Talking Tickets 22 July 2022: Tim Chambers! WTC! COVID Relief! More! More! More!
Number 145
Hello! I’ve returned from my trips to New York and Miami.
Where should I go next?
Let’s see what we can come up with.
I’m looking at Atlanta, Asheville, and, maybe, Charlotte during August.
The fall is looking like NYC, London, Manchester, and maybe a few surprises.
To the Tickets!
1. The Big Story: Tim Chambers lays out the future of ticketing from his visits around the UK.
Big Ideas:
Having a pint with Tim Chambers is one of life’s true joys. The challenge is limiting it to a pint and not pints, dinner, and after dinner drinks. But I’ll take that challenge head on any time.
There is no “New Normal”, cut out the crap.
“Lost revenue” is a stupid way to frame what happened during the pandemic and the only worse way to approach whatever this is is by thinking about “clawbacks”.
A few weeks back, I shared how I feel about Richard Howle and how excited I am to see him whenever I get the chance.
This week, let me start by saying the same thing about Tim Chambers.
When I was ill, Tim sent me a few nice notes and when I was in London we spent an afternoon and evening together along with the Stay22 gang. What a wonderful and thoughtful man.
Now, let me look at his story…
I see five things in his story that I want to comment on. Tim is a keen listener and observer, so not all of these ideas are Tim’s but they represent the world around us all.
Those five ideas:
“New Normal”
Event Congestion
Recession/Behavior Change
“Lost” revenue and “clawback”
Status Quo Bias
First, the idea of the “New Normal”.
There is no “New Normal”, full stop.
Have y’all looked around?
How many numbers of challenges are we dealing with that aren’t clearly defined nor exist in a way that we have any sort of playbook or template for dealing with?
I’ve lost track frankly.
I find “New Normal” to be some of the laziest and most dangerous kind of thinking because it signifies rushing back to some paint-by-numbers approach to business/life that isn’t going to happen.
This is a period of “No Normal” and that means that we have to be ready, willing, and able to adapt quickly because we can’t be prepared well for any of the challenges that we are going to face.
In my reading of the world, it is going to be many, many years before we see something that we can begin to define as “normal” and that has any hint of predictability.
Two, event congestion is real.
This makes the rush to the same old, same old so frustrating.
What people are dealing with right now is akin to a bubble in the housing market or the stock market instead of a sustainable or realistic vision of what the future will look like.
Once this backlog of events passes, how are you going to draw fans and customers into your building because they’ve used their credits, their postponed tickets, and all those other sweet things that are keeping things moving at an elevated clip?
Obviously, nothing since the market is “Supply Side” and you have no control over anything because the free hand of the market is king.
Three, is the potential for a recession and behavior change.
These are really two different issues. Behavior change was a guarantee after people were locked down and isolated for many months and we went through entire seasons where fans weren’t allowed into the building to see performances.
Where a recession plays into this is that it is likely to go further in entrenching those behaviors that were adapted during the pandemic’s lockdowns to pull people further away from the venues and events that they might typically attend.
The fourth idea of “clawbacks” and “lost” revenue are dangerous ideas in the same way that ignoring sunk costs are dangerous in any industry.
This is much the same only different.
Finally, “Status Quo Bias” as a challenge to overcome has been a topic I’ve dealt with a lot in talks publicly and inside organizations for a while now.
In my special notebook that we’ve visited while I was on holiday, one of the ideas that I may have shared was the persistence of the past and the reliability bias that underlies almost everything too many organizations do.
The persistence of the past means that we should be able to use our previous experience and analysis of prior data to make the best possible decision.
On the side of the reliability bias, most organizations have a tendency to only take a “risk” if they know it will work.
Both of these things are totally bogus, straw men arguments for the status quo.
First, we are in the midst of a time of extreme volatility. This means that we don’t have much relevant experience to help guide us forward.
Taking this further, this means that you base any decision on your analysis of past data at your own peril because we don’t have any stable models to base our decisions off of.
Second, one thing I can guarantee all of you is that all data has happened in the past. This means that anytime you are making a decision based on historical data, you are making a bet based on the idea that the future will look like the past.
That hasn’t turned out to be a good bet lately.
More importantly, I do suggest you study the past, but you also have to have the courage to understand that any decision you are going to make going forward is built on your best guess of the future and looking for certainty in any decision is impossible.
I’ve mentioned this concept of the analyst and the architect in passing before, but it is appropriate here again.
To be a good strategist, you need to look at the world through two eyes: one of the analyst and the other of the architect.
The analyst looks at the data, the numbers, the cold hard facts.
The architect takes all of that and uses creativity, an understanding of history, people, and psychology to create a future that might not be easily seen without really digging into the situation you are dealing with.
Again, it isn’t either or…but both.
Key Takeaways:
Remember the analyst and the architect. Cold hard facts are one thing, but that doesn’t eliminate creativity or people.
Beware of the “Status Quo Bias”. No decision is going to be without risk. In this current environment, standing still is likely the most dangerous.
No “New Normal” stop it!
2. The Road to Recovery: Live Nation got $19M in relief funds:
Big Ideas:
This seems like a law that was written with one intention but administered in a different way.
When you have the market power that Live Nation has, it is going to be difficult to avoid some conflicts.
It isn’t illegal to be a monopoly. What is illegal is monopoly behavior. (I had to look it up because it was confusing to me too.)
Several folks sent me this piece to ask me about it for weeks and I was on vacation so I didn’t really deal with this one.
Now that I am back, let’s dig into this one quickly.
It doesn’t take a lot of digging actually. We can understand this by making three quick points.
First, the law was written to exclude Live Nation.
The lawmakers were pretty specific.
What happened was when the law was administered subsidiaries of Live Nation received funds.
This is unintended consequences and all.
But this is pretty common. You have the written law and the way that the law is applied.
This isn’t uncommon.
It sucks, but it is common.
Second, we do have to look at market power.
Live Nation has a lot of market power and it is almost impossible for you to touch any part of the live entertainment industry without encountering Live Nation.
Full facts.
Is that good or bad?
That depends.
This brings me to the final point that becoming a monopoly alone isn’t illegal. What is illegal is monopolistic behavior like price fixing, market manipulation, and things of that nature.
So…take that for what you will.
On the whole, this story might be frustrating to folks, but it is par for the course of America in 2022…no one is really awake at the wheel.
3. How To: Throw a Party in Vegas:
Big Ideas:
WTC had a big crowd.
The secondary market is filled with great innovators.
Hello, Nashville!
WTC had nearly 1,000 folks!
Nice job.
I couldn’t be torn away from Miami, but I heard that folks had a nice time mixing, learning, and finding new solutions to the challenges of selling tickets.
I was busy hanging out with Daniel Craig.
While I didn’t visit Vegas this year, I do know that the secondary market is filled with great innovators. I came away last year with a list of folks I wanted to follow so that I can continue to learn from them.
Most importantly, the WTC is going to Nashville next year and I love Nashville. So, let’s get to Nashville.
4. Tech/Tools/Profiles: Lyndsey Jackson—Badass!
Big Ideas:
Check out my conversation with Lyndsey Jackson from a few months back.
“It’s tickets. Not kidneys.”
Having the opportunity to take risks is amazing.
Lyndsey Jackson is the best.
End of the discussion today.
But I had a chance to chat with her for the podcast and saw her in Birmingham before the troubles. She gave a great presentation on how she builds teams and leads. And, she is a real leader in how she approaches her job and life.
In reading through this profile of Lyndsey, you should pay attention to two things that really stand out to me.
The first is that it isn’t life or death…just tickets.
You can change someone’s life when they get tickets to a show or an event, but you also have to keep the right perspective.
That’s true no matter what situation you are in.
The other big thing that stood out to me was the idea that only having one event a year means that you have to take risks every year…you have no choice.
The status quo has people paralyzed right now, despite the reality that we can’t even hope to get back to the status quo now.
How do you manage risk in an environment like we are dealing with now?
You make sure you get an understanding of the environment you are dealing with. Revisit your research, talk with your customers, and figure out how the world you operate in is different now.
Don’t think all or nothing, but balance.
Test in small batches before you roll out to big groups.
5. Blurbs and Such:
My father’s bad seats at the opera: This is a good profile of the difference in experiences when you go to the arts.
College football will end up like the dog that caught the car: Remember how great interleague play was in MLB? Yankees v. Mets?! Then, remember when no one cared? College football is falling down the rabbit hole that a lot of places are prone to, chasing the thing they can do and not the thing they should do. The term is financialization and if you want to know what the end game of that looks like, check out David Gelles’ book, The Man Who Broke Capitalism.
No relocation fee for the A’s?: I have a hard time getting too worked up about these stories with the A’s and Rays. Oakland and Tampa should be good baseball markets, but both stadiums aren’t very good. Of course, why does someone that comes with inherited wealth from Gap need a taxpayer subsidy?
The Savannah Bananas are a great story: Jesse came on the podcast when I still didn’t really know how to podcast. He has created a team in Savannah with people that care about the team, the community, and delivering an incredible experience.
Adele may announce new Vegas dates soon: My favorite Spurs fan has a residency planned in Vegas and we are waiting for the dates to drop. I’ll be there.
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.
Let me know who you’d like to hear from by sharing your ideas with me here.