Talking Tickets 2 September 2022: Man U's Brand Power! Audiences Straggling! Tix Ticketing! And, More!
#151
Hi-
The final weekend of the summer! I guess I’ll have to stop vacationing!
Forget about it.
It is summer in the Southern Hemisphere soon!
Before we get into the week’s newsletter, I want to point you to a tribute that Softjourn posted on their website in honor of Ukrainian Independence Day that shares the memory of two co-workers that were killed defending Ukraine from Russia’s attack on their country.
I’d also like to point y’all towards the incredible work that Michal Lorenc from Google has been doing to support the folks in the UK as well. Following his many trips to volunteer, and bring donations and supplies has been very inspirational.
To the tickets!
1. The Big Story: Live Performance Is Back…But Audiences Are Straggling:
Big Ideas:
There are pockets where events have come back like before 2020, but that’s the exception in a lot of places.
Expanding the audience was something that was an evident need before 2020.
For many would-be buyers, the pandemic isn’t over yet.
This is a solid article.
Long, detailed, and covers a lot of areas of the ticket business. Give it a full read.
From my POV, the big issue to really think about it how to expand your audience. That’s something that I’ve been hearing from people around the world. That’s the number one issue.
This was evident before 2020. I talked about it in 2019 when I went to Australia.
We are seeing a few kinds of behavior emerge as we continue through whatever phase of the pandemic we are in now:
Some people are never going anywhere.
Some people are only doing things outside.
Some people have changed their habits.
Some people are non-customers and they are still non-customers.
Some people are going back to what they did before.
You can’t attack these audiences with the same approach. Each needs its own strategy for reaching them.
The truth on this is that your non-buyers have always been the biggest segment of your market. You can’t ignore them, you have to give them a look and find out what they are doing instead of coming to see you.
This is where market research comes in.
As we head into the fall, the key question to deal with is: how are you going to expand your audience since the makeup of so many organizations’ audiences has changed?
Action Steps:
Figure out what the big question you are trying to figure out for your organization is.
Look into what your market or audience is doing. The ones that are coming and the ones that aren’t coming. In many cases, I’m guessing that you’ve arbitrarily shrunk your target market for no reason except that you’ve always talked this segment. Check out my conversation with Ruth Hartt about “jobs to be done”.
Think expansion. Your focus should be on reaching more people any way you can.
2. The Road to Recovery: Aren Murray talks about how technology can help aid in recovery:
Big Ideas:
Put yourself in the shoes of your customer.
Ticketing shouldn’t be hard.
Build your community in the industry.
Tix Ticketing is a new ticketing platform for the arts and culture.
They are focusing on using a cloud-based platform to help make ticketing easier for the people buying and selling tickets.
Aren and I got into a ton of different stuff on this week’s podcast from being customer focused to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit and INTIX.
There are a few key ideas that stand out to me as mattering:
Putting yourself in the shoes of the customer. Now more than ever, we need to spend some time understanding exactly what the audience wants, needs, and is doing.
Technology has to be a tool to help people in entertainment deliver a more human experience. As I’ve mentioned at many points, we need to build the business around the people, not just pay lip service to them.
After dealing with a pandemic for going on three years, it is important to realize that everyone needs some support and a community. Aren and I talk about INTIX a lot, check them out. You can also check out the Talking Tickets Slack Community and join as well.
3. How To: Man U isn’t for sale, but you can still see the power of a brand to drive valuations:
Big Ideas:
Manchester United has the third most valuable sports business brand in the world in the WCG Team Brand Index trailing only Real Madrid and Barcelona.
A brand is almost always a business’s most valuable asset.
Invest in your brand: it is an asset.
Your brand is often your most valuable asset. If you look at the valuations of a company like Apple, somewhere around 40% of its value is in its brand.
This reminds me of the saying that you hear from time to time about the NFL, “protect the shield.”
And, this is why I’m pretty particular at this point about who I will and will not work with.
Your brand matters.
My definition of a brand is that it is the accumulation of all of the interactions your market has with you over time, good and bad.
Mark Ritson, my old marketing professor, talks about the brand being the gap between you and the commodity version of your product.
The importance of a brand is on display in the conversation around how much would Manchester United be worth if they were for sale.
The article in the link says that they might be worth up to $6B if they were for sale right now.
In 2021-2022, the team lost over $100 million dollars.
Going back before the pandemic, the club would bring in around $700 million a year in revenue.
Discount the last year or two and look at the before times, it is tough to get to a $6 billion valuation without a really strong brand.
In looking at the valuation of Premier League teams, Manchester United’s brand offers them about a 61% premium over the lowest valued team of the Premier League’s Big 6.
Or, put it another way, despite winning a Premier League title more recently than Manchester United, Leicester City is still valued about 10-11x less than Manchester United.
What’s the secret sauce to Manchester United’s strong brand?
Historical success. United has won a lot of titles.
Smart marketing. If you check out the book, The Club, you can read the story of how United made a transfer for the Spurs’ commercial executive to help the team reach a bigger market.
Being a big brand. How do you build a bigger brand? Start with a big brand.
The key idea here is that despite the lack of success that United has had in the last decade or so, the team is still the most valuable in world football because they have the strongest brand in England.
They built that brand by winning, by marketing, and by investing in it for decades.
You should keep these three things in mind no matter what area of the business you are in because the last two we can all control.
4. Tech/Tools/Profiles: Spotify gets into the pre-sale game:
Big Ideas:
Spotify dips its toe into the ticket waters.
The UX is pretty simple.
Can Spotify get major artists?
This test drive of ticketing for Spotify is pretty cool.
Is this going to be a major new platform to sell tickets? No one knows for sure.
What I can tell you is that I went through the purchase path for the Ani DiFranco show in Philadelphia in November and the whole process was simple.
To me, the big challenge is whether or not Spotify can get inventory for major artists’ shows since major artists dominate the listenership.
My guess is that Spotify will find some of the same challenges that Amazon had getting into the ticket game because they won’t have access to most of the desirable inventory.
Sure, you can do an API integration with other platforms, but I’d imagine Spotify would want more control of the customer journey than that.
5. Blurbs and Such:
NWSL hires new executives: Look at the ratings of the WNBA v. MLS. Then, look at me telling you, I told you so. Do I know how this NWSL idea plays out? No. But I know that not trying to tread the same road as everyone else can lead to opportunities.
90% of World Cup ads are sold out: There’s no sales genius going on here: US v. England on Friday after Thanksgiving, World Cup taking place during December when it is mostly crap bowl games…winning!
UEFA publishes a report about the business case for women’s football: I’m glad to see that we are all on the same page on this one. There is a big opportunity in women’s sports right now. It is the right thing but also the economically wise thing.
Take the money, don’t take the money: that’s the question: Cricket Australia is weighing whether or not to take PE money for their commercial rights. On one side is the slower approach, waiting until after the next round of TV rights. On the other side, go in right now. If you are in a position, I’d suggest waiting.
D2C isn’t new but it teaches a ticketing lesson: Invest in your brand or your D2C ads will become less and less effective meaning you’ll lose market share, profits will shrink, and value will be destroyed. This isn’t a new story.
You can find me everywhere with my special Linktree! It is all my links!
Be a part of the ‘Talking Tickets’ Slack community.
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. Including this week’s talk with Aren Murray.
Let me know who you’d like to hear from by sharing your ideas with me here.