The Ticket is the Key to the $500B Sports, Music, and Theater Space
Total global spend on sports, music, and theater events is a massive $500 billion annually[1]. That spans everything from marketing to production to engagement — essentially the entirety of the user experience from discovery to memory, and everything in between. The digital transformation resulting from the pandemic is also driving the industry toward a singular control point for this journey — the ticket.
What does this mean? To put it simply, having a connection to the ticket in some way, shape, or form is going to be the critical success factor for anyone providing services along the user journey. For example, having a curated events platform is rendered virtually useless if it is not able to offer access to the most important aspect of the experience — the event. Without knowledge of and a connection to those who’ve attended an event, post-event engagement is blind marketing.
We’ve seen this happen before. Transformation upends industries and ways of doing things. Our smartphones are the gateway to everything from music to entertainment to relationships. Internet accessibility changed how we consume content and created new opportunities for those who produce it. Change is afoot in ticketing, and it will impact everything in the events space.
Let’s take a step back
Everyone has 10,080 minutes of time every week, much of it already spoken for. Sleep, work, and other obligations leave a limited number of minutes for entertainment, and every live events venue, streaming service, video game, and social media platform is competing for the remaining minutes.
The most successful understand that they’re most competitive when they understand what people value. Of course, to paraphrase MIT’s Sandy Pentland, the most important determinant of what people value is where they spend their time. Before you can identify the people that value what you provide, you need to know who they are. This remains a massive issue as well as opportunity for in-person events.
Live events have long lacked the engine of growth that drives other industries — the knowledge of who their customers are. Streaming services, video game platforms, and social media all basically not only know their customers, but know their customers’ behaviors, which gives them a huge advantage in the attention economy. The Boston Symphony isn’t competing against the Boston Red Sox, they (both) are competing against Netflix, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook.
All that is changing as ticketing offers new ways to learn everything from who is in each seat at each show to who your most loyal fans are and what keeps them engaged. The recent ticket market convergence we’ve been seeing is just one sign that ticketing is still working to capitalize on this opportunity. Here’s what the future of ticketing looks like.
The data divide
Years ago, venues would take out a full-page newspaper ad to make blanket announcements about upcoming live events. Organizations have gotten much better at targeting audiences over the years, but there’s still a significant gap among live events venues.
There has always been a decoupling of the ticket and attendee from the initial sale to the scan at the gate — driven by a combination of ineffective technology and engrained user behaviors. Baseball teams admit they typically only know 25% of the people who come to their stadium. Theaters and other venues know no more than 40%. The shift to digital ticketing is changing all that and the key to the future of the events industry is the ticket. Maintaining the connection to the ticket and the knowledge of who has it will be the critical success factor as the industry moves forward.
Venues are increasingly using tickets to learn more about their audiences, better tailor content to their preferences, and keep engagement going year-round.
The gap is closing
With more knowledge of who attends each event, organizations and venues are better able to compete in the marketplace from both a macro and micro level. At the macro level, they will have better informed content — are they providing the best or most desirable content for their customers? Should they bring in Jennifer Hudson with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra or Hamilton?
At the micro level, are they creating the most engaging and delightful experiences? It is almost impossible to create individualized, curated experiences if you don’t know who you’re creating those experiences for.
The silver lining is that the competition for those relationships and the data that empowers them is far from decided. The future is very much in play, but those that aren’t already working toward this future stand to lose much more than they realize.
[1] Verified Market Research — https://www.verifiedmarketresearch.com/
