Jim McCarthy, co-founder and chief executive of Goldstar and Stellar Tickets, has warned operators against relying on a last-minute push to sell tickets for online shows, even though such performances attract a greater proportion of late purchasers than in-person events.
Speaking in a video, McCarthy, who provided a keynote address at TheTicketingBusiness Forum 2020, revealed sales data collected from more than 2,000 shows via Stellar Tickets over the past year.
According to Stellar’s data, across online events of all sizes, 65% of sales happen within a week of the event, with 37% occurring in the two days before, and only 3% happening more than 30 days ahead of the show.
By comparison, the “scarcity of good seats”, as well as “well-known promotional strategies like pre-sale” are reasons why ticket sales for in-person events often occur “when tickets first become available, even if it is months earlier”.
When splitting Stellar’s data into online shows of up to 99 ticket-buyers (small), between 100 and 999 (medium) and 1,000 and over (large), McCarthy explained a consistent trend for a greater proportion of sales to take place closer to the event for smaller shows.
With small events, an average of 46% of the total sales take place within two days of the event, whereas for the large events, the average drops to 36%.
“I want to dispel the myth that because sales break late, marketing can wait until the last few days before the event,” McCarthy said.
“This is not true and it’s a recipe for lacklustre sales in the end. We recommend a six to eight-week window of sales, because you need to plant the seeds for your harvest in that last week.”
McCarthy also stressed the importance of strategies such as early-bird pricing, VIP packages and limited premiums for driving earlier sales to provide “more predictability in the course of the event, but perhaps more importantly, you will also be building awareness”.
You can watch the video here.
Share this