Overview:
The Ticketing industry has long been a crucial aspect of the entertainment industry. Sports fanatics, music lovers, and theater goers all save their money to buy and see their favorite performances in person. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2017 alone there was a 10% increase in entertainment expenses! The ticketing industry is a 10.5 billion dollar industry and the backbone of many sports franchises, musicians, and more. As targeted marketing continues to improve, online ticket sales are predicted to continue expanding for the foreseeable future.
Amounts of Ticket Sales by Sector
Key Takeaways:
1. Market is Growing
2. Increase in consumer Spending and disposable income
3. Younger demographic preference for live performance (festivals account for large growth)
4. Concerts and festivals are the best opportunity for broker growth
5. Learn to discover upcoming performers with data to stay ahead of the competition and make the greatest resale margins.
History of Growth:
Over the past 10 years online ticket sales, and ticket sales in general have grown tremendously at an annual rate of growth of about 8.5%. As online purchase transactions have become commonplace, the majority of tickets are now purchased online. The addition of mobile ticketing has been a big push towards even more positive growth from 2015 forward. Mobile ticketing purchases allow for tickets to be purchased much closer to the time of the event and with ease of accessibility, incentivizing more event goers. Streaming platforms like Spotify, Pandora, and Soundcloud are now able to share listing data with artists and promoters. This interchange of information allows for better marketing on behalf of artists who know you listen to their music, and can now send people ads stating “Hey I am coming to your city next month, buy tickets to see me live”. This alone is a major driving factor for increased live event viewership and thereby ticket sales. More data equals more ticket sales.
Preferences and Changes:
Younger demographics, ages 16-34, disproportionately prefer live performances while only making up 35% of the total money spent on tickets, will begin making and spending more money on live events. In comparison consumers aged 35-54 make up 43% of all the money spent on tickets. With this in mind, we can hypothesize that live performance demand will continue to increase into 2020 and past that over the next 10 years.
Performers are also making increasingly less money selling copies of their songs due to pirating and lower total income from online streaming services. Live performances are a crucial aspect of their income and will continue to grow in importance.
These two factors in combination solidify the future of the Live Performance and Ticketing Market.
The Market
Although Ticketmaster and Livenation seem to be the overarching leader in online ticket sales, they only make up about 8% of tickets sold. This leaves a large 92% of market share open to the other “3000” businesses that are selling tickets! The amount of people in the space is expected to continue growing. Diversification of ticket options will be one of the main ways in which these companies will win. Tickets will begin to include additional perks such as access to online groups for event goers to interact before and after the show. These types of places will be selling experiences not only for one night, but extending much further out, creating a sort of tribe effect.
Sources:
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm
https://blog.bizzabo.com/event-marketing-statistics
https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/report/2018/us-music-360-2018/#
https://www.eventmanagerblog.com/event-statistics
