Ticketing

As part of their annual 360 Report, demographics giant Nielsen undertook a study that queries festival fans what is most likely to sway them towards a particular festival. The results are nothing short of illuminating, especially when they so closely reflect Intellitix's own findings in our State of Live report. We take a closer look below. Lineup First and foremost in prominence: 86% of fans state that the lineup is of major importance. With booking fees occupying so much of festival budgets, this should come as no surprise. However, it would be incorrect to assume that this data suggests that ...

Ticket fraud at festivals is costing fans millions of hard-earned dollars in losses, and in today’s market, digital tickets have become an integral part of any event’s ticket sales. So integral in fact, that two-thirds of tickets sold online are digital, a comparatively large figure to other online industries, and one that attests to how rapidly the market has matured. And it’s growing. This year, the e-commerce fraud prevention firm Riskified estimates the global online event ticket market value at $30 billion annually, and in the US, lost revenue is expected to exceed $10 billion. Riskified have found that ticket ...

It seems that there are few issues in the live music scene as widely condemned as ticket scalping. The contentious market is estimated to be worth over £1 billion annually in the UK alone, and a new report from FanFair Alliance has found that the practice is greatly undermining the public’s faith in the live music sector, leaving 80% of concert goers feeling ripped off by ticket scalpers. "If there were any doubts whether consumers are aware of the problems around secondary ticketing and the impact this is having on the wider music industry then these are very much dispelled ...

UK Music reveals that the UK live event industry is thriving with audiences for concerts and festivals at 30.9 million in 2016, up from 27.7 million the previous year. “For the first time, the total spending generated by concerts, festivals, and other live events hit almost £4bn as music tourism shot up 11% on the previous year,” says Paul Latham, COO of Live Nation, UK & Ireland. The growth in live events has been getting glowing reviews from both industry leaders and politicians. “Music and the creative industries are central to our post-Brexit future,” says Karen Bradley, Secretary of State ...

Last year, Billboard reported that 32 million people attend at least one music festival per year, and that 51 percent of Americans attended a live music event in 2015. That’s almost 164 million ticket sales in the United States alone. It’s gargantuan business, and major players like Ticketmaster, Ticketfly, and LiveNation face competition in plucky startups entering the space vying for business and promising cost-effective solutions to getting around the market saturation. “We increased festival tickets sales by almost 300% over last year’s early bird sale,” says festival organizers Brian Crain. One particularly interesting example of fresh approaches to ticketing ...

Last week marked the 10th anniversary of the International Music Summit (IMS), an annual symposium in Ibiza with electronic music industry biggest players. The event featured keynotes and panels from Pacha Group owner Ricardo Urgell, AFEM’s Mark Lawrence, and influential DJs such as The Black Madonna and Seth Troxler. Founded by long-standing BBC Radio 1 host Pete Tong and industry mogul Ben Turner, the event’s flagship Ibiza summit has become one of the most valued meeting points for the dance music community. Recent years have seen the event’s influence expand with the debut of conferences in both Los Angeles and ...

Ultimately, it all comes down to ticket sales. You can have the most innovative social strategy, a forward thinking and enticing lineup, excellent vendors and well oiled infrastructure, but if you come short on your ticket sales, the event is going to fail and you’re going to be shouldering a significant burden. There are so many different ways to sell tickets nowadays, and there are an increasing number of vendors, all claiming to offer better solutions than their rivals. But ultimately, you should be combing over the small print and making sure that you are getting the best deal. Away ...

The idea of the VIP has become a contentious one in recent years. Driven by a souring attitude towards wealth and exclusivity, and supported by more unscrupulous promoters packaging “IP” as “VIP,” the term doesn’t mean what it used to at a festival. At many events, VIP merely means being in a slightly less crowded bar area and access to toilets that are cleaned with a little more frequency. And when you consider the price hike and the volume of VIP tickets sold, you can feel somewhat less than important. Simon Beckingham is a Sydney-based restaurateur and founder of Lost ...