Talking Tickets 28 May 2021: Brokers! Festival Overload! Hong Kong! And, More!
Number 86
Hey There!
I’m relieved today because I finally finished some coursework I decided to take during the pandemic from the University of Cambridge about strategic thinking.
The executive education I took on during the pandemic is going to be very helpful in whatever comes next. But right now, I’m just happy to be done with the stuff. It was a lot of work, but I’m totally going to be saying, “What do Dave and Charles Darwin have in common? Both have learned at Cambridge!”
It is a holiday weekend here in the States! That means a soccer tournament for the boy!
I’ll be hitting the road to Boston in June, Miami in July, and Las Vegas in August. Get your tickets for Ticket Summit and the ALSD in Vegas. I’ll be there and doing some talking!
And, I’m going to look at doing an in-person strategy workshop at some point in September in NYC or DC.
To the Tickets!
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1. Live Nation bookings rebound…but who will buy all of these tickets?
Big Ideas:
Too much inventory is going on the market and that isn’t going to end well.
Reprice, but never discount!
We are entering a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment. Better put my cell phone on speed dial.
I saw this image on Twitter earlier this week and it got me shaking my head. This is a lot of festivals to be on sale all at once.
And, it isn’t just these festivals because there are going to be festivals going on all over the world along with theatre, concerts, sports, arts, and more.
So when I saw the cover of Live Nation stating that they are seeing their bookings strong into 2022, coupled with the statement that as things go on sale they expect demand will come back, it gave me pause.
Why?
Because that’s a lot of tickets and a big assumption about what is going to drive demand.
Let me cut to the chase this is called “Sales Orientation” in marketing class.
Allow me to define this for you quickly because “Sales Orientation” means that you just believe that as long as you have something else to sell, you’ll be winning.
The downside of “Sales Orientation” is that it pays no attention to the market, to the customer, to the brand, to profits, to anything except making that next sale.
I’ve been working with a professional services firm during the pandemic because they have a discounting problem which has become a profit problem and the whole thing stems from not reigning in their sales team.
That out of the way, what we are seeing here is a just throw open the doors approach to reopening.
Three challenges:
Without proper market research, all of these show launches are just guesses about future behavior based on prior behavior or nothing at all.
Too much product is dangerous for everyone.
In the long run, no one wins a price war.
Give me a moment to explain.
I’ve been harping on research for months now. One thing that I cringe at is when someone tells me, “We know this market.”
Why?
Because, honestly, you don’t. You can’t.
To be an effective marketer and sales person, you have to take a step back and realize that you can never put yourself in the shoes of your customers and prospects because you are too close to the product or service you are selling.
In this wild rush to get back to “normal”, people are skipping the line on research.
A short list of things we don’t know right now:
How many people are in or out of our markets.
What behaviors have changed.
The economic environment.
The psychological environment.
I’m scratching the surface.
And, if you write me to say, “I know.” I’m going to ask for your research because that’s the only thing that will help us answer these questions. And, for the most part, we won’t have a full answer for a few months.
So rushing into anything just because you need things to sell could be risky.
Second, oversaturation of the market is coming fast.
Here is a quick snapshot at DC:
Every game for the rest of the baseball season is on sale now. Football is on sale. There are about 40 events at the Anthem, 9:30 Club, and Merriweather Post Pavillion that are on sale right now. Once the NHL and NBA seasons are settled, I’m pretty sure Capital One Arena will have a bunch of events to announce.
This doesn’t even start to highlight the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Theatre, George Mason’s arena, or any of the other venues around the DMV.
Now multiply this by hundreds of markets around the country and the world!
What do you see?
A recipe for oversaturation.
Thus, research.
Finally, I’m sure I’ve gotten you to the idea of research. If not, I don’t know what else to tell you.
I’ve also shown you how much stuff is going on sale in DC right now.
Strike two.
Now, let’s go to pricing once again. Because we’ve already seen heavy discounts all over the place.
Here’s the situation:
Tons of stuff on sale
No market research
Lack of attention to marketing because things are just coming back to “normal”
What happens?
Discounting happens!
As a recap, discounting destroys your brand. You lose profit. And, it teaches your market a bad lesson which is to wait because there is always a better deal.
What we are likely to see is a price war in markets around the world.
You know who wins a price war?
No one.
The customer gets a cheaper ticket, but their opinion of the event goes down.
The venue loses out on revenue, perception, and attendance.
The artists and teams lose out.
Everyone loses a price war!
Here’s what you do:
Make a plan. Strategy first.
Create an action plan for dealing with an oversaturated market. If you are overpriced, don’t discount. Reprice or add value, shift venues, or something else.
Be prepared to move quickly to react to your competition, they may or may not know to call me and ask me how to get them through a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous situation. You do…you have an advantage!
2. Mark Fowlie and “The Great Reopening”:
Big Ideas:
Ecosystems have a specific meaning and are a reflection that in modern business, you don’t create value alone.
Ecosystems aren’t static and you can be a part of many.
An ecosystem doesn’t mean an open, free for all.
It is probably worth going back and listening to my conversation with Mark from August of last year.
A few weeks back when I was discussing DTI’s platform, I wanted to mention the AudienceView ecosystem because, in my opinion, they do a great job of having a platform that sits in the middle and radiates value out in a way that makes it easier for their partners to deliver value to their fans and customers.
I, also, found it amusing because a broker accused me of using “buzzword nonsense” to describe the business DTI is building.
First, I laugh because I’ve never been accused of being someone that uses “buzzword nonsense”.
Second, I realized that maybe everyone doesn’t understand what an ecosystem means in terms of business or strategy.
Plus it is something I think folks should get a better grasp on since it is going to be important going forward.
When I use the term ecosystem, I’m recognizing that in a modern business environment it is much harder to create value on your own. Full stop.
In some cases, you can’t create value alone, at all. You need others to help you create value.
What does this mean for all of us?
A lot, actually.
Because whether we realize it or not, many of us are already part of an ecosystem.
There are a few things we have to realize about ecosystems:
An ecosystem doesn’t mean an open system.
Not every situation needs an ecosytem.
You can be a part of many ecosystems and play different roles in each one.
In the context of AudienceView, they’ve done a really great job of finding ways to create value across the ticket and event ecosystem through their partnerships with folks like Booking Protect, for refund protection. Queue-it for online waiting rooms. And, in an exclusive to me, Mandolin, for streaming events.
Through their customer facing properties like TheaterMania, they are able to go right to the customer and open up a new avenue for their partners to sell tickets. Right now they have one customer in the south that has put their tickets on TheaterMania and they have seen a 16% jump in incremental sales.
To skip past the buzzwords, lest I be accused of using “buzzword nonsense” again. Incorporating all of these partners and different forms of value drives revenue, retention, and customer satisfaction. In fact, AudienceView has seen their ecosystem push NPS up 8 points and retention improve on average 5-10%.
We could go on and on because being listed on TheaterMania has positive impact on partner’s SEO. Partnering with Booking Protect drives higher revenue and improved customer service scores. And, working with Queue-it can give customers the perception that the on sale is going much more smoothly, even if they are still waiting to access tickets, something that would normally drive folks nuts.
As Mark points out in talking about the decision to accelerate the depreciation of the Vendini software, the managing of an ecosystem is constant and the needs of the ecosystem and its partners changes constantly.
It is about managing the ups and downs of the ecosystem to make sure value creation is constant.
One of the things that has stuck with me during the pandemic was Mark’s focus on flexibility and taking action in ways that continued to create value for their partners even when folks couldn’t sell tickets.
While you think through your business decisions now, it is important to recognize in ways big and small, for good or bad, there are a ton of ecosystems operating in the world of events. As examples:
Live Nation is a huge ecosystem.
DTI is a big ecosystem for the secondary market.
StubHub and Vivid Seats are ecosystems.
The Sydney Opera House is part of several ecosystems in Sydney.
Major League Baseball is the heart of one ecosystem and a part of at least 30 others.
I can go on, but I hope you are getting the picture.
You have to recognize what ecosystems you are part of and where you add value.
Here are 5 questions to think through to help you strategize right now:
Where can you help create value in the ecosystem?
What role(s) should you play?
Should the governance of your ecosystem be open, managed, or closed?
Can you adapt in the ecosystems you are in?
How many ecosystems should you realistically be playing in?
Hell, by the time it is said and done, I’m probably going to end up as an ecosystem…if I’m not already one! And, lord knows, I’m in the middle of several as well.
3. Hong Kong shows us a way to drive awareness and bring people together in public again:
Big Ideas:
Now is the time to reimagine what art, community, and events mean and what role your business can play in that.
Don’t be afraid of risk. Life is risky!
Be creative! Have fun!
Love this!
Why?
Creativity! Connection! The arts in public places!
One example that I think I’ve used in the past, but if not I’ll share with you now is the example of the way that the Sydney Opera House started using props, costumes, and their building as a way to help engage people in Sydney Harbor, on the Opera House grounds, and the area around Circular Quay.
(No filter needed! And, when they get a chance to put on the next edition of the Ticket Professionals Conference of Australia, go! Hi Jo and Ang!)
I bring this up because in the before times, I spent a good deal of time early in my career helping find ways to come up with unique ways to promote events, businesses, attractions in public spaces.
In other words, driving awareness.
Look at my work with Yellow Tail Wines and their ad agency where we worked to execute the idea of throwing tailgate parties at 36 locations around the United States with a ticket giveaway component.
This was part of a huge awareness effort by the brand that helped drive an over 600% increase in pallets delivered.
I also did an activation with Odwalla and Coca-Cola around endurance events like the marathons, half-marathons, and more with the goal of increasing Odwalla’s awareness with endurance athletes.
This went on over 2 years and we were able to gain the brand millions of dollars in earned media attention around the globe!
Finally, when I worked at the Experience Music Project in Seattle, one of the key drivers of my early marketing success was finding ways to bring the Liquid Lounge to folks that were in the Seattle Center, near the Monorail, or just didn’t realize that the museum and restaurant had ambitions of being a part of the larger Queen Anne community.
In this case, we created a program that increased happy hour business somewhere around 450% in the first month.
In the piece, we see that The State Theatre, the Victoria Harbor, and other sections of Hong Kong have become communal gathering spots.
As we emerge from the pandemic there is a lesson here from me and Hong Kong and that lesson is to push the boundaries of what is possible and how you think about getting people engaged in your art, events, or spaces again.
Let me share some ideas here.
First, how can you take your art or experience into the community?
I’ve laid out some of the ways that the Sydney Opera House does it in Sydney.
When I think of these things, I’m often reminded of Rage Against the Machine shooting a video on Wall Street without the permission of the City of New York or on the back of a flatbed during the DNC in LA.
So how can you do something that brings your art into the community?
Doing this well will elevate your brand in people’s eyes and memories.
Second, use your spaces differently.
We’ve seen lots of places become mass vaccination centers during the pandemic. When I chatted with Alex Chang from the 49ers a few weeks back we talked about how Levi Stadium became one of the world’s largest vaccination centers.
Again, if you read the article about what is going on with Hong Kong, you’ll see that people are reimagining their spaces to make it easy for people to experience community and connection with their building as the platform.
One cool space in DC that could be open to that is the new outdoor area, the REACH, at the Kennedy Center. Get my man, Ian, from Fugazi, up there and you’ll open the Kennedy Center to a whole new audience.
But really…use your spaces differently. This will help your awareness for years to come.
Finally, reimagine what experience means.
The entire story in Hong Kong is about reimaging what the arts, community, people, and togetherness mean.
I’ve said this pretty consistently, but we are a social animal and we get together.
Another thing I’ve said is that the arts can heal us and teach us things that we might not be willing or able to listen to at other times.
Take advantage of this period as a way to reimagine the experience of the arts so that your organization is leading the way.
Throughout the pandemic, we’ve seen great examples of people bringing arts to different places like Dave Chappelle bring his comedy to a field, the Providence Dance performance in the parking lot, and drive-in concerts.
This should be a point of reimagining and reinvention for everyone.
When people think of arts, community, and entertainment, you want your venue or events to be top of mind.
To bring it back to me, no one had ever thought about throwing a national tour for a wine brand before Yellow Tail did it. It wasn’t guaranteed to succeed. But it did. Part of the excitement was the reimaging of what was possible and the knowledge that this might not work!
The same spirit should be on your mind now.
4. Ticket brokers think they will come back. But will they be the same?
Big Ideas:
The secondary market has always worked best when it was about relationships, love of events, and the ability to add unique value.
The business of the secondary market is about to change and none of us really know exactly how.
Look at how you can increase your power in the ticket ecosystem and drive value.
I’m sure this part of today’s newsletter will get a lot of attention in the Facebook groups like Ticket Broker Hub because I’m going to share a few ideas on the direction of the secondary market going forward.
First, if you are going to be at Ticket Summit, I’m going to be doing some panels and I’m hooking in some good folks like:
Kate Howard, Chief Commercial Officer of Eventellect
Josh Ludwig, President of LuvSeats
Second, my history in the secondary market should be well-established since I was very successful as a broker building really successful partnerships on a global scale.
Third, I realize this is an especially American topic so I’ll try to tie the relevance of this to examples in other areas as well.
Anyway, back to the story.
This piece puts the secondary market in a really good light. It is a nice balance to so many articles that only talk about how awful brokers are and how they offer no value to the ticket ecosystem.
Not true.
Though I do think the value that brokers offer is likely going to change coming out of the pandemic.
For Circle Line and Fanfare, this piece highlights the things that attracted me to tickets and the secondary market when I was getting involved:
Heavy on relationships
A love of the live experience
Being part of a generalist, I could work in more places
Let me explain.
First, I’ve talked about the lessons I learned in selling tickets to corporate buyers. The most important was that they were never really buying a ticket. They were establishing a relationship, building a connection, or spending time with their family.
This made me a valuable advisor because we could go through the situation that they were facing and I could help them get the ticket they needed for that situation.
It was never a Yankees v. Red Sox game. Getting you courtside to see LeBron wasn’t about LeBron vs. the Knicks at all.
It was always something more personal.
Second, I always knew I loved sports and concerts.
I traveled all over to see Pearl Jam, R.E.M., and other bands until I got involved in night clubs. Then using the nightclubs as a tool to gain access to connections at the teams, I managed to get gameday positions and grunt work with teams like the Dolphins, the Seahawks, and the Supersonics!
Until I started working in NYC, I never realized how much I loved the theatre and Broadway.
I still remember the first week I started at Americana in NYC going to see The Producers with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick and being squished against the stage in Apple 3.
Greatest musical experience I’ve ever had…still!
Finally, because of the nature of the work of a broker, you could have a bigger impact for your clients and could work in a bunch of different areas.
I was lucky because I had the chance to work with some clients that gave me global exposure from the time I started working in the secondary market.
And, that gave me power because I got to learn and visit venues around the world. Making me more valuable to my clients, my business, and the world of tickets.
It created a virtuous cycle that ended with the BBC calling me “The King of Tickets” on air!
Y’all ask me how I know so much about all these different places…it started due to my relationship with American Express and grew from there.
I’ve had the chance to have an outsized impact on my partners because of my good fortune of being a generalist, not attached to a team or sport, but to the process of selling tickets, marketing events, and understanding why people do things.
These are my experiences, but they aren’t unusual because both of the teams in Indianapolis have similar stories to tell.
So what will happen to the brokers coming out of the pandemic?
I’ve got three ideas.
First, the importance of relationships is going to be more important than ever.
I did one of the most popular NATB webinars ever a few years back and the whole point of it was: if you ain’t willing to build relationships, don’t be surprised if you don’t get treated like a partner.
Lo and behold, years later, I’m still having this conversation.
I’ve talked about the power framework that Dr. Kamul Munir teaches at Cambridge, but you look at every situation and strategy through the lens of whether you are gaining or losing power against your competition, your customers, and your suppliers.
So when folks ask me about my take on a topic like consolidation, or shutting down BOTS, or anything, I tell these brokers to look at the relationships they have and in a lot of cases they don’t have any.
And, here’s the flip side, if you do have a relationship with a team, venue, organization, you are going to try to double down and expand your relationship to deliver more value. You aren’t going sit around and say, “How can I help make these other businesses more successful?”
So begin by looking at relationships with your customers and your suppliers. And, pay attention to the relationships your competition has.
Relationships will win!
Second, get to know the ecosystem.
If you are a broker, you are part of an ecosystem.
And, if I were you, I’d get my notebook and my pen out and I’d think hard on those questions I put in number 2. Or, I’d tell you to bring me in to do a day or two of strategy work with the Whiteboard Workshop or some other intense strategy sessions.
I’ve been talking to a CEO friend of mine about some stuff we are looking to do in the fall and I told him, “I’m looking at building an ecosystem around me and the stuff I do in tickets coming out of the pandemic.”
Why?
It isn’t one thing, but a few:
Control of the learning and value created for the people that I focus on.
Ability to deliver more and different value for people through effective partnering.
Power to expand the impact I’m having.
That’s what an ecosystem does. It creates value. It shifts and changes. You have power one day and the next you don’t.
You have to know where you fit in the ecosystems that make up the world of ticketing.
Because if you are a broker, large or small, knowing where you fit and how you can create value, extend value, and grow value is key to your long-term success.
Finally, the business you knew is likely going to change.
In Tisha Thompson’s ESPN article about the future of tickets, Gary Adler talked about how bad the ticket world was getting before the pandemic.
I agree. The whole scene had gotten pretty bad.
I think that had a lot to do with reaching the end of a business cycle. Real attendance was down, prices were up, and it felt like the whole business was a fight between the primary and secondary, technology and the secondary, technology and everyone, and the only people really suffering were the fans.
Fans didn’t always know stuff was on sale. They didn’t know where to go to find tickets. The purchasing process was complicated. Prices were high. Getting to and from an event could be a pain.
I’m not sure what the next form of the ticket world will look like. I’m sure if I make a prediction, I’ll certainly be wrong because no one could predict so many of these changes we’ve all seen over the last decade. So why would the next phase be any different?
I do know that you are going to need to be aware of the environment around you, be willing to adapt, and look for ways to increase your power by better serving a market, better driving attendance, and creating more value in some way.
I don’t know that this is revolutionary. In fact, I think it was always true.
So, if your whole game is just creating tons of Ticketmaster accounts to use on sale codes…I’d be concerned about that business model holding up because the technology to shut that down can be deployed at any time.
So look for ways to add value.
Fast!
The Super League was good for business as I got to advise some folks in China and Asia about this and got a few new media appearances out of the deal!
Go me!
I keep coming back to the story, not for the cheap web hits, but because it really highlights a long-term challenge that organizations in opera, theatre, sports, concerts, etc. are dealing with or are going to deal with sooner than later.
That’s the challenge of bringing in new audiences, keeping old ones, and building stability.
See, revenue is a lagging indicator.
Meaning, that we could still see revenues going up while all the other indicators of success are going down. And, by the time the revenues start dropping, we are in a free fall that can be difficult to recover from.
If we are all being honest with ourselves, that’s kind of what we were seeing a lot of in places before the pandemic. Right?
Leading indicators would be things like:
Discounting because people aren’t buying your product.
Low real attendance.
People’s behavior changing.
Lower TV viewership.
There are a number of factors driving the leading and lagging indicators and the article points to the cost of being a fan. That is wrapped in a bunch of things like the cost of TV packages or streaming services, merchandise, attendance, attention, and more.
As the pandemic continues to recede in more places, it is important that we take a step back to diagnose what we are really dealing with, both short and long-term. Because if we aren’t careful, we open the door to the competition and new experiences and behaviors will pop up to replace the experiences that are at the heart of the work of the folks that read this newsletter.
So what can we do right now?
Focus on three things.
Focus on your strategy:
Again, this is a constant refrain. But look at those leading indicators and when you see them popping up, you recognize a business that isn’t strategic. Instead, you are seeing one driven by tactics.
In regards to doing strategy work, you have to get the diagnosis right before you do anything else.
I started working with an international school this week on a project to help them expand their student population in the Bay Area.
The board member that brought me in on the project asked me what I did to everyone because he had never seen such unanimous agreement in the board before.
I said, “I explained the importance of diagnosis, research, and getting your strategy right. In real terms with examples of how you can recognize when you haven’t done that well.”
The strange thing I did was I looked for patterns and diagnosed their situation without even knowing exactly what it was.
I listed things that are patterns when you don’t have your diagnosis and strategy correct like:
No SMART objectives only vague ambitions.
A leadership team that is pulling in all different directions and with no clear definition of the job to be done.
Cycles of trying to deal with the same problem over and over again, always starting from zero or a point where “we know the problem”. But no research or data to really back the assertion up.
So start with your strategy and get the diagnosis right.
Examine the real value being created:
Remember last week when I talked about pricing so much?
I talked about how pricing is the MVP moment of marketing because it is the moment where you capture some of the value you’ve been creating for your market.
The thing about this is that you have to really understand what the value you are creating is.
You aren’t the arbiter of that. Your customers and fans are.
Let me repeat that a different way: your opinion on what is valuable doesn’t matter. It is worthless and likely dangerous.
The only person’s opinion that matters is your customer’s.
How do you find out what the customer thinks?
You ask them!
Remember the method I use?
Backward Market Research can be done with three steps:
Figure out the question to be answered
Find out what the best way to answer the question is: long-form answers, multiple-choice, etc.
Design the research around those first two answers
It is that simple.
But don’t guess about the value, find out what it is.
Get the cost structures in line:
Y’all know I’m a big fan of Tottenham Hotspur and I was figuring out how many different subscriptions I have needed to be able to watch Spurs this season when they were in Europe, the Premier League, and all of their domestic cups.
Here’s what I’ve come up with:
Verizon cable bundle
Peacock
ESPN+
Paramount+
BR Live
I also have a subscription to Four Four Two, but that is optional.
It is fine for me, but the economic strain is real. The barriers to consumption are real.
One key concept to keep in mind as we head out of the pandemic is that the sales process for your organization is more likely going to shift from straight sales to sales enablement more than it was before the pandemic.
What do I mean by sales enablement?
I mean that our job is to get out of the way of the customer that is buying the tickets, merchandise, or F&B. Our goal is to help them buy as quickly and easily as possible.
This will require at least a few adjustments:
New sales processes.
A renewed emphasis on marketing.
A different strategy.
Like I said at the top, you have to get your strategy right and you need to understand the value.
After you’ve gotten that far, you have to look at the pricing because the price does a few things:
It is a way to capture value
It is a indicator of your effectiveness as a marketer
It is also a tactical tool to achieve your goals
So as the pandemic ends and normal activities can resume, everyone is going to need to do research. Everyone is going to need to look at their market and figure out what role they play, what their value is, and the perception of them in the market.
As you do that, the price has to come into play.
Because I can say one thing with certainty, the value and the price were out of whack in a lot of places before the pandemic, and the need to do better research was necessary.
How can I be so certain?
Simple, the majority of tickets on the secondary market sold for under face value. Second, real attendance was declining and was problematic in a lot of places.
This is an issue that probably needs more of a deep dive because I see the way that folks are approaching data now and I think it is likely to create problems…but I don’t have a story to hang that on today, so I’m going to just thank you for reading and wrap it up by reminding you:
Strategy before tactics!
Value! Value! Value!
Pricing is marketing’s MVP moment!
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My Linktree is here! You can find all of my stuff in one fun place! Get the podcast episode with Kate Howard from Eventellect. She’s awesome and we talk about the NPS research they did at the start of the pandemic.
If you are interested in the worksheet we created to help y’all do research of your own, send me an email. It is FREE!
Check out Booking Protect. Refund protection is more important to people’s peace of mind than ever. How do I know? The data shows that people are buying refund protection at almost double the rate as before the pandemic.
Next week, Martin Gammeltoft comes back to the podcast to talk about the new Activate email marketing tool. So check out Activity Stream to get a preview of our conversation.