Talking Tickets 15 July 2022: Samuel L. Jackson! TBF! Broadway! F1! And, More!
#144
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This the final 2022 vacation edition. We will get back to normal next week.
I’ll be announcing a specific, monthly pricing newsletter next week that launches in September.
But for now: To the Tickets!
1. The Big Story: Business as (un)usual in Manchester:
Big Ideas:
Nothing, as it seems, feels like the theme of the business right now.
Data but for better connections to humans, not numbers…I think we’ve heard that one before.
Pricing got a lot of play as it should.
This seems to fit with the theme of the Dave World Tour 2022 coming to you from Miami again this morning.
Many friends of the podcast and newsletter were at TBF in Manchester last week including:
Sean Kelly
Paul Williamson
Booking Protect
And, more…obviously.
Since the TBF get-together was about business as unusual, let’s make this week’s list of ideas about the nature of the unusual right now.
Next week, we will look at Tim Chambers’ piece about the event and more.
But for this week, let’s have a few more ideas from the DW notebook:
I’m thinking that a lot of the different industry organizations are going to start to fall away unless the value proposition of them is elevated.
In thinking about how to sell tickets now, we definitely need to revisit strategy and get the marketing department pulled into the process. In too many places, we see that marketing has just become the coloring in department and this hurts marketing, sales, and branding.
Many organizations are going to struggle because many employees haven’t had to deal with a recession or a downturn before. We still don’t know exactly what the next 6-12 months are going to really look like for folks.
Do you have a plan in place to map out your touchpoints?
Next week, we will get back to normal. But spend a few moments jotting down your own ideas or responses.
2. The Road to Recovery: Samuel L. Jackson gets moved to a smaller venue:
Big Ideas:
Samuel L. Jackson is coming to Broadway! That’s amazing!
The economics of Broadway right now mean that if a show is doing well commercially, the locations for new shows might get moved.
The fall on Broadway should be interesting.
“Say what again!”
This is an interesting story because I love plays and I love Samuel L. Jackson. And, I can understand the desire to keep a Sondheim show playing as long as possible because historically musicals have done better business than plays.
What I do see is that the economics of Broadway are still under pressure. And, this makes the next period of time on Broadway interesting.
3. How To: Women’s sports can be a great investment!
Big Ideas:
Where have we heard this before?
Half the world’s population is women.
Don’t invest in women’s sports because it is the right thing to do, invest because you are greedy!
Thinking through this, we see a couple of really great things that are working for women’s sports that can be useful as these leagues start growing and folks invest in them more and more.
First, women’s sports aren’t tagged with outdated business models.
Of course, you also do see all too often that some of these organizations are using the broken men’s sports model for branding and selling tickets. But if people step back, they can see that there is a lot of room for new business models.
Second, women’s sports don’t have tons of commercial deals holding them back.
When you have a blank slate, you can do all kinds of things.
What is exciting here for me is that there is room to really be creative and not saddled by old ways of doing things.
See the theme?
Third, women are half the population.
Why wouldn’t we want to offer them something that would appeal to them?
Going a step further, we can also look at the success of AFLW to see that the audience for a women’s league often isn’t the same audience you might find for a man’s league.
So, what do we see here?
Opportunity y’all.
4. Tech/Tools/Profiles: F1 grows a brand:
Big Ideas:
Building a brand is a long-term effort.
The long and short of it shows up once again.
Original content alone isn’t enough.
I love Oli Shawyer’s F1 podcast. Who knew I’d even listen to a podcast about F1?
Because Oli is such a great marketer, I learn a lot each episode about marketing and the F1.
F1 is a brand that deserves its very own case study and look, but not this week.
Instead, let’s run through some key points of this article really quickly.
First, brand building takes time.
In looking at F1, as late as 2016, the brand was in the dumps. In 2022, the brand is stronger than it has ever been.
Why?
F1 picked a position as a premium brand and stuck with it. Just like a few weeks back, Indy Car decided to do the opposite.
Second, the long and short of it are always at play.
Long: emotional brand building like the Netflix series and other high-level, mass market things like a partnership with ESPN.
Short: sales activation like selling tickets in Miami.
You can’t do only one. You must do both.
Third, content alone isn’t enough.
People often point to the Netflix show, but that isn’t enough.
Above, I wrote about the long and short of it. But folks are always going to focus on the content or the stuff that is happening right in front of them because it is easy to identify.
But think about this for a moment, what if in 2016 F1 had changed course and focused on a new Facebook strategy or social media strategy?
Instead, they stuck with the plan to use Netflix and to build big emotional connections with folks, consistently.
That’s what needs to be done for everything.
Make it about the league or team, not the moment to moment stuff.
5. Links and Blurbs:
The Weeknd is canceled in Toronto: The weekend is never canceled in Miami, y’all. Actually, this is an example of the unintended consequences of all-digital everything.
Philadelphia has some ideas for keeping nightlife popping: Y’all, I started in nightclubs. So I’m a fan of nightclubs. Reviving the nightclubs and nightlife around the world is going to be a key to the road to recovery.
Coyotes could make more money at a 5,000 seat arena?: These numbers don’t seem to add up to me, but what do I know?
The Wall Street Journal teams up with The Ticket Club: These kinds of partnerships were my bread and butter when I was selling tickets daily and this might work, but the track record of these types of partnerships isn’t strong. That said, I signed up with my subscription to check it out. I’ll let y’all know.
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Check out my friends at Booking Protect!
We continue to see the value of offering refund protection in the data. Feedback shows that the most challenging issues since re-opening have been pretty consistent for teams, theatres, and venues:
Consumer confidence
Changes in buyer behavior
COVID policies coupled with refund or exchange policies.
Offering refund protection helps you provide a solution for these challenges.
Hook up with the team at Booking Protect!
I did the FREE webinar a few weeks back but had some technical issues with the live stream on Microsoft Teams. I’m not sure if was Teams or my new desktop computer, either way…I’m going to continue to play with the tech stack and I posted the audio file in the podcast stream. So, pricing ideas to your heart’s desire.
Lots of great podcast conversations: check out recent conversations with Amanda Lester, Paul Williamson, and, Brett Goldberg.
Let me know who you’d like to hear from by sharing your ideas with me here.