B, and more.
The TV money is great right now, but it could go away with little warning.
The challenge here is that being dismissive to fans and customers isn’t exclusive to baseball.
It happens in industries all over the world including sports, but the more competitive the marketplace is…the less this kind of thing flies.
To me, this all boils down to the idea of power.
I talk about the power framework of strategy regularly here.
And, you look at strategy through the lens of whether or not you gain power against:
your customers
your competition
your suppliers
In looking at baseball and how they are dealing with their fans and managing the game right now, you have to look at their strategy through this lense.
How are they doing?
Versus the customers: their strategy is weakening their position.
Why?
There are tons of other choices for folks. So you can’t treat them like you are doing them a favor.
Versus the competition: anything you do that upsets or irritates or doesn’t respect prospects and customers, it helps the competition.
Well, mission accomplished in many markets.
Versus suppliers.
In this regard, I’ll look at partners.
I don’t see where baseball has come out better than they started. Like I mentioned when the Apple TV+ deal was announced, the biggest challenge that baseball is dealing with right now is awareness. So putting some of your prime weekend games behind a small paywall for a relatively small payday doesn’t make a lot of strategic sense.
Take this same analysis and look at beer, RSNs, ticket partners, and on…where can you say that baseball has gotten stronger?
I'm serious. If you know, let me know.
On the whole, there’s a lot of danger on the road ahead for a lot of baseball teams in a lot of markets…or, “How did the rich man go broke? Slowly at first. Then, all at once.”
Back to dealing with this situation. Let me give you three options:
2. The Road to Recovery: People are coming back, but no show rates are still super high:
Big Ideas:
Attendance is age-based now.
No show rates is much higher, as high as 40%.
Profit margins are thin and this is a challenge.
The Dutch removed all restrictions on 23 March and many areas of entertainment and culture have been slow to come back, but live music has been stronger than most with tickets selling better than museums, shows, and other performances.
The biggest challenge now seems to be the rate of no-shows with the current rate hitting as high as 40% when the before times might see no-show rates of around 10%.
Compounding the slump is that age has shown up as a factor in whether or not a show has a lot of no-shows or not with shows for younger buyers having less no-shows than shows for middle age and older concert goers.
The olds ain’t going…what?! I thought they were YOLO and we needed to let them get back to their lives?!
I kid but this has a real impact because the profit margins of shows have been pretty slim over the last few years and with audiences in the 60% rate, this makes the challenge of having the revenue necessary to drive the industry harder to come by.
I think I’ve gone over ways to get people back into the building before, but let’s take three whacks at it this morning to refresh our thinking:
First, we want to communicate with people to let them know things are safe and that we are doing things to keep people safe.
Second, you are likely going to have to do more marketing in the lead up to the show to remind folks that they have tickets to a show or that a show is going on. I think this is a pretty good touchpoint anyway, but it will also help you cut down on the no shows.
Third, create some offer to get folks in early because part of the no-show rate some markets is due to the time or inconvenience people think will be a part of experience. So reward folks for doing what you want them to do by buying them a free drink or a happy hour or something.
I doubt that there is a one size fits all solution here so my suggestion is experimentation.
3. How To: Set Better Prices:
Big Ideas:
Pricing is a story. Make sure you tell the right one.
Are you setting a price for the right reasons? How do you know?
Do you need to offer a discount?
This is a quick, smart piece from David Reece from Baker Richards.
You know I love the pricing stories and this is another one that can teach you a few lessons.
Let’s go through this stuff quickly because it matters.
First, pricing tells a story.
I’ve pointed to the work on neuromarketing by Martin Lindstrom and the idea that once you begin discounting, you are a discount brand in your customer’s mind for up to seven years.
Pricing is a story and sometimes you are ignorant to the story it is telling.
As David points out, you have to know exactly the message you want to get across and make certain that it is getting through to folks.
Second, set your price for the right reasons.
Last week, I wrote about a piece that talked about knowing your customers to help you make better decisions for reaching your customers and conveying your value.
A continuation of that story is this one when you think about the reasons you are pricing the way that you are.
Why are you offering a different price on the weekdays?
Why are you offering a discount?
What do you hope to gain by offering a subscription?
Then, get to the second level of thinking and ask yourself things like:
Is this strategy working?
Am I getting the results I want?
What would need to be true for this to work?
Finally, don’t fall into the knee-jerk reaction of discounting for discounting’s sake.
David talks about the barber.
I talk about the scourge of $6 tickets in college athletics that will lead to people rushing back to pay full price. Or, the deep discounts that get rolled out when demand isn’t actually happening.
These are all knee-jerk reactions and they harm your brand because they aren’t based in an understanding of your customers.
So don’t fall into that trap.
Understand your customer. Tell the story you want to tell. Set the right price.
P.S. You’ll obviously want to be part of the FREE pricing webinar on Wednesday 20 April 2022!
4. Tech/Tools/Profiles: Ticketing Professionals Australia returns in November
Big Ideas:
If you’ve never been to Australia in November, you have to get there.
This is the premier ticketing event in the Southern Hemisphere.
The content is on-point, as the kids say.
Angela and Jo are back on 2-3 November with their second Ticketing Professionals Conference.
I’m a big fan of the conference and I’m glad they will have the opportunity to put on a new one this year.
The link above is to sign up for updates.
Knowing that the conference is going on, I’ll look at putting together a few workshops and days to work with me so that I have an excuse to come down. I mean, I’m sort of the ambassador to Tourism Australia at this point.
First things first, if you’ve never been to Australia and you are reading this newsletter…November is a great time to go.
Second off, this is the premier ticket event in the southern hemisphere. And, it is going to be even better than the first one…
Finally, the content is on point. Don’t believe me?
Maureen Andersen talked about the importance of flexibility in dealing with customers. Andrew Thomas talked about the need to find new revenue streams. And, I talked about the difficulty of change.
This all happened in November 2019…tell me we didn’t have a crystal ball.
This is going to be a great event. So sign up now!
5. Links and Blurbs:
Jai Alai is making a comeback: I remember these Dania Jai Alai commercials so well. I also have to say that one of the reasons that I love Cigar City’s Jai Alai IPA has to do because of the connection to the sport. I remember it being fun and never even thought about the gambling part of the game, but I was a kid. This is exciting news and it would be a fun thing for Florida, even if they are fighting an uphill battle.
Soccer saved itself in the 1990s with rule changes. Would that work for baseball? There’s a lot of stuff being written about the challenges baseball faces right now and in many places, it seems like the game itself isn’t paying attention to the decline in attention, attendance, or interest because the revenues are still rolling in. But I’m reminded of one of my favorite sayings, “How did the rich man go broke? Slowly, at first. Then, all at once.” The same could be on the agenda for baseball without someone stepping in like Sepp Blatter back in the 90s, as strange as it seems to say that now.
This is Tomorrow Festival pushes back a year: At some point, we were always going to hit a saturation point in the market. For this festival, pushing back a year is likely a wise decision. In the UK, they are dealing with increases in COVID cases, inflation, economic uncertainty, and market saturation…amongst other things. So hitting the pause button makes sense.
The newest Tottenham song is great! I’m buying the hype and I love the English songs! “Give me! Give me! Give me! A ginger from Sweden!”
Title IX is 50, but womens’ sports still don’t get their fair share: There are more women than men in college. Most sports are non-revenue generating. Most college athletes don’t go pro. So not investing in womens’ sports is just absurd.
Oli Shawyer and his pals have an F1 podcast: I like the name. Anything with idiots works for me. Oli is a smart marketer, a great sports business guy, and an overall good dude. He’s got a podcast on F1 and they’ve been building a pretty nice audience. I know the F1 audience continues to grow, so check out Oli’s podcast!
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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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.