Talking Tickets 22 April 2022: What I've Heard! T-Pain! Pricing! Spending! BTS! And, More!
#132
Hey There!
Let’s wish the boy a happy 12th birthday!
My beer, not his. In the before times. Soon we will return to the Other Half brewery. They are Landon Bears, just like Cormac and they deliver delicious barbecue to the brewery.
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I recorded some good conversations to push out “The Road to Recovery” series in May. It will be fun and a lot of stuff is coming. So bookmark the podcast feed! Or, if you have an idea you want to contribute or want covered…let me know. You email me and I answer them all!
To the Tickets!
1. The Big Story: “What Have You Heard?”
Big Ideas:
As things open up more completely, decision making in the live entertainment industry is probably poorer than before.
Going back to “normal” was a fool’s errand to begin with.
There is no “new normal”.
I was out with a friend and sports business executive last week and the question was presented to me: “What have I heard?”
My first reaction was to say, “Nothing because I’ve been in the hospital.”
But that wasn’t accurate.
Tons of folks have reached out to me and chatted with me before, during, and after my recent troubles and I’m totally on the mend, but health jokes are easy ones to make and I like nothing more than a good joke…so YOLO Dave is in the building.
Anyway, I got to thinking about the whole idea of what I think and what I’ve heard and what I’ve seen over the first part of 2022, my many conversations, and my trips to a few places the last year.
Here are some takeaways and I’ll probably come back to this theme again and again:
“Fans are very important to us”, but only when we are paying lip service to them: I had a chance to chat with a really great European ticket professional last week and he mentioned that the reason he feels my newsletter is the best in the world is because of my focus on the customer.
I never realized it came across so completely until I talked with Tisha Thompson for her profile on the world of tickets last year. She mentioned that the thing that stands out about me is that I am really focused on making sure the fan’s voice is never lost…and I’ve found that makes me unique.
What I’ve noticed over the last few months or year is that the more people talk about how important the fans and customers are, the less likely they are to actually be paying attention to giving the fans a reason to come back or a reason to come back more than once.
If I had to put a number on it, I’d say that about 5-10% of organizations are really paying enough attention to their fans and are acting in a way that I would call customer oriented.
Marketing before the pandemic was bad. Marketing now is mostly pure crap: I was having a conversation this week with another friend and the gist was that an organization that sells itself as helping be an effective “marketing” partner wasn’t really an effective marketing partner.
Color me shocked.
Because most of the marketing and the “marketing partners” I see right now aren’t really carrying their weight.
I’ve seen poor or no research done and the poor research being used to back up recommendations or entire new strategies.
I’ve seen no research driving new strategies with the justification of “we know how this is done” or some other nonsense.
I’ve seen marketing plans that would have been dated in the 1990s.
I’ve seen teams and organizations that are rolling out the strategy of “more is more”, overwhelming their fans and customers with marketing messages, and then asking why no one is paying attention.
In other words, the marketing of live events has been shit and continues to be shit.
Strategy continues to be an afterthought: I’m going to look at doing a strategy session in Australia in November so I have an excuse to go to Sydney to see Angela and Jo and the next edition of TPC.
I’m also going to look at doing one in London in September so that I have an excuse to go see Andrew and the TPC 2022.5.
I’m also going to look at doing these strategy sessions because strategy is the most important skill you can develop, people talk about “strategy” and are mostly using the word wrong, and the companies and organizations that win coming through the end of the pandemic and beyond are going to be the ones that make clear strategic decisions.
What do those strategic decisions look like?
You decide what you want to be. (Ambition)
You decide where you will compete. (Focus)
You decide why folks will pick you over the countless other options. (Value)
You decide on the things you need to execute. (Resources)
You decide on the next steps. (Actions)
I see a lot of organizations that are losing their minds over tactics. They’ve become “tactified”.
I can spot an organization that lacks a strategy a mile away. Here are several ways that I know when an organization is out of line on strategy:
No clear mission. People don’t know what they are really hoping to achieve.
No filter to judge ideas.
No accountabilities
No SMART objectives.
A few weeks back, I wrote about how Vivid Seats talked about their brand in their quarterly filing and highlighted all the ways that they were doing well by their brand. That’s an organization that has a strategy.
When we looked at the communications around Everton’s planned new stadium, the communications to the fans, and the way that the customers were treated…you saw an organization that was being driven by tactics.
Again, a strategic minded organization shows a through line…that’s what you are always looking for in strategy a through line so that the decisions make sense and the decisions are coordinated.
A tactically driven organization is going to feel all over the place, like none of the decisions have a core, or like things were just thrown against the wall.
When you look at a business, that’s where you start…by looking for the through line.
When there isn’t one there or things don’t feel like they have a rhyme or reason, you might be in trouble.
And, in a lot of places, I see trouble.
Those three items bring me back to the initial question.
I’ll leave you with three things:
Everyone needs to feel more comfortable with challenging their ideas right now. If something isn’t working, the answer isn’t to just do more of it or do it harder. The answer may be to do something else.
There are still too many people that are operating in the world that they want to be, not the one that is. Be honest about “tickets sold” and stop hiding behind “tickets distributed”. Be honest about no-show rates. Be realistic about attendance. If you aren’t starting from a point of honesty, you can’t do anything to right your organization.
Don’t be afraid of change. It is here. Nothing is going back to “normal” and for a lot of places, “normal” wasn’t great to begin with. So embrace the new and champion smarter decisions around what’s next. If you are out front, you might make an error or two, but you are just as likely to be leading the way as well.
P.S. As I was finishing up with this, I had a conversation with a friend of mine and he shared this piece from Kathy Burrows that sums up a lot of this nicely. There is probably one point of difference that I share from Kathy on this one and it is minor because she gets to my point second…but everyone needs to stop the brainstorming, stop the getting creative, and stop with the thinking they know the customer.
Like Kathy points out, listening is key.
Or, as I would put in in my way, the first step you take is a step back to see the world through the eyes of the customer.
2. The Road to Recovery: BTS fans spend a lot of money to see their band:
Big Ideas:
Tim Chambers is quoted here so this moves the article up the list!
A Live Nation rep saying they don’t think the prices of tickets is too high is a lot like a fox saying the henhouse should definitely be open, no?
What goes up, must come down…right?
I’ve been a fan of the way that BTS has built their fanbase since I first started following them when Greg Turner taught me about them a few years ago now.
I’m also typically skeptical of the self-reported numbers that anyone offers up publicly because you have to think about who stands to gain from the good or bad numbers and there isn’t any way of verifying anything.
This is an interesting story because it highlights a few key ideas that we need to keep in mind right now.
Let’s run through a few things:
First, customers will spend money, but there are limits. If someone is spending $600 on a flight to Las Vegas and $200 on tickets, plus other costs, unless they are the heir to a large family fortune or make over $500,000 a year, there are limits to how many shows anyone person can or will go see.
I read a recent article that said the average American income is around $30,000.
So do the math.
If you say the top 1% of Americans make most of the money and you do the math on how many folks that is, you realize that there are limits because there just are not enough folks to go to everything.
Eventually the math catches up to you.
Thank you Tim Chambers for that insight.
Second, Live Nation claiming that they think that prices are too high is a lot like insurance companies telling you that folks love their insurance, a fox telling you that he’ll guard the henhouse, or some other equally one-sided proclamation.
The reality is that number one, of course that’s what someone is going to say.
Number two, you have to know what the goals of the business are.
If you are looking at maximizing revenue…maybe pricing is just right.
If you are looking at maximizing attendance, I’m not sure that this is the case.
But, again, it depends.
The key point here is that you have to make sure you are measuring the right numbers and making the right decisions before you say that the pricing is just right. Or, you’ll end up saying something like “prices are 98% right” like Scott Friedman shared on Twitter last week.
It is a statement that is likely not accurate and really just makes people feel like the wool is being pulled over their eyes.
I’m not saying that prices for tickets couldn’t be 98% right, but I’m saying that if they were that would be the greatest pricing accuracy ever…and would beat any other pricing algorithm by about 25% or more.
The final point here is that famous one: “It depends.”
How long will prices stay high or people be willing and able to spend at a premium price?
It depends.
How fast will true recovery take?
It depends.
With every question, the proper answer is that it depends on a lot of things like the economy, war in Ukraine, debt loads, marketing, sales, and more.
Strangely, it always just depends.
3. How-To: T Pain wants to know what he did to Dallas:
Big Ideas:
Promotion takes many forms.
Don’t be afraid of poking fun at yourself.
Being honest can take you places.
This is a good story because I like the way that T-Pain is handling this.
I don’t know if this means he is going to sell a lot more tickets, but he is having a good time with a show that is underselling expectations.
Let’s take a quick look at three lessons we can learn here.
First, promotion can take many forms.
You might think the only way that you can promote a show is with Facebook or social media ads, radio ads, or flyers. Those are traditional methods, no doubt. But T-Pain is using a video and despite what you think, it is a good way to promote the show in Dallas.
Why?
Because by showing off how low the sales are, he is drawing attention from all over the place to the fact that he is selling tickets to a show in Dallas in May.
Winning.
Just because it doesn’t look like promotion or the normal stuff, doesn’t mean it ain’t selling tickets.
In fact, this probably gets him more play than that “normal” stuff.
Second, poke fun at yourself…it won’t hurt, it will only help.
The horses and the hats and what did T-Pain do wrong are funny, but they also humanize T-Pain.
Again, this helps.
People like to feel a connection to their artists and their art. In this regard, being fun and having fun at your own expense is likely to help T-Pain sell more seats.
Don’t be afraid to let your hair down a bit and use humor or something that might be out of character.
It can help.
Finally, honesty helps.
I know that every sports team in America is selling at 127% of capacity right now and that you can’t get a ticket for months or years because things are so V shaped it hurts.
Okay, we all know that is BS.
4. Profile/Tech/Tools: The Suns have refreshed their brand:
Big Ideas:
Use the origins of a brand when possible.
Don’t rebrand, refresh.
Talk to your customers.
I could do this week’s entire newsletter just from lessons you could learn from this article.
But I won’t.
I’ll dole out the branding notes slowly.
Here’s a few really smart lessons on branding that you can apply to your organization in sports, theatre, bands, or any business actually.
First, recognize the power of the diagnosis.
Diagnosis means getting to an understanding of the situation you find yourself in. You want to know the customer, you want to know the brand and its history, and you want to know the market you live in.
All of those are at play in this brand scenario.
Second, don’t run from the old.
The talk about the Suns being the first professional team in Arizona matters because there is power in knowing a brand’s origin story and using that origin story to build the brand for now and into the future.
In my brand work, we spend a lot of time finding out the history of the brand including the situation the brand was born into, the founder, and the history of the brand.
Why?
Because these stories are the foundation of everything that the brand will have become over the years.
It matters and there is often a lot of really rich material that has been neglected or ignored that you can use to your benefit.
Finally, don’t just jump to the rebrand.
I learned from Mark Ritson that rebranding is something you don’t want to get into the middle of and the Commanders and the Guardians have proven how right he is. They were launched poorly. In the case of the Commanders, you are looking at a rebrand that lacks distinct brand assets. And, with the Guardians, you are looking at brand that is sharing its brand name and assets with another sports brand in the market.
It is a tough job to pull off.
On the other hand, the Suns still have their basketball logo and it has been updated to reflect this current generation. In addition, “The Valley” builds on that to give the brand another layer and to offer some additional unique brand assets to provide oomph to the brand.
In my opinion, if you are looking at your brand, the Suns can teach you some lessons on doing things well.
5. Links and Blurbs:
TPC 2022.5 is a possibility: Despite my 8 day hospital stay after returning from TPC, that wouldn’t keep me away from a special edition of TPC. Until I felt ill, getting to see folks in person was a treat and the content was better than ever. Andrew and the team have put out a survey to ask for thoughts on what would work best for folks. So give it a few minutes and let him know what is up. TPC consistently offers up the best value of any conference in Europe!
Broadway keeps masks in place, but test results will be on a show to show basis: The mask mandate for Broadway theaters will continue until the end of May, at least. The interesting thing is whether or not you have to show proof of vaccination depends on each show…which I’d imagine will get confusing or contentious because what hasn’t been confusing or contentious?
The NCAA could be in trouble, but will they realize it in time: I was chatting with an executive from a team this past week and he asked me what I was hearing. I said that the strangest thing to me is that folks are remarkably consistent in their desire to have things be exactly the same. The status quo would be undefeated if it were up to everyone in decision making positions right now. If not everyone, most. Unfortunately, the pandemic has acted as an accelerant to change in many places despite folks saying things like “things are V shaped” or “similar to how they were”. In looking at the NCAA, you look at the top line numbers and they are great. You look at the underlying business and you can say, “damn, there’s a lot that could go wrong.” In my opinion, it is always smart to get in front of stuff…but will the NCAA heed my advice?
Victoire Cogevina Reynal is excited about the future of women’s football: I’m on the board of my son’s soccer club and I was excited when I saw one of the young ladies from the U12 ladies travel team running around in an Alex Morgan Spur’s top. I kept thinking it is so amazing that someone knows Spurs due to Alex Morgan. Then, a Barcelona-Real Madrid women’s match had 91,000 fans. That’s amazing. I’ve written a lot about the WAFL and WNBA over the years, but seeing the excitement around women’s football is just as exciting. And, for me, the more we get folks into sports, the better.
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 did the FREE webinar this week, but had some technology 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.
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.