Talking Tickets 5 November 2021: New Format! The First Modern Secondary Market! Sam Adams Would Rather Lose Millions Than Discount! And, More!
Number 109!
Hey There!
This week is a bit of a transition week for the newsletter as I’m going to play with the format a bit to add some value as we all look to recover and to give me a little bit more time to look at stuff on my blog, in articles, and with courses and the sort.
See…research works!
All of this came from studying the research I’ve been doing the last few months.
Going forward, you’ll still get 5 sections with a layout like this:
The Big Story: This will be one story that seems to dominate the news or my thinking in a given week. This week, it is the announcement from Everton that they are repricing their tickets to reflect their “financial reality”. But it could be anything from any part of the world.
The Road to Recovery: This section will focus on recovery, duh. Currently, I’m working with Booking Protect to create the sequel to our first anthology of ideas from around the industry and you guessed it, we are calling it: The Road to Recovery. Each week, I’ll highlight an idea that comes from one of the three questions I’ve been asking people the last few weeks around lessons learned, innovation, and changes made.
How-To/Question of the Week: This will either be an answer to a question or a lesson on how to do something that we cover here in the area of sales, marketing, strategy, and branding…you know, the core things that I help y’all with and teach y’all about. If you have a question, send it in.
Profile/Tech/Tools: This will be a profile of a venue, person, event. Maybe a new tool or idea. Or, some piece of tech. I’ll put this here and share with y’all how to use it, what it means, or how to implement it.
Links and Blurbs: These will be links to interesting stories, ideas, examples, etc. that I found interesting from the week. This will be short and sweet and I’ll put ideas from inside and outside of the world of tickets into this section.
What do you think?
Don’t forget to join our ‘Talking Tickets’ Slack Channel. We have over 250 ticketing folks from around the world in there, hanging out, making good trouble.
Let me know by hitting reply.
And, if you know someone that digs this kind of stuff and doesn’t get it, share it!
To the Tickets!
BTW…my dude, Jake Tapper, is raising money to build houses for wounded veterans. This means a lot to me because my grandfather received a purple heart, many folks in my family were in the military, I was born on a naval base, and Jake is a good dude.
So bid, win, and send me your receipt and I’ll see what kind of value I can add to help Jake’s efforts. Y’all know I will come up with something fun or funny to encourage y’all to give to a great cause.
1. The Big Story!
Everton’s “financial reality” probably needs to reflect their fan’s perception of value:
Big Ideas:
The “financial reality” argument for price increases may not carry much weight with fans.
Neither will decreases in prices over a decade because customers don’t care about what you’ve done for us just what you are doing for us now.
Focusing on the improvements and the experience can help.
This is an interesting story because Everton is walking a pretty interesting line here. They are trying to build a new stadium, have been struggling to achieve success on the pitch, and need to generate revenues over the next few years to support construction and to be able to continue to offer up a competitive product for their fans.
The approach that Everton is taking right now is in the dangerous territory of product-focused marketing. And, it often doesn’t get you the success that you deserve.
Let me explain.
First, there are a couple of primary forms of orientations that businesses can take when they think about marketing and selling their products and services:
Sales Oriented: where all sales are good sales and no consideration is ever given to profitability, customer fit, or strategy. This happens a lot. It is the home of deep discounts.
Market Oriented: where you go out into the market and do some research to find out what your customers want, need, and value so that you can create or find products and services that fit their needs. This is my preferred method.
Product Oriented: this is where you get that saying, “build a better mousetrap…”. This often doesn’t work because you make guesses about what people want that are based on nothing but your own impressions of the situation.
When you look at what Everton is up against, they are building a new ground and they’ve had declining results and declining revenues over the last few years. They’ve moved to change some of this by bringing in players like James Rodriguez and a manager like Rafa Benitez, but without moving up the standings, they’ve hit a point where they are in a bit of stasis.
In building a new ground and offering a new mix of experiences, products, and spaces to their customers, the working assumption can often center on if we build a new ground we are sorted.
You can file that in the same bin with the idea that if you win everything will be fine.
We’ve seen both fail pretty regularly over the years.
The lesson to share today works no matter new stadium or not, winning or not, location or not.
First, you do your research.
I’ve beat on everyone here about doing your research for a long time now, but it comes up over and over as the area that needs the most attention because you often don’t recognize all of the things people love and hate about you.
The key is that you need to get into the market and find out what folks are thinking about you.
Talk to some of your most rabid fans, use the Google machine, conduct some surveys. Get into the mind of your fans.
It helps you make better decisions.
Why does this matter?
Because your customers don’t really care about what you need from them, they care about the value they are receiving. And, sometimes that value comes in the way that they are able to support the club.
Which might be a point in the favor of Everton, if played correctly.
Second, focus on that value that people get.
The great thing about a sports property/performing arts venue/etc. is that you almost always have a unique selling proposition that you can use as the foundation of your sales offering.
The challenge comes in the way that you frame this.
In looking at the situation in Everton, you can sell the promise of the future, and the history of the club. The tying together thing will be the work that you are doing now and the way that even as you build towards a brighter future, the present is pretty great.
Look at the way that the year or so before the Mets and Yankees closed out Shea Stadium and old Yankee Stadium the teams pointed to their history, celebrated the current teams, and used the current situation as a bridge to a brighter future.
The same situation can apply in Everton.
Finally, always remember, you aren’t your customer.
That’s marketing rule number one and it is important to keep in mind here. You aren’t the customer. What you think doesn’t matter and is often dangerous.
In looking at the situation in Everton, it is vital that the team step back and not think about the pressure that they are under or what they would want in this situation because neither idea matters. Instead, they have to spend a bit of time thinking through what their customers would want.
That’s all that ever matters, actually. Even if it is just a winning side.
2. The Road to Recovery:
My friend, Bruce, writes about probabilities:
Bruce has nothing to do with sports, concerts, theatre, or tickets. But Bruce is a smart guy and he sends me articles, books, and ideas constantly.
As I was talking with him about the new ebook idea, The Road to Recovery, we got to talking about probabilities which is something we’ve talked about here over the last 18 months or so.
The way I’ve framed it for y’all is that at every turn, the pandemic has taken the one that is most disruptive.
What I’ve also pointed out is that in too many instances, we’ve all been guilty of always planning for only the best-case scenario.
In looking to the future and recovery, the question I’ve been framing for folks to help with the ebook is:
What’s one lesson you’ve learned that has stuck with you as you work to recover?
What’s one innovation that has been created due to the pandemic?
What is one change you’ve made due to the pandemic?
Bruce’s piece sits right in the middle of the lesson learned category because he reminds me that we have to likely force ourselves to plan for three different scenarios or, at the least, manage against three possibilities:
The best-case
The worst-case
The most likely outcome
I’m curious how you are dealing with this stuff now. Let me know by hitting reply.
3. How to: Avoid Discounting…
Sam Adams threw out tons of hard seltzer:
I received this story from a few of you, thank you.
What do I think of this story?
I love it.
Why?
Because it shows that you can put your brand’s health above a few discounted sales.
In looking at this story, let’s focus on three key points:
Jim Koch says that discounting just isn’t something that Sam Adams does. That’s unusual, but when you see it, you pay attention because Koch is linking the lack of discounting with the fact that they didn’t read the market effectively and overordered seltzer. You do your research, but when you see the market changing before you, act decisively. That’s true no matter where you are.
The rise and fall of seltzers in the alcohol market is a warning about jumping on the latest trend and missing the ebb and flow. You see this with things like NBA Top-Shot and the rise and fall of that NFTs. NFTs aren’t good or bad, but they may not be the miracle that too much hype might lead us to believe. You have to balance innovation and new ideas with the basics of growth and sustainability.
Touchpoints matter. In this piece, Sam Adams talks about how having a stale seltzer might make people have a bad experience or how someone might have a seltzer at the bar and have a reaction of “I could have just had that at home.” This is important as we work to bring back fans and return to an environment where folks go to shows, games, and events more regularly. The experience matters and all touchpoints matter. And, the dirty secret is that the small stuff typically matters more than the big stuff.
I would just highlight this because I’ve been preaching about the importance of not discounting. I try to take an absolute position on it, but when I talk with people individually, they are surprised that I’m slightly more nuanced.
But the big thing about the discount idea is that a little bit of your soul should die every time you do a discount. In the case of Sam Adams, they seem to agree with me.
Am I out of bounds with that assessment?
4. Profile/Tech/Tools: BOTS
BOTS cornered the sneaker market, but before that tickets:
This is an interesting piece about BOTS.
I remember back on one of my first trips to the Ticketing Professionals Conference in the UK, chatting with Andrew Thomas about the difference between a “good bot and a bad bot” with the reality being that we have to be really specific about what a BOT is because if you don’t you can put Siri, Alexa, or any voice-activated tool into the same category as these tools.
Which probably isn’t your real goal.
First, over the last few years, I’ve had a chance to learn about the sneaker market and how it mimics the ticket market from a few guys that are in the ticket and sneaker market.
To be clear, there are also parallels with the trading card market as well.
It really pays to pay attention to where people’s attention is flowing, where there is a potential emotional connection, and an inefficient distribution market to look for lessons and opportunities.
That’s on display in the market for shoes, the same as it is for cards, and for tickets.
Second, how cool is that the first event with brokers is reported as a Charles Dickens’ reading in the 1860s?
I didn’t know that.
I’ve gone back and looked at tickets being something that were around since the days of the Roman Empire, but never thought to look at the first sort of modern example of the secondary market.
This illustrates that some of the stuff we are seeing has been going on for years, hundreds of years, even.
Finally, the analysis of the situation is pretty interesting with the sign of BOTS being a sign of an economic mistake.
And, how the way tickets are marketed, sold, and distributed contributes to free money to people using BOTS to get access to tickets.
I’ll see myself out here. I have to go create a BOT of my own now.
5. Links for the week, y’all: I will end the week with some links today!
The future of games: TBF, Pittsburgh is a market that has been slow to adopt technology at their games.
DC United’s new season tickets are on-sale now: This landing page doesn’t do the experience of attending a DC United match justice. Or, am I wrong?
Wembley is set for a return of concerts: I’m going to Hyde Park, but I love Wembley…or, I just love London. You decide. A big event at Wembley is a great event!
Shopify and Spotify show artists a new way to monetize their audiences: This is an interesting story to watch because we can see a new business line opening, along with new ways to distribute products, and raising brand awareness. There is a ton of stuff to look at and it is emergent.
Youth coaches and youth sports are a key to long-term fandom: Talking about how important coaching was and is was one of the big topics in my conversation with Scott O’Neil. Because throughout the pandemic, coaching the kids on our soccer team has helped me keep my shizz together, but it also has a positive impact on turning kids into lifelong athletes and fans.
Pricing needs more than intuition: Duh! If I can only teach you one thing it is that your pricing decision is one of the most important marketing decisions you make. And, this argument about “letting the market” dictate the price or other arguments really is just a case for saying that marketing and sales are useless activities. It is wrong and you need to dedicate the maximum focus to setting the right price.
You can find me everywhere with my special Linktree! It is all my links!
Great podcast this week with Pauline Fallowell from the London Theatre Company! We talk about data, market focus, and audience building. Totally worth your time.
Check out my friends at Booking Protect! Customers have been taking up refund protection at a rate that is double what it was before the pandemic began. This is a great opportunity for you to offer more value to your customers in a way that they want while also creating a new revenue stream for your organization.