Industry News

Ludus aims to become ‘Ticketmaster of high schools’

Ludus, the fast-growing high school digital ticketing platform, sold more than $2.2m worth of tickets in 2017.

Zachary Collins, co-founder of Ludus, said the market has a “built-in audience” through parents, family, friends and faculty, and last year the firm filled 199,000 seats. While data for the high school performing arts sector can be scarce, Ludus has seen rapid growth since its inception.

“We find that around 90 per cent of transactions occur online once a school starts using Ludus within the first two years,” Collins said. “It’s all self-serve, but we have a strong focus on customer relationships and support.”

Ludus is free to high schools, which often need get approval for budget expenditure, as fees are charged to the patrons. It provides tools to manage tickets and customers, accounts for sales, integrate with hardware and more. 

Once the platform is set up, it becomes self-serving for the schools with batch ticket management, show management, and custom ticket prices.

The platform also keeps track of customer data, making it easy for administration to see which people have been to past shows and their spending habits, along with basic personal information. It also offers reports built-in that shows insights into revenue and customers.

Collins said there is no public data on this market, such as with the live entertainment industry, but he assumes the total money spent on high school tickets is between $500m and $1bn a year, based on Ludus’ internal data and number of high schools just in the US. He added that these estimates don’t account for sporting events or other school functions.

“Our goal is to become synonymous with high school ticketing. Or put simply: The Ticketmaster of high schools (minus the fees),” Collins added.

Images: Ludus