#INTIX 2020

[davewakeman]

Talking Tickets 17 January 2020...See You In NYC!

Sign up for this newsletter and never miss an issue! 

Hey Everybody! 

Thanks for reading! 

First off, in the end, we had over 700 entrants into the giveaway for the pass to INTIX and the winner is: Dominik Schreyer. 

To quote Dominik, “Wow! That’s so cool—I never won anything!” 

Now you’ve won! Congratulations! 

Unfortunately, Dominik can’t make it because he has to speak ESSMA in Budapest on 22 January. He will be talking about empty seats and no shows at stadiums. 

But I’ll find a way to make it up to Dominik when I’m Paris in the spring. 

As for me, I’ll be in NYC all week meeting with folks in tickets, marketing, and money! If you are in the City next week and want to get together, let me know…I will be at INTIX, but I will have some downtime as well. 

At INTIX, you’ll find me at the Booking Protect Booth, 522, right next to the food and beverage. Simon has pulled together a game of “high and low” for the occasion. 

You’ll also be able to find me at Booth 230 with my friends, Einar and Martin, from Activity Stream. 

I’m leading two panels:

Tuesday, 21 January: “Discount? Or, Don’t Discount?” with Martin from Activity Stream. We also added my good friends, Angela Higgins from TPC Australia and Gabe Johnson from Roundabout, so it isn’t just a 90-minute rant from me about why discounts are stupid. 

Thursday, 22 January: “Service is the Best Form of Marketing” with Simon Mabbfrom Booking Protect, Guislaine Bulman from Ticketpro, and Frederic Auoadfrom Stay 22. Spoiler: service is essential to your ultimate success. 

To the tickets! 

—————————————————————————————————

1. Broadway brings in new and more diverse crowds! 

I love Broadway and I’ve been struggling to find really good theatre stories to share in the newsletter lately. So I was ecstatic to see the Broadway League release its latest demographic study this week! 

Great news! 14.8 million folks attended a Broadway production last season! 2.8 million were international and 3.8 were non-white, all highs! 

Amazing! 

This tells us a couple of great things:

* Broadway is healthy! 

* We need to continue to focus on developing and promoting Broadway globally because, despite a certain amount of political uncertainty and unrest, NYC and Broadway still bring people into the United States. 

* The theatre can appeal to folks of any background and this is a prime reason that we need to find ways to expose more and more folks to theatre and the arts. 

2. The wildfires in Australia are likely to have a negative impact on the live entertainment business:

If you’ve never been to Australia, you are totally missing out! It is a magical place! 

That’s what makes the situation with the wildfires so heart-wrenching. 

Mark Ritson wrote about the tourism and marketing implications that the fires could have on Australia for MarketingWeek.com this week. 

And, the live entertainment business is dealing with this as well as the Australian Open has had to put procedures in place due to health concerns, the AFL is renewing the Origin match to support relief efforts, and folks around the country are raising money and offering assistance. 

For all of us, it is easy to see the situation in Australia in isolation, but it highlights the growing need to have contingency plans in place for weather-related events as we continue to see changing weather patterns. 

3 steps any of us promoting or producing events can take immediately include:

1. Thinking about how we are going to deal with customer issues related to being unable to get to or attend an event in the case of catastrophic weather conditions. Refund protection and refund policies to start, but also cancellations and safety are all going to be important. 

2. Look at scheduling. Weather and climate conditions are likely to change the way that we schedule and plan our events and our lives. What does this mean to all of us?

3. How do we fit into the efforts to fight these tragedies, support these communities, and give back? I’m a believer that no matter what we do, we are part of the larger community and that if one person or organization is suffering, to an extent, we are all suffering. 

To that point, I’ve been encouraging folks that want to offer assistance to donate to the Red Cross of Australia! 

3. Soccer, or as I like to call it, football, continues to grow all over the world:

Y’all know I love Spurs, for better or worse. 

Due to this love of the Premier League, I spend a lot more time paying attention to the global football business than I might have in the past. 

And, there is a lot to notice. 

La Liga is seeing growth in attendance…which means we are going to need to pay attention to what they are doing because most of the stories we see in the States are about declining attendance. 

To boot, the French soccer leagues are also seeing growth. 

And, City is taking over the globe with teams all over the place! 

While the entire picture isn’t completely like a rocket straight up, I think we can learn a few things from the growth of soccer around the globe:

1. Soccer clubs around the globe have done a great job building communities and monetizing their global fan bases. Check out the One Hotspur Club. Or, Man City’s Cityzens. 

2. They emphasize attendance. I’ve mentioned the book, The Club, before and Richard Scudamore’s point that an empty stadium is a bad soundstage for a TV production. This is worth keeping in mind. 

There’s a lot more that we can learn from the growth and continued growth of futbol! 

4. Marketing effectiveness in tickets, arts, sports, and entertainment needs to be platform-agnostic and focused on what folks actually want and use: 

Drew McManus writes up a piece about a study that asked folks how they read his orchestra business blog, expecting that most people were going through and reading the web version. 

Wrong! 

This idea has come up in a couple of places this week because I chatted with David Fowler for a podcast coming up in a week or so on sports marketing and I have a podcast conversation with Ryan Wallman about his new book, Delusions of Brandeur, where we talked about needing to do research at the start of the project to ensure you are using the right channel to communicate with your audience. 

This is important to remember because many of us get infatuated with one particular channel or idea. 

In reality, combining marketing modalities improves response. In reality, we aren’t our market and what we assume is conventional wisdom often isn’t. 

My challenge to all of us is to take a step back and ask the question: “What if this isn’t true?” And think through the implications. 

I’m betting it will change your thinking on the topic. 

5. Details of Live Nation’s renewed consent decree are made public: 

I’ve said in the past that it seems a little ridiculous to expect anyone to not try and leverage the entirety of their business assets to win business. 

That’s kind of the way I feel about the consent decree and Live Nation. 

If the government doesn’t want a company to control all aspects of the live entertainment experience, we have antitrust laws and regulations or they can put provisions in the agreement that they can punish if the deal is broken.

I am a little surprised that the deal wasn’t altered or strengthed more in light of the allegations and findings, but in the States we have been taking a pretty lax position on antitrust and competition law for several decades now. 

What does all this mean? 

I’m not sure. 

I don’t see anything in the decree that would stop future investigations or that points to there not being other investigations ongoing. 

But, when you look at the state of play with government regulation, it is fairly consistent with what has been happening across industries for the last 10-15 years. 

—————————————————————————————————————- What I’m Up To: 

I’m going to be in NYC this week from the 20-23. If you are at INTIX, make sure we say, “hello”, or, if you aren’t let me know if you are around and we can grab a cup of coffee or a drink. 

On Monday afternoon, from 5PM-6PM, I’ll be at Faces and Names at 159 W. 54th Street having a delicious beverage or two. I’m sure I will have a few friends with me, so swing by. 

I’ve been updating my blog daily this year, having set myself the goal of writing up one thing a day to ensure that I keep the writing habit. Some ticket related, but a lot of strategy and marketing as well. Including a piece about customer experience based on a great white paper, Simon Mabb sent me on customer service. 

You’ll want to check out my podcast with Ryan Wallman. Ryan is one of the best advertisers in the world, he wrote a book last year, and he’s a hell of a lot of fun to hang out with. 

Please follow and like us:

Talking Tickets 17 January 2020…See You In NYC! was originally published on Wakeman Consulting Group

[davewakeman]

Talking Tickets: 17 April 2020--Refunds! Restarts! Support! And, More!

Hey! 

Thanks for being here again this week. If you are enjoying this newsletter, tell your friends and colleagues to sign up by visiting this link.

How is everyone holding up out there?

If you need someone to chat with, let me know. I’m here for you if you need a proper chat as my friend, Cat, would say.

I made a typing error about the strategy webinar. It is going on this coming Tuesday.

Have a few minutes and want to grab a drink? We may not be able to have a drink in person just yet, but we can have a virtual happy hour. Join me and Ken Troupe for what is becoming a Friday tradition for happy hour with sports business folks at 5 PM EDT.

If you are interested, we’ve got a nice Slack community with folks from around the world and all areas of the industry, exchanging ideas, connecting, and thinking about the future of their businesses.

I’ll share a bunch of links to resources and other places to connect in the newsletter.

Hopefully, I’m able to strike a proper balance for all of you…between, “Wow! This is nuts!” and “We will get through this.”

To the tickets!

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1. When will events return? No one knows but we are learning more:

Dr. Zeke Emmamuel says he doesn’t see large scale events coming back until the fall of 2021.

Shane Harmon, CEO of Sky Stadium in New Zealand shared some interesting information from his government on when restrictions might start to be loosened and things can begin to normalize a little. Patron Base also put together a nice resource guide for their customers that y’all may find useful.

In Europe, the UK is preparing for 3 additional weeks of stay-at-home orders, pushing the opening of events back a bit further.

In the US, we still have no clear strategy for what reopening will look like, what we should expect, and how we will start to regain any sense of normalcy.

We do have a reopening panel and we do have a desire to reopen events, but, again, unfortunately, no clear direction.

I think we all have to try and take a balanced approach to our expectations here. First, we have the economic factor and that’s impacting all of us here immensely. Second, we have to deal with the safety concerns of the population and recognize that liability will drive a lot of the decision making process. Finally, never lose sight of the impact of fear and emotionally driven decision making on mass society. As quickly as people are gung ho to get back to ballparks, if an outbreak happens that was accelerated by a ballgame and that link is made, that could do more long-term damage than anything that has happened to this point.

Because, unfortunately, none of us really know the right answer here.

But I am hopeful after seeing the PGA Tour aim for June and the Australian Football League talking about July. 

2. The economic impact of these shutdowns becomes more and more apparent:

Baseball America wrote up a piece on why fan free games aren’t going to make sense for MiLB and what not playing in 2020 would mean for minor league baseball going forward.

The economic challenges are going to be felt all over. Colleges are likely going to be put in a position to cut sports like the University of Cincinnati did with soccer this week.

As a holistic thing, Research and Markets put together a report this week that tries and cover everything about the entertainment industry and the impact of the virus on folks.

Like a lot of stuff, the analysis and the information coming out from reputable sources needs to be parsed with for context and when you see anyone tell you something is all or nothing…take that with a grain of salt.

Bill Sutton tweeted out a call for teams to get on the virtual season tickets now and over the years I’ve been calling for folks to think more seriously about their membership model, their email lists, and how they are developing their global fan bases.

Harry DeMott from Ticket Evolution wrote up a good piece on restoring liquidity to the ticketing ecosystem as I was finishing this up that is worth a read.

Whatever position you find yourself in right now, your strategy going forward is going to be more important than ever. And, if doing things the way we’ve always done things is a bad idea in the best of times, right now it is a really bad idea to settle for that answer.

3. StubHub, refunds, cancellations, and more continue to make the news: 

The regulators in the UK continue to look into the merger between Viagogo and StubHub. And, as was mentioned in the press this week, “worst timed acquisition ever“?

Vivid Seats did announce their refund and exchange policy this week and it looks a lot different than Ticketmaster’s or StubHub’s.

AEG is offering a 30-day window for fans to get refunds and once a new date is announced, fans will get another 30 days.

While many of us have focused a lot of our attention on the platforms and technology companies, the same uncertainty is trickling into other areas with college football programs feeling the pinch because of the compromised place they find themselves.

Let’s be real here, college programs are only feeling the pinch now because most of them had the earliest deadlines…at a certain point, this is going to be a refrain that all of us are going to hear. Again, it goes back to the point above…we need clarity, information, and guidance on what the next several months look like before folks are really going to feel comfortable doing much of the stuff that we consider normal.

Leadership 101 stuff.

4. How are you connecting with your fans and customers during the pandemic?

Over the last few weeks, I’ve highlighted some really cool examples of using assets, content, and ideas to connect with folks.

The link above is from my friend, Blair Hughes, down in Brisbane. He’s been focusing on fan engagement since 2013 and he updated his resource guides this week to include a few new ideas that will work even when you are socially distanced from your fans.

The Indianapolis Indians were lauded by the governor. The Red Sox dropped coloring sheets. There are tons of free videos and performances from organizations all over the world. 

I’ve struggled with this a little bit because what do you offer folks when there is so much uncertainty. My path has been to continue to figure out how to add value and share ideas with folks. (To be fair, it is selfish as well because focusing on others helps me overcome the gaping void of being an entirely inadequate 4th-grade teacher and helps keep some of those negative thought processes at bay.)

But what are you doing to connect with folks now? Let me know and I can try and highlight some of these ideas as well.

5. The ticketing industry is doing a lot of stuff to help everyone weather this crisis together: 

This week INTIX announced a relief fund, the INTIX Member Covid-19 Relief Fund. 100% of funds will go to member assistance to help members of the ticket community bridge the economic gap while we wait out the pandemic.

Any gift matters, even $1.

As Maureen says that all folks want to do is help and I agree. So if you can, support this effort.

On top of the relief fund, Maureen and her team are hosting a weekly Zoom call on Wednesdays at 12 PM EDT. Anyone can join, no matter if you are a member or not. This week’s had over 200 folks.

The ALSD has a list of resources and ways for folks to learn and connect during the pandemic.

Global Citizen has put together the Live Aid of the Covid-19 crisis for tomorrow, 18 April.

Crew Nation is Live Nation’s effort to help the crews that make the shows happen. The Arts Council in the UK is also working to help freelancers and other folks impacted by the shutdowns. Theatre Support as well.  Indie venues band together to form a group to lobby congress for support of the industry.

While it isn’t about giving any money to support folks, MLS put up a training site so folks can keep their soccer skills fresh during the social distancing. And, if you have a young kid, this is likely enough to make you weep.

This is on top of all the other things I’ve highlighted over the last few weeks. If you or your organization are doing something to help folks, let me know and I will highlight it and share it here and with my community as well.

As I finish this up, I love when folks run and do challenges in their local communities…so I saw this one from Rob Sibbitts in Atlanta and he has completed his challenge…but maybe we can convince him to run another race for a local nonprofit.

My buddy, Greg Turner, who lives outside of Hong Kong just translated a report for anyone that is interested in learning more about the Chinese market for arts and entertainment. It doesn’t fit into the weathering the crisis theme, but it does give you something new to explore and since China is slowly starting to return to normal activities could give you some food for thought about what to think about in all of your home markets.

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What am I up to this week?

Guess what? I’m still at home! I am doing the webinar that is listed at the top and I’m starting to drop new content on the podcast feed.

Want to chat? Let me know. Between my duties as an awful elementary school teacher, I’ve got plenty of time and will to chat. And, I’m happy to be here if someone needs someone to talk with. 

Please follow and like us:

Talking Tickets: 17 April 2020–Refunds! Restarts! Support! And, More! was originally published on Wakeman Consulting Group

[davewakeman]

Talking Tickets: 3 January 2020

I do this ticket newsletter each week. Sign up for it and receive it no matter what, free here!

Happy New Year!

What resolutions? Goals? Ideas? Anything you are working on or thinking about in the new year? Send me a note and let me know!

Booking Protect has been generous enough to offer up an INTIX registration and an INTIX trade show pass for a lucky subscriber to ‘Talking Tickets’!

How do you win?

Two ways: one, you are getting this newsletter, so you are already entered.

The second way to get another chance to win is by getting folks to sign up for this newsletter by sharing this link. (Through the magic of technology, I can track your link and who is encouraging folks to sign up! Like magic!)

I’m going to run this contest until Monday, October 13th and draw the winners on Monday morning. So share this far and wide!

I’m in DC this week and I may even make an appearance at the Wizards game tonight, depending on how my son’s report from school is.

Let’s talk tickets! ____________________________________________

1. David Stern passed away: 

Without David Stern, do we have the sports business economy that we have today? I’m not sure.

While you can search for any number of articles on people’s memories and stories about dealing with David Stern, I think this piece from Larry Stone sums my feelings up pretty well.

But we can’t argue that he was a champion of the NBA and helped turn the game of basketball into a global game.

To have seen the 1992 Dream Team is to have seen basketball stand there with the biggest rock tours in the world.

The NBA’s moves into China, India, and other international markets would not have been possible without the groundwork that David Stern laid.

2. Endeavor acquires majority in On Location Experiences:

Follow Tony Knopp on Twitter for a few interesting Twitter exchanges on this deal because as Tony says, the valuation seems high.

In reading through this piece, it obviously looks like Endeavor is going to keep pushing down the road of we can continue to squeeze more and more money out of fans and experiences.

Is this true?

Time will tell.

To me, this is a deal that doesn’t make a lot of sense because I can’t see how the numbers add up. The Super Bowl is big business, but is there really almost a half-billion dollars in revenue from other events right now?

What do you think?

3. Hatti Simpson decides to take in tons of theatre in 2019:

I know Hatti from my European travels and we got a drink at INTIX in Dallas last year, but I really was intrigued by her Twitter thread that she posted earlier this week talking about her experience seeing 46 shows outside of her venue last year.

As I was reading through her review of her year, I remembered this article on experiential marketing from the week before Christmas and I thought the thread really highlighted the fact that none of us are just selling a ticket, we are selling an experience and we miss out if we don’t really capture that.

As a kicker, Holly Mulcahy shared this piece about the original subscribers to the Denver Center and their experiences.

To me, the experience is everything. Don’t believe me? Go back and listen to my conversation with Danny Frank on my podcast where we talk about the power of the experience and how everything we do is included in that experience.

4. The Huffington Post UK takes a look at ticket fees:

This is another story that I didn’t get a chance to share heading into the holidays because there was so much going on and it was the holidays. (If you haven’t heard from me, I’m back in the office…so I’ll get back to you in the next day or two.)

Even if most of us know the game of the fees and why they take the form that they take, it is still pretty amazing to see it spelled out so clearly.

This piece is especially interesting when you pair it with the deal that was struck between Live Nation and the DOJ around the consent decree and the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster when the two companies merged in 2010.

What is interesting to me is that as soon as this deal was announced, all of a sudden Live Nation came running out with “opportunity” around raising prices even more…considering that there are so many tickets that go unsold.

To me, the biggest opportunity is still in finding ways to market and sell tickets more effectively at points all along the value curve because there are just so many unintended consequences that come from maximizing revenues in only one area or not maximizing the experience for all guests.

But…I’ve also been told I focus too much on customers, so what do I know?

5. MLB’s small-market teams claims for not spending are being questioned:

We’ve seen a few very big deals this off-season in Major League Baseball.

We’ve also seen MLB promote how much money they are making.

What we haven’t really seen is anything that would tell us that fans are going to come back to MLB in 2020.

All of these stories, minus the huge contracts for guys like Rendon, Strasburg, and Cole, seem to point to the fact that MLB thinks it can continue doing what it has done.

In reading through the article above, I came away with the sense that MLB would be served by a commissioner or an executive or advocate that was focused on the game, the fans, and growing the game because it seems that revenue is king…despite attendance heading in the wrong direction and fast.

From ticket prices, to attendance, to merchandise prices, F&B, training folks on discounts, on and on…baseball has many issues to be addressed.

But, I’ve said it on many occasions, I love baseball and I want to see it succeed…so Rob Manfred, give me a call! ——————————————-

What I’m up to:

I’m working on fixing the podcast with Greg Turner and I should have a new episode up this afternoon, but check out the podcast archives.

Come see me at INTIX in NYC on 20-23 January.

Check out my blog post with things I’m going to be paying attention to in 2020.

I also posted a little exercise I learned from friend of WCG, Chris Brogan, called “MY 3 Words” you can learn more and find mine here.

As I’m easing my way into 2020, I’ve been reviewing David Allen’s Getting Things Done method. If you feel overwhelmed or are trying to be more organized this year, check it out. 

  Please follow and like us:

Talking Tickets: 3 January 2020 was originally published on Wakeman Consulting Group

[davewakeman]

3 Things I've Learned From 'Talking Tickets'

Each Friday, I send out an email called ‘Talking Tickets‘ with 5 stories from the world of live entertainment that I think we can learn something from.

I started it on a lark due to my buddy, Tony Knopp, posting 3 things he learned that week in tech, sports, and business.

In the past 4 months that I’ve been doing the newsletter, I’ve learned a lot about business and I’ve been surprised at how avid the readers of the newsletter are.

But I wanted to share 3 ideas that I’ve found most powerful so far:

Don’t underestimate what folks find valuable:

I figured that everyone already knew all of the stories and all of the stuff I was thinking about and sharing.

I was wrong.

I think we all have a tendency to underestimate the things we are good at.

This is definitely true with the idea behind ‘Talking Tickets’.

There are a number of ticket newsletters and sports business sites sharing stuff, but what I’ve created has hit a nerve with the audience I am serving.

In putting the newsletter together, I found that folks dug a few things:

My insights

The diversity of topics

The consolidation of stories into a few important ones

That is valuable.

Writing the newsletter makes me a better marketer and consultant: 

If you are like me, you get newsletters, social media feeds, emails, press releases, and every other imaginable distraction to keep you “focused” on the business.

But the thing is, if you are also like me, you ignore most of it.

By creating a newsletter, I had to figure out how to handle most of this stuff and digest it in a quick, simple manner.

Why does this make me a better marketer and consultant?

Simple.

First, I have to keep an eye on stuff. I can’t just dump it and get to it later.

Second, putting together the newsletter helps me recognize what I think about something.

Third, I see so many examples of what is working and not, that I can’t help but have those things collide in my head!

Creating is a great way to connect:

Over the last 18 months with the newsletter and ‘The Business of Fun‘ podcast, I’ve seen my personal brand in the world take a couple of steps up.

I have to admit that I never really put a great deal of weight on my personal brand until about 2 years ago.

I was naive and assumed that my work would speak for itself.

I was wrong.

Why?

To quote Alan Weiss, “if you don’t toot your own horn, there is no music.”

On top of the need to promote myself, I’ve also found that doing all of this stuff makes people feel like they know me a lot more. And, it helps me connect with people.

At INTIX, people were stopping me to chat and talk regularly. It was awesome because I honestly stared doing most of this stuff so that I would never have to cold call again!

But these things have also allowed me to connect with folks in Europe, Indian, Australia, China, Brazil, and so many other places!

It is truly amazing and only happened because I was willing to put ideas out there.

I mean, I’m not always right…but I do show up.

Get the new ebook I created with my friends at Booking Protect, What Matters in Ticketing Now!?. We are also hosting a free webinar on 26 February 2020 at 1500 GMT with ideas, actions, and trends that we discovered and feel are important while putting together the ebook. 

  Please follow and like us:

3 Things I’ve Learned From ‘Talking Tickets’ was originally published on Wakeman Consulting Group

[davewakeman]

Talking Tickets 17 January 2020...See You In NYC!

Talking Tickets 17 January 2020…See You In NYC!

Sign up for this newsletter and never miss an issue! 

Hey Everybody! 

Thanks for reading! 

First off, in the end, we had over 700 entrants into the giveaway for the pass to INTIX and the winner is: Dominik Schreyer. 

To quote Dominik, “Wow! That’s so cool—I never won anything!” 

Now you’ve won! Congratulations! 

Unfortunately, Dominik can’t make it because he has to speak ESSMA in Budapest on 22…

[davewakeman]

Talking Tickets: 3 January 2020

Talking Tickets: 3 January 2020

I do this ticket newsletter each week. Sign up for it and receive it no matter what, free here!

Happy New Year!

What resolutions? Goals? Ideas? Anything you are working on or thinking about in the new year? Send me a note and let me know!

Booking Protect has been generous enough to offer up an INTIX registration and an INTIX trade show pass for a lucky subscriber to ‘Talking Tickets’!

How do you…

[davewakeman]

Talking Tickets--22 May 2020! Bundesliga! Revenue! Rocking At The Drive-In! More!

Hey! 

Thanks for being here again this week. If you are enjoying this newsletter, tell your friends and colleagues to sign up by visiting this link.

Heading into the long weekend in the States, if that really even matters right now…here’s a video that came my way of The National performing a set around the time of their album, High Violet, which is excellent. I’m guessing that they won’t be playing their show at Wolf Trap, but if something changes…I’m there.

I had a chance to participate during Eric Fuller’s Rescue Meet on Tuesday along with Anthony Esposito and a few others from different areas of the industry. You can watch the replay here.

Don’t forget Happy Hour with me and Ken Troupe this afternoon. Ken has fixed the technology and we can definitely have more than 6 people or whatever crazy number kept getting folks bounced that one week.

To the tickets!

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1. Events Are Starting To Come Back With Drive-Ins and Social Distancing: 

In the span of a few moments, we went from having the first social distance concert to having it postponed, to having it back on again. Then we had a drive-in show with 600 cars!

While all of this is positive, the cluster developing at Bryant Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa shows that we still have to be cautious with our expectations and with the speed of being able to bring events back online and things back to normal.

Casinos in Las Vegas and Mississippi are going to be coming back soon. These aren’t live events, but I do think they will provide us an opportunity to learn about what safe openings and safe gatherings will look like or can look like.

The same can be said for the opening of museums, parks, and other places where folks gather to see art, hangout, and commune. Though I do wonder how marathons and big races are going to manage to come back in the near term…if you’ve never run the NYC marathon or seen it, social distancing is tough.

Th0ugh if you’ve never run the NYC marathon, put that on your bucket list.

All of this highlights the need to continue to watch what other countries are doing, try to learn best practices and to be cautious but creative like these mixed events in Norway. 

2. We will come back, but what will that look like? 

If the coronavirus has taught us anything in the States is that if you don’t have a lobbyist, you don’t have much of a chance of anything.

So far, live entertainment has been hurt about as much as any industry and we don’t have anything to show for it. Regular folks, are in the same boat for the most part. Maybe we should all go into banking or lobbying…

I did do some nerd reading this week and found an interesting piece about neoliberal economic policy and the coronavirus that put a few ideas into my head that I think we can all learn from in this crisis:

* The ideas lying around are important. * What is feasible and likely can change pretty quickly. * Ultimately, ideas change the world.

For all of us, this means a few important things…

* First, push our ideas of helping live entertainment recover. Countries around the world have varying plans for doing just that. In America, we definitely need to continue to push that agenda. My neighbor is a lobbyist and he’s explained the dark arts to me and I’ve worked on a presidential campaign, so I understand how ridiculous the whole process can seem and feel from the outside…and it is, just the people in the middle of it can’t let their own self-importance get in the way of recognizing how ridiculous it is.

* No idea is a crazy idea. You need crazy ideas to come up with workable solutions…look at the stuff above with drive-ins and social distance concerts.

* Show up and do the work. I’ve been talking about change, innovation, and evolution for my entire career…this stuff doesn’t come easy and it doesn’t come fast, but to give up now in the face of the need for innovation is just crazy. The industry needs everyone to be smarter, more thoughtful, and more creative.

I’ll cover economic models and ideas in point 5.

3. Football, Futbol, Soccer Saves Us?! 

Have you picked your Bundesliga team yet?

I’m still sticking with Bayern Munich because of their connection to Oktoberfest and beer!

Did y’all get a chance to catch any of the action from Germany over the weekend? I liked Haaland’s socially distanced goal celebration, but I have to say it was still weird watching football without fans.

On top of the Bundesliga, we also are going to see the return of the Liga FPD as well. (That’s the Costa Rican soccer league.) (ESPN will be showing their games.) (My team is Limon FC…I’ll explain over drinks sometime.)

The French league has already declared Paris Saint-Germain winners, but most of the other leagues around the world are attempting to finish their seasons with the Champions League looking to finish by August.

In the Premier League, we are seeing a lot of caution.

But it will be great to see the EPL return since all of Spurs injured players are back…but we all long for the return of home-field advantage. 

In South Korea, there was a little story that likely gives folks a bit to think about with “unique” partnerships!?

And, if the Grand Final can have fans, I’m hoping that I can be there.

A couple things here:

* I’m glad to have sports back to watch. * Keep paying attention to what is working and what isn’t. * Constantly ask yourself what you are learning from all of these experiences and these events so that you come out of this stronger than before.

4. Arts Have Always Come Back, Yeah! 

I’ve been saying it for months now, people will come back eventually. To think otherwise is to laugh in the face of thousands of years of recorded history.

The challenge in the short term is what will this coming back look like, how quickly will folks feel comfortable, how many financial challenges will we be dealing with, and whether or not we get the marketing challenge correct.

This virus and the financial conditions created by the shutdown of economies around the world have created the most challenging environment for the arts and entertainment in any of our lifetimes, true fact. But the virus and the financial crisis has also highlighted a lot of bad business practices, poor business models, and the need for more innovative thinking any many places.

The challenges that everyone are dealing with aren’t unique to one area of the industry. I mean, movie theatres, musuems, and bars are feeling the pinch as well. Everyone is in the entertainment and hospitality industry.

In speaking at Eric Fuller’s Rescue Meet event this week, I come back to a couple of ideas that seem to sum up where my thinking is this week:

* Creativity and innovation need to be at the front of everyone’s thinking. * Cooperation is going to be key to being successful going forward. * There won’t be a one-size-fits-all plan or approach to coming out of this. And, we have to recognize that earlier rather than later.

5. The Way To Generate Revenue Is Going To Need Some Attention: 

I’m doing a webinar on Tuesday, 26 May with Frederic Aouad from Stay 22 on revenue and creating revenue opportunities now.

Two sessions: 9 AM EDT and 2 PM EDT. We wanted to give folks a chance to join if they were in markets outside of the US or mainland Europe.

The genesis of the idea came out of someone grabbing my notes off the stand at INTIX in Dallas and how I had to come up with a presentation on revenue on the fly. 

Revenue numbers have been in the news a lot the last few weeks as we saw Adam Silver talk about how about 40% of the NBA’s money comes from fans going to games. This week, we saw MLB’s owners share that playing games without fans will cost about $640,000 in losses per game!

I’d always thought the NFL had a little less reliance on in-game revenue, but a report this week put the number at around 38%.

For minor league sports, the threat is even more severe.

So we see that tons of money is still tied up in getting people to get into the games when they are played.

Which really begs a serious question: if getting fans into the stadium is so important, why has the sales and marketing models of the teams in the States been stagnant for so long?

The hard truth is that in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and many other markets, the creativity to capture more of their fan base has existed for a lot of time and we have to get on-board. I had David Fowler on my podcast before the lockdowns started, but he appeared on Richard Clarke’s podcast this week and talked about his ideas in the context of the coronavirus and I think listening to these guys can be useful. David’s big three are content, creativity, and community.

This all comes up in light of the need to rethink where the money comes in from, this week Kirk Wakefield wrote up a piece about how little folks actually notice sponsors during games. Which was paired with the idea that MLB teams might cover seats with sponsored tarps to help recapture some revenue from not having fans in the ballpark.

And, don’t even get me started on “impressions”, “likes”, and that sort of thing that is basically meaningless but easy to measure. Even though there have been lawsuits about the accuracy of a lot of these social web measurements.

Revenue going forward is going to need a lot of thought, but I’ll offer up three things to consider now:

* The way tickets are marketed and sold needs some serious attention. The folks that have invested in their fans over the years are the exceptions that prove the rule. We all need to rethink marketing and selling practices…which should have been a priority before but when you could just easily raise prices, sell to brokers and consolidators, and fall back on “tickets distributed” as the way you reported attendance…YOLO!

* Investigating where folks are doing things better or where we can learn is going to create a lot of opportunities. What can we all learn from a professional services brand? What can we learn from the school bake sale? A nonprofit? There are millions, or more, examples to learn from.

* I said this in a very pointed way that was likely a bit ruder than I wanted to say it at INTIX in Dallas, but none of us are limited in the way that we make money and generate revenue…we are limited by our creativity and that’s the biggest challenge we are dealing with, limiting our creativity to predetermined ideas and solutions. And, I get it, there are real challenges facing everyone right now, but that should cause everyone to be a lot more creative.

As MJ said, “BREAK!”

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What am I up to this week?

Check out my webinar with Frederic and the folks from We Will Recover. I’m working on getting two or three exclusive blog posts and articles up on the We Will Recover site from some of the smarties I know from around the world including a really great piece from my friend, Georgia, down in Sydney.

The podcast is sitting there with over 100 episodes. I’ve been trying to think about what form, if any, it takes going forward and I’ve come up with an idea now that I think will work for me and offer value to all of y’all. I’m going to focus on the future and I’m going to bring in more folks from my work on strategy and marketing that don’t always touch the world of entertainment as a way to introduce more ideas and a different viewpoint.

Visit my site, www.davewakeman.com.

Please follow and like us:

Talking Tickets–22 May 2020! Bundesliga! Revenue! Rocking At The Drive-In! More! was originally published on Wakeman Consulting Group

[davewakeman]

Talking Tickets 15 May 2020--AFL! Bundesliga! Refunds! And, More!

Hey There! 

Thanks for being here again this week. If you are enjoying this newsletter, tell your friends and colleagues to sign up by visiting this link.

Don’t forget to check out what we are doing in the Slack Channel. The folks in there try to keep it fun and light while offering up ideas and perspectives on what they are thinking about, looking at, and doing.

A bunch of great free resources are going on right now, here are 3 from friends of the podcast and the newsletter that are worth your attention:

Eric Fuller has his virtual conference, Rescue Meet, going on the 19th from 9-11 AM PDT. He’s got a couple of conversations lined up with folks from venues, tickets, and the customer side along with a few other tricks, opportunities to connect with folks in the industry to work on solutions and to focus on moving forward.

We Will Recover is an effort started up by Einar, Martin, and the team at Activity Stream over in Europe. Frederic Aouad is co-hosting a webinar with me on 26 May at 9 AM EDT and 2 PM EDT to hit the North American and European markets. We are going to talk about recreating your revenue streams, rethinking your marketing approach, and building events that are destinations for your customers.

Andrew and Carol Thomas have put the Ticketing Professionals Conference online, or as many of the sessions from this year’s event as they could online. There are some really great ones coming up with Kara Parkinson, Kirk Bentley, and a bunch more.

There are a bunch more as well including weekly meetings with INTIX, Pollstar, and more.

And, don’t forget, me and my buddy, Ken Troupe, are hosting happy hour tonight.

To the tickets!

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1. Reopening events is starting to happen: 

I start the week by sharing Dave Grohl’s essay on why we need live entertainment.

Tonight, we will see the first American attempt, potentially, at a social distancing concert in Arkansas. (Spoiler, as I was finishing this up, the event in Arkansas was postponed.)

The Bundesliga is returning as well. 

These are all positive signs. But from my conversations with folks around the industry, we are still a long way off from being together with crowds again.

The UK released a three-phase plan this week. Cinemas are starting to reopen in New Zealand and the certification process for venues and stadiums to reopen safely is well underway.

In the US, we are still playing on the 50 state 50 strategy idea that likely means we are going to continue to experience a prolonged period of waiting for business to start to get back to normal. Which is going down against a backdrop of optimism around the NBA and NHL finishing their seasons and a lot of uncertainty around MLB even getting theirs off the ground.

Again, I’ve been pretty consistent on this one…

Watch what the countries that are out in front are doing like South Korea, New Zealand, Australia, and China…see what works and see what doesn’t, recognizing that in certain countries and places, the response to the virus has been a little more robust, targeted, and comprehensive. Then, adjust accordingly.

I wish I had a better answer, but I think we have to recognize that the path ahead is going to be a bit bumpy and that there isn’t likely to be a straight line.

But…I mean, BUNDESLIGA!

Who is your side?

I’m taking Bayern Munich because Munich is home of Oktoberfest.

Or, do you prefer to go to see a drive-in show?

2. Marketing, Revenue, and Rethinking What We Do:

Ceci Dadisman wrote about the conversation that seems to be picking up in too many places about things “going back to normal”.

I had a colleague email me the other morning, bemoaning the nature of a lot of conversations that they see taking place as “not productive” or “looking at the wrong things.”

From my point of view, for a lot of places, the way things were wasn’t at a level they needed to be to begin with: sports attendance was down and something most organizations were thinking through globally; the arts, opera, and theatre were seeing challenges to their business model; prices were up and costs were up, making profits tougher to come by.

My vantage is that over the next few years we are likely to see more challenges to profits, greater competition for customers, and less free-spending from investors, the secondary market, speculators and consolidators.

What does all of this mean for all of us?

I think we all need to become comfortable with the idea of innovation being our friend.

Marketing had gone to the crapper before the coronavirus. I could go on and on and I have in private conversations about the deterioration of the marketing role in organizations because folks are afraid to talk about being in marketing because that’s where the money is.

Instead, folks get lost on misguided ideas like “clicks”, “likes”, “reach”, and other terms that aren’t directly attached to money.

Our marketing efforts going forward are going to have to be heavy on revenue generation, getting people into events, and making one time customers repeat customers. For any business, you have to create and keep customers. In far too many instances, that idea is being mouthed, but not followed through on.

I say more about revenue and rethinking below. But marketing and strategy should be on the agenda for every call, meeting, and brainstorming session we are all having.

3. Australian Sports Business Is Back, But What Comes Next?

Australia has a lot of news coming out about the return of sports with the big news of the AFL’s blockbuster return on 11 June. 

While the return of sports is exciting for all of us, especially Melbourne fans like me?!

A lot of the conversation around the return of sport has revolved around will the industry contract and how will the country deal with potentially having to endure its first official recession in almost 30 years.

Hawthorne president Jeff Kennett is asking questions about how to reform the AFL’s business heading out of the pandemic, the NBL could see players leave the league due to the virus, and the A-League is having to go to a hub system to complete its fixtures.

There have been a lot of interesting things going on in Australia and New Zealand both since they’ve handled the virus very well and they are in the Southern Hemisphere.

First, we need to pay attention to how these leagues and organizations monetize. The AFL’s membership program is a pretty great example of monetization of your audience, globally.

Second, we will have to watch what happens as they head into the fall and winter and whether or not there is a snapback of the coronavirus as they head into their flu and cold season.

Third, it will be interesting to see how the Australians capitalize on the absence of sports in the States over the next few weeks since the AFL was broadcasting live to the west coast of the US before the coronavirus shut down Australia as well.

4. Ticketmaster, Refunds, and Finger Pointing:

Representatives Pascarell and Porter wrote a letter in Billboard this week, admonishing Ticketmaster’s behavior during the pandemic.

The letter from Washington was quickly followed up by one from Jared Smith, defending Ticketmaster’s practices.

Jared Smith is absolutely correct when he is explaining his points, but the first rule of crisis PR as credited to Ronald Reagan is “if you are explaining, you are losing.”

That’s where Ticketmaster finds itself along with StubHub and other companies.

I’m not saying it is right or wrong, but the pandemic has exposed the shaky financial underpinnings of a lot of businesses, including live entertainment.

Currently, Live Nation is raising around $800 million by selling off debt.

And, it was good to see that the company is thinking about experimentation heading into the back half of 2020.

From a customer point of view, every one of these examples is a stain on the industry. We’ve had StubHub getting hit heavy, early on. Ticketmaster and Live Nation are taking heat now. We’ve had mismatched refund, exchange, or compensation packages from teams all over the place around the world.

Maybe, most amazingly, I sat in on a call where people were debating ways to avoid paying back fees to customers on tickets they purchased for events that can’t happen, won’t happen, or might never happen.

Again, each of these points creates another dent in the armor of trust between industry and customer and the habit of going to shows, events, and games.

I feel a lot like a broken record here, but none of this stuff happens without customers, fans, and buyers. In an industry where there are so many unsold tickets to begin with, to expect that folks are just going to come rushing back and eat poop to do so is ridiculous.

I recognize it is an uncertain time for everyone, but the longer these refund stories stick around…the more damaging it becomes.

5. Vince McMahon and the XFL…

Well, the XFL isn’t going quietly into the night…I see.

This isn’t the kind of story that I typically find interesting, but as we are dealing with a lot of new ideas due to the pandemic, it pays to think things through differently.

With this story about Oliver Luck and Vince McMahon, there are a few things to pay attention to here.

First, Vince McMahon guaranteed Luck’s contract. I’ve had a couple of folks call me and ask me about taking on new jobs or moving after our lockdowns let up.

Basically, they are looking for advice and I think the wise decision is to make sure you get guarantees.

Second, the basis for not paying the contract is pretty weak.

The precedent that is set here if McMahon wins would be pretty awful for folks, period.

I highlight this story for a few reasons, but I think if you look at what this story highlights about the coming future of what we are dealing with in events and especially sports a couple of ideas come to mind:

1. Strategy matters and it seems like the strategy that the XFL was built on was suspect. The pandemic has highlighted this at a macro level now and I think we are going to see a renewed necessity to adjust the sales process, innovate pricing, and focus on driving attendance.

2. Pick your partners well.

3. Multiple streams of revenue, product-market fit, and testing the basic assumptions of “what everyone knows” or thinks is going to be more important than ever.

Look at the NBA, they are as “innovative” as any league in American sports and 40% of their revenue is tied up in getting fans to come to the arena. This tells you that really two revenue streams drive their entire business: TV and in-game. Something about “all your eggs in one basket” comes to mind.

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What am I up to this week?

Not a lot planned. It is the final week of 4th grade homeschooling…so once we are through that, maybe I can get back to a slightly more normal schedule.

Make sure to check me out on social media and follow along with me at www.davewakeman.com 

Please follow and like us:

Talking Tickets 15 May 2020–AFL! Bundesliga! Refunds! And, More! was originally published on Wakeman Consulting Group

[davewakeman]

Talking Tickets--1 May 2020--Refunds! Marketing! Seth Godin! And, More!

Hey! 

How is everyone holding up?

I just want to take a second to thank all of you again for being here. If you need anyone to talk with or just to bounce an idea off of, let me know. I’m here for y’all.

Prioritize your mental health and if you don’t want to listen to me, listen to Harry Winks.

If you are enjoying this newsletter, tell your friends and colleagues to sign up by visiting this link.

I’m still dealing with intermittent internet issues that hopefully can be resolved soon so I can do some more webinars and such. I will still be co-hosting the Sports Biz Happy Hour with my buddy, Ken Troupe this afternoon at 5PM EDT. So come share a drink with us and our other hardcore happy hour colleagues. We will be voting on Ken’s new profile picture for Twitter this afternoon!

Get into our Slack group as well. We talk beef, business, and BS.

To the tickets!

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1. We Will Come Out Of This Period: 

There is no doubt that folks will be at venues, cheering, dancing, and connecting sooner rather than later, but we still have a long road back.

What is great is that we continue to see a bunch of efforts from folks all over the world that are working to help educate folks and get people prepared for relaunching the ticket industry.

We Will Overcome was started by my friends, Einar and Martin, from Activity Stream and includes support from folks around the world like  Frederic Auoad, Angela Higgins, Andrew Thomas, Derek Palmer, and too many folks to list in one email.

I’ve been pretty up front about taking care of yourself and reaching out to your community for support throughout this crisis, but as we enter May, I also want to make sure that we all spend time doing some planning and setting ourselves up to be successful when things begin to return to normal.

Trust me, they will. It is just what will the return of events look like and what will the market for folk’s attention look like…that’s what we have to really think about now. And, there are a bunch of really great resources to help you think through this, here are a few:

Eric Fuller is hosting a virtual conference called “Rescue Meet” and he’s launching on May 19th with a 60-75 minute web meeting and he’s asked me to participate along with folks from Live Nation and many other industry leaders.

Ticketing Professionals Conference in Birmingham is hosting many of their speakers and this year’s presentation online now. You can check out their listings and sign up for one, many, or all of them.

The Society of London Theatre has a bunch of webinars and information that they are sharing.

INTIX continues to host weekly lunches on Wednesdays and has a bunch of resources on their dedicated landing page for Covid-19 resources.

IQ is launching a virtual panel series as well with a pretty good lineup built around a lot of music and festival content.

If there is some resource or idea you are looking to learn or find out more about, let me know and I will help you find it. We will recover and we need folks to pull together and work together to get there. 

2. What Will Things Look Like When We Return? 

The truth is, none of us know.

The article above talks about a bunch of venues in the DC area and how they are planning….and, the truth is, no one knows anything right now.

Oli Shawyer wrote about the need to be clear and thoughtful in how we think about what our future selves might look like and his analysis of the current reality is right on. Right now, we think we are going to do one thing and in the future, we are likely to find that our actions are entirely different than what we imagined we would do…or, we may just be ready to do anything besides sit at home.

We have already seen organizations adapt and change to engage with people, entertain them, and stay connected. As a friend at an iconic venue noted to me, “it is amazing how we were able to become a digital content production facility in a week.” After struggling to get the necessary investments in tech prior to the coronavirus.

The only correct answer here is that we don’t know what things will look like when more countries start opening up again and we start seeing social distancing loosen up.

I have talked to a lot of folks about the idea of social distancing within venues and it is pretty unrealistic, difficult, or not entirely financially feasible to do the large scale social distancing that has been talked about in a few places this week. Most of the time, you have to look at the sources and the angle to know if there is some bias in these pieces and some of the ones in sports definitely have the hint of someone trying to drum up demand like Scott Boras does with his notebooks on his clients.

I do think that as you prepare for the return, it is important to think through the entire experience you want to provide from start to finish, how you can better curate your event, and walk through the concerns and questions your guests are going to have.

Repeat: start by understanding the value you want to create for your guests and work from there.

3. Refunds are starting to become a little clearer now: 

MLB teams started announcing their plans for refunds and cancellations this week with the Red Sox, Cubs, and Cardinals leading the way. But it hasn’t been nearly fast enough for the people that have been left in limbo by the fact that games and events have been postponed due to the coronavirus.

And in Europe, Ligue 1 was the first major league to call it quits for the season.

Admittedly, teams and organizations have been slow to announce refund and exchange policies or they have had to adjust them because of the nature of the virus, the shutdown, and the uncertainty.

From my point of view, StubHub got killed for going first and trying to do right by their stakeholders early on when things were so crazy, but the bigger issue for the organizations around the world has been in not communicating with their customers, in many cases, at all.

As an example, I had conversations with folks in several cities over the last week from around the country and these corporate ticket buyers told me that in most cases no one has called to talk with them about what is going on right now with their tickets, with updates, or just to check on them…from my conversations that included teams in most of the major sports. If that is widespread, that’s unconscionable and it will be tough for teams to ever overcome.

You may not know anything, but you need to at least communicate enough with your customers to let them know that you can’t give them an answer yet. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and imagine how you would feel.

It is this lack of communication and the changing nature of the policies that some organizations have been rolling out that has likely led to these lawsuits being filed this week…

In England, Brighton and Hove Albion announced their plans for next season as a hopeful sign that football will return sooner rather than later…I’m hoping that this season of the Premier League can be completed because if not Spurs will be out of European competition next year and I don’t like that.

The NFL is looking to announce its schedule next week and there is a bit of a conversation around whether or not putting out the schedule and selling tickets is a wise decision.

What do y’all think?

For me, it would be pretty risky for the NFL to start selling tickets…especially understanding what the current environment with refunds looks like, but what do I know? (Shameless plug…I was quoted in SBJ this week.)

Maybe, we can all just buy tickets for our cardboard representations?

4. Marketing, Community, and Connection Will Matter More Than Ever:

This is awesome because I get to write about Seth Godin in my ticket newsletter.

The backstory is that Seth put out a manifesto called Stop Stealing Dreams about 8 years ago and he challenged folks that read his stuff and follow him to find ways to share the content. I’d just bought a new iPad and was testing out GarageBand, so I did the first audio version of the manifesto.

With that, I got my first dose of internet fame! Now, look at me?!

The podcast and the article that introduce the podcast are totally worth the hour, even if you aren’t in the arts.

Seth hits on some ideas that have been at the core of my work in marketing and tickets over the years as well like community and connection.

I was on the internet with Frederic Aouad from Stay 22 on Thursday and we talked about the need to be better at marketing because the world that we will return to is going to be more competitive than ever and the need to give people a clear reason to come visit is going to be more important than ever before.

I’ve been writing and speaking about marketing and strategy for about a decade and what I found was that folks know they need to be better marketers and want to sell more stuff, but the “way we’ve always done things” is a tough competitor to change.

Now, we find that it isn’t possible to go back to the way things have always been done. We are seeing organizations change in a week or less, rethink their value, and brainstorm tons of new solutions…in tickets and everywhere.

The fact is that marketing is magic. That’s where the money is. That’s where the stories are. That’s where you can build relationships with your audience that can take you all over the world and to places you’d never imagine. (I’m speaking for myself here.)

But being good at marketing is tough.

You want a jumping-off point, start here with Rory Sutherland.

But all of us are going to need to sharpen our marketing knives because we are going to need them in the coming months and years. And, just giving into the tactical aspects of marketing isn’t likely to win you the business you need or the support you have to have to be successful.

I could go on all day about marketing and the need to market more effectively, but I won’t today.

5. Here are a few things that I loved or thought were interesting this week that don’t have a common theme:

First, how about that Post Malone fundraising concert where he covered Nirvana songs. I thought it was pretty good. And, he’s raised some serious coin for the WHO.

Every morning I read a newsletter called, “The Daily Coach” from George Raveling. Coach Raveling coached Harold Miner at USC and was instrumental in getting Michael Jordan to sign with Nike. The newsletter on Thursday was all about leadership and the first two points are super important right now.

The Mayor of London announces a fund to support the arts and culture. We need similar things in the States, but I’m not holding out on that one.

Live Nation is being sued for monopolizing ticket sales.  To quote Scott Galloway, it is good to invest in unregulated monopolies. This will be interesting to watch because the government has approved the deals that Live Nation has made and antitrust enforcement as a way to increase competition in the market hasn’t been a priority for a long time. So we will see. I’ll be watching it.

J Cobb shared the video of the world’s worst Old Fashioned and the redemption story that followed. This is fun and maybe that’s what I will drink this afternoon at happy hour.

Mark Pollard is an advertising strategist in NYC and he came up with the idea for a summer camp to help folks focus on their strategy. I’m going to talk with Mark about this and maybe as we work our way out of this shutdown, we can do something similar for marketing and selling tickets. I mean, 100 days for like $30 with 100 new exercises. That’s like the price of a book! 

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What am I up to this week?

You know, teaching fourth grade…poorly.

I’ll be in the home office all week, if you want to chat, let me know. My Internet connection is still a bit iffy due to my blown cable box, but the McGyver move I pulled to get it to work is genius. So I’m holding off on a lot of things that need the technology boost to produce them. 

Please follow and like us:

Talking Tickets–1 May 2020–Refunds! Marketing! Seth Godin! And, More! was originally published on Wakeman Consulting Group

[davewakeman]

Talking Tickets 24 April 2020--Leadership! NCAA! MJ! And, More!

Hey There! 

Thanks for being here again this week. I know we are all dealing with challenging circumstances and I’m glad that I can be part of providing you some ideas to help move forward!

If you are enjoying this newsletter, tell your friends and colleagues to sign up by visiting this link.

Right now, to maintain my sanity, I’m working on a new ebook with my friends at Booking Protect that builds off of our previous one about what matters in tickets. This time we are focusing on helping businesses in sports, theatre, concerts, and entertainment gain ideas to recover from the coronavirus.

If you are interested in sharing ideas or want to hear from particular folks, reply to this email.

And, don’t forget happy hour this evening hosted by me and Ken Troupe at 5 PM EDT. Ken will drink some amazing beer and I will drink some whiskey. You can drink whatever you want or nothing at all. But come hang out and chat with some really smart ticketing and sports business folks, and me too!

To the tickets!

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1. The business of college athletics and big college sports is exposed and vulnerable right now:

This story from the Washington Post is interesting because it draws a clearer picture of where the NCAA’s head has been at the last few years and how easy it is to take actions that are good in the short term, but not in the long term.

I had my friend, Tammi Gaw, on my podcast a few months back to talk about image rights for student-athletes and the heart of the NCAA’s justification for doling out the money they had in reserve in case a tournament was canceled is athletes not wanting to play because they feel like they should be reaping some of the benefits of these big contracts.

Some of the reasoning here is a little flimsy at best…like just because the organization had a bunch of money in reserve, this made lawyers more attracted to the NCAA and filing suits against them being the gist of most of this.

I know many lawyers and I’m guessing they were drawn to the billions a year in revenue as much as the reserve fund.

But I imagine that the NCAA’s business practices are going to be under the limelight for the next several months as we work to reopen the country. Right now 75% of ADs think we are going to see a delay in the college football season. This seems like a reasonable assessment of the current situation, especially if you pay attention to the challenges other countries are facing reopening their economies and everyday lives and there are options possible to make football season still happen.

My lady shared this article from the Sunday paper with me and said that it mirrors what a number of Fortune 500 firms have mentioned as a possible scenario.

The NCAA is an interesting example as we go forward for a number of reasons that we should all be paying attention to, but I’ll stick with 3 today:

1. These are college kids, not professionals and if you aren’t paying these kids, how are you going to ask them to risk infection for college athletics. 2. Knowing the above is true, this likely heightens the tension over name and image rights. 3. Colleges were facing attendance struggles already, what will be the long-term impact of the coronavirus fallout? 

2. No matter what comes next, we are all going to pitch in and work together: 

Over the last month or so, we have all seen the stories about challenges to the industry and actions that folks are taking to survive or deal with the crisis like furloughs, offering coupons with added value to protect cash flow, creating groups to connect with each other, and much more.

I like Don’s message in the link above because I think recovery and relaunching from the pandemic and the fall out of having so many events postponed, canceled, or held without fans in the seats isn’t going to be some quick fix and it isn’t going to be a situation where you can just go back to business as usual.

That’s why it is important that folks all come together to figure out what they want the business to look like in the future, how folks will add value in the context of the entertainment business, and how to drive demand and revenue while being customer-focused.

Right now, you should be engaging with the stuff that Pollstar is doing, the stuff INTIX is doing, the stuff the ALSD is doing, and on and on it goes. Or, if you are so inclined and you have some new ideas or concepts you want to explore and you don’t know where they fit, create your own group or network. That’s what I did with my webinars, Slack channel, and this newsletter.

Go search out the positive, no matter what!

On this topic, I got an email earlier this week, and the person emailing talked about “the uncertainty”. To be fair, the follow up to the talk of uncertainty was that they were going to do something anyway.

This is my challenge to you, I don’t ask a lot of you but I challenge you to find one proactive action or idea that is outside of just treading water to take each day. If you’ve already been doing that, awesome!

I want everyone to be moving forward, even a little bit right now so that when things do start to come back to life, you are all already making forward progress.

Need help? Reply to this email and I will help you brainstorm an idea or two.

3. We are all still up in the air about what comes next for live events:

I love it when folks take examples from different industries and situations and apply them to new situations or different industries.

I’ve been calling for that kind of thinking in the world of selling sports tickets here in the States for years.

I don’t know that I’ve watched Margin Call, but I might now. I watched Harley Quinn the other night, no movie can be worse than that.

Tim brings up some really good points.

We definitely have had our eyes opened to some pretty fundamental flaws in the business models of concerts, festivals, sports, theatre, and other live experiences.

A few years back, I wrote a piece about the 10 biggest challenges facing the performing arts. It always amazes me that it has been the most widely read piece on my blog each month since I wrote it and it isn’t even close.

In reading Tim’s piece and thinking about putting together this week’s newsletter, I revisited the post to see if anything was missing or outdated. Strangely, there are no references to the coronavirus but it could be a good roadmap for us to think up ideas on how we all lead the recovery of the live event industry.

Tim has a quote in the piece that talks about how the entertainment business is in the most perilous position in America. I’d say the world right now, but, okay, America.

What this means is that we have to really focus on the 3 phases that we are going to go through:

* Phase 1: Now until we get out of lockdown and some events like sports are able to proceed with no crowds. (Short term) * Phase 2: From the start of “made for TV” events until we start opening events up to folks again with, I think, substantial social distancing in the near term. * Phase 3: When we can get back to the ability to throw events with big crowds.

Each of these phases will require thoughtfulness around storytelling, strategy, marketing, community building, and selling.

Some of the concepts that were secondary or weren’t getting the proper attention or weren’t being innovated enough are likely to be more important now like community building, marketing, and storytelling. Because we are going to need to pull folks closer to us and keep people engaged in our artists, teams, and performances in ways that we haven’t had to previously.

This is also going to mean that many of us are going to have to innovate our revenue strategies.

As I find myself repeating constantly, pay attention to other locations and industries to see how they are handling this and what they are doing.

We are already seeing many performing arts organizations innovating around delivering art through virtual performances. Sports organizations outside of the US have done a much better job of keeping a community feeling about them and giving fans a way to be a part of their team and spend money no matter where in the world they are: hello Tottenham Hotspur and Melbourne FC!

And, there’s a great book about marketing called Everything I Know About Business I Learned From The Grateful Dead. 

Or, you could look at the fan club model of someone like Pearl Jam. (Granted, maybe I will write the fan fiction version of the above book and write it about all the business lessons I’ve learned from Pearl Jam.)

The reality is people will come back. It isn’t a matter of if, only when. People have gathered since the dawn of man! So don’t listen to the folks telling you folks will never come back, they are wrong.

That doesn’t mean you can take their attention for granted though.

4. Michael Jordan can still draw eyeballs:

I watched the first two parts, I loved it. I tried to buy the special release of the Jordans, I missed them.

I love MJ.

He was one of my three favorite athletes coming up:

Michael Marino John Smoltz

6.1 million folks tuned in to watch on Sunday night as well. It was the most-watched documentary in ESPN’s history.

But I think the number deserves a little context to illustrate the environment live entertainment exists in and I think the numbers of this documentary likely help illustrate this point better than ever.

The average viewership of a show I’ve only heard of in passing, God Friended Me, averages 6.2 million viewers.

With a pandemic going on, all the buzz from folks saying they’d kill for any kind of sports content, and the season finale of The Walking Dead being postponed due to the coronavirus…I’d have guessed that the viewer numbers would have been much higher.

Just as we’ve been thinking about events coming back and when fans will be back in the door, we have to recognize that we are not our market. And that everything we think people are thinking about and paying attention to the exact same things we are and that isn’t true.

I wish I had bookmarked the tweet that said something along the lines that “this MJ documentary is going to challenge the Super Bowl”.

3  points here:

1. Don’t make assumptions based on your own preferences. This will be more important going forward because I’m sure that most folks are going to be a little less certain about the safety and the security of going to an event than any of us might be, especially at first.

2. The market for folk’s attention is crowded and even during a pandemic, the most famous athlete of all time signing off on one of the most highly anticipated documentaries ever, could not even outdraw a bad CBS sitcom. Though the Global Citizen concert did better with over 20 million folks watching. This just means we have to reinforce our thinking around the entire competitive landscape we are dealing with when we offer our events and we ask people to come to spend time with us.

3. I’m entirely read to eat my shoe depending on the numbers from the NFL draft last night.

Also, maybe I should write a sitcom!

5. The CoronaVirus is putting leadership on display, good or bad: 

I feel like the NHL and Gary Bettman have handled the coronavirus crisis pretty well. They’ve been clear in their communication, open with their plans, and thoughtful in the way that they’ve taken all of their stakeholder’s concerns into their decision making.

In Australia, Rugby Australia’s first female CEO stepped down this week due to losing the confidence of the board. The interesting thing here is that the organization has had a fair share of scandal and poor performance over the last decade or so, leading a few stories I saw to ask the question: “Do women executives have to meet a higher standard?”

Endeavor is cutting staff and pay during the coronavirus and this shouldn’t be surprising. When they had to cut their IPO, we got a look at the books and they weren’t pretty.

I could go on and on because I feel like leadership has been on display, good and bad throughout this crisis. And, we continue to see people step up like the Padres, who are committing to pay their staff through October.

I’ll leave you with this…leadership matters. My monthly column for the Project Management Institute that comes out next week is about leadership and I think again we are seeing the value of leaders.

We are also seeing how much damage bad leaders can do as well…but that’s a story for a different day!

—————————————————————————————————————-

What am I up to this week?

I’m home!

I’m having some technical issues around losing power due to falling trees in my neighborhood and that caused my cable and internet box to blow. So until 30 April, I’m definitely on limited internet access because Verizon is not allowing their service technicians into homes.

So no webinars this week.

I’m writing and blogging though and I’ll keep posting old webinars to the podcast stream when I have the signal to do so.

I’ve got a new white paper with 101 strategic questions for relaunching your business coming your way in the next few days as well.

Want to chat or discuss an idea, let me know. I can totally talk on the phone. 

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Talking Tickets 24 April 2020–Leadership! NCAA! MJ! And, More! was originally published on Wakeman Consulting Group

[davewakeman]

Talking Tickets 20 March 2020--What A Week?

Hey! 

Where do we even start this week?

That was something, wasn’t it?

How are all of y’all holding up? You can always email me, call, or text me. I’m here. My cell is +1 917 705 6301. I also WhatsApp! Don’t feel like you are working through this complex time alone…we are all in this together.

I’ll probably spend more time here than I will with the stories this week, but I think that’s okay. Writing a newsletter about the business of entertainment and tickets in the week that the whole business shuts down isn’t a lot of fun. But I’m grateful for every one of you that allows me to come and visit with you each Friday.

Someone shared a tweet with me earlier in the week, mentioning that this is likely to be a defining moment in the way that your kids remember you. I posted a thread on the Twitter about this.

But to restate a few ideas here this morning:

1. It is tough for all of us right now. But don’t go through it alone. You have friends and colleagues, people need people. And, I know the tough part of this virus thing is the social distancing thing…but that’s important too. But if you need someone, call, text, email, but don’t go it alone.

2. As tough as things are right now and as dark as it seems, try to focus on the things you can control and the things that you can find positive out of this experience. It is tough to do, but take a moment to catch your breath and give yourself room to think. I’ve only ever screwed things up when I’ve run too quickly into the next thing out of panic. In the next week or so as I figure out what the timeline of this pandemic looks like and when we might possibly start to see economic activity come, I’ll start putting together some webinars, chats, and other ways that we can lean on each other to figure out what comes next.

3. Find something to distract yourself from all of the news. The constant barrage of cable news, Twitter, and other media will drive you nuts. I’m fortunate that we have a nice backyard and live on a street where there is basically not many folks around, so the boy and I have been doing soccer drills. I’ve also picked up my favorite book of all time, Underworld, again. Also, here are a couple of concert bootlegs for you to remind you how awesome live music is:

The National at the Sydney Opera House Pearl Jam at Fenway Park in 2018 Wilco’s 25th Anniversary Concert

You pick your own, but just find something to take you out of your own head for a moment.

BTW, I put together a Slack Channel for folks in tickets, sports, entertainment, and such to connect, chat, and just have a place for a little bit of community. Go in there, find the area that best fits you and connect.

I’m doing a little sports business happy hour Google Hangout today with my friend, Ken Troupe, at 430 PM EST. I did a happy hour for St Patrick’s Day at the last minute to test the format, it works and it is likely a good way to break the monotony of the day.

————————————————————————————————————

1. What comes next? 

I really liked the above LinkedIn post because I had been struggling with what to say to my friends, colleagues, and clients.

I’m certain all of us have struggled with our thoughts, feelings, and direction this week.

But Alan’s post really helped me to clarify my thinking.

What is next?

I’m not 100% sure. People keep telling me, “live is going to roar back.”

But I’m not so sure. Someone pointed out to me that many markets never recovered after the 2008 financial crisis.

Live Nation lost 2/3 of its market value in a month. And, a lot of companies are having a hard time right now…okay, all companies. 

Michael Billington writes up a really good reminder of the power of the arts to help us make sense of the world we live in that I want to hold close to me and my thinking as we move forward over the next few weeks and months.

As often happens, I’ve turned to re-reading Peter Drucker. I’m working back through, Managing In A Time Of Great Change. 

What I love about Drucker is how he focuses on taking action in the present to create the future.

We are discussing the book in the Slack channel, but I’m curious to hear from all of y’all about where your heads are and what you are thinking about right now.

Another resource I came across, TicketManager put together a guide for their clients in troubled times that might be useful to some of y’all.

2. The entertainment business comes together: 

Around the industry, people are coming together to try and support their partners and the live entertainment industry.

QCue starts a collaboration initiative; Stay22 drops commissions; and, Spektrix offers a tool to convert refunds to donations.

INTIX has started a COVID 19 forum and more organizations are doing things.

Goldstar is turning on all of its promotional activities to help its partners.

If you or someone is doing something to support the industry, let me know and I will share it in Slack, in the newsletter, and on social media.

3. In the short term, leagues, teams, and owners are trying to do right by hourly and part-time workers: 

Marc Cuban led the way with his comments right after the NBA suspended the season. But we’ve seen a lot of teams, owners, players, and others jump in to support the season and part-time workers that make the gameday experience go for so many.

MLB commits $30M to ballpark employees and pays minor league players until April 8.

4. The NBA was better prepared than the federal government:

This story is wild! Especially when you combine it with all the great reporting coming out on Thursday about the Senate ignoring warnings but telling their donors and selling stocks to protect themselves while poo-pooing the danger to the American people. And, as I was finishing this, here’s a thread with links to all of the Congress critters sales of stocks after the January meeting where the issues at play with the virus were laid out.

I mean, I’ve been one of the most widely read project management writers in the world for about 8 years now and I know that one of the biggest things you can do is have a risk plan in place. So to see the NBA’s risk plan is amazing.

I do think we all need to think about putting risk plans in place for the future.

5. There are a few bright spots: 

South Korea’s basketball league is making the first moves towards restarting.

Marble racing is totally a thing!

The CoronaChoir made the news. I’m a fan of alliterations.

Chelsea offers up Stamford Bridge for NHS use and Ronaldo offers up his hotels and pays medical staff.

And, if you don’t mind the time difference, you can get your fix of AFL and NRL games. (Go Dees!)

I’m excited to watch some footie, but just the site of all these examples of folks contributing, moving forward, or innovating…it helps let us know that things will get better.

I hope I’ve struck as much balance as possible this week. It wasn’t easy to write this one.

—————————————————————————————————————-

What am I up to this week?

I’m taking care of the boy and supporting my lady as we try to figure out how to deal with social distancing and the measures that are being put in place to help slow the progress of the coronavirus.

I will get back to writing and podcasting next week. Let me know if you have any guests or topics you want to learn about. Keep an eye on DaveWakeman.com and I’ll keep adding stuff there as I can as well.  

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Talking Tickets 20 March 2020–What A Week? was originally published on Wakeman Consulting Group

[davewakeman]

Talking Tickets 31 January 2020

Hey There!

Thanks for being here again this week. If you are enjoying this newsletter, tell your friends and colleagues to sign up by visiting this link.

Yesterday saw the release of “What Matters In Tickets Now!” an ebook that I put together in partnership with my friends at Booking Protect.

I can say that this is one of the coolest things we’ve pulled together so far: 40 perspectives on the world of tickets and how to make more sales! It is great!

In conjunction with the launch of the ebook, we are putting together a special webinar with key ideas, takeaways, and action items to make the ideas from the ebook take hold in your organization. The webinar will be Wednesday, 26 February, and we will have a landing page to sign up ready for next week’s email, but if you want to make certain you get hooked up…reply to this email.

To the tickets!

————————————————————————————————————

1. Kobe Bryant passed away in a helicopter crash in the Los Angeles area:

Like all of us, Kobe Bryant had a complex history. And, one of the more mature things I’ve learned over the years is the understanding that no matter how you feel on a topic, your feelings are valid. So I am cognizant of the people celebrating his life and pointing out his failings, all of those feelings are valid.

I mention that because I don’t want to make a values-based judgment on this story, but I did want to discuss this because I think it highlights a few big points about what sports does for us and why sports and live events matter:

First, this story reflects the power of community that live events foster. I heard Bill Simmons talk about how Kobe’s death feels like it is hanging over the community. This is in death, but if you look through history, you’ve seen how sports also has pulled communities together, if only for a short time like when the Caps won the Stanley Cup. 

Second, this story points to the irrational nature of our likes, dislikes, and fandom. As many announcers pointed out, most people never met Kobe, so they didn’t know him, but they felt a real pain at his loss. While, I’m looking at this through the lens of Kobe, this equally applies to any athlete, team, or star. I mean, I have no rational reason for disliking the Oklahoma City Thunder, but because I was a Supersonics season ticket holder when I was a young adult, the ache of the loss of the Sonics is still there. 

Finally, it reflects the power of shared experiences. Sometimes, in a world where everything feels like it is on-demand or at our fingertips, we can miss shared experiences and that should be a lesson that we apply to the way we present events. 

2. The Super Bowl is on Sunday and the death of the NFL seems to have been a myth:

The challenges and opportunities that the NFL are looking at over the next few years likely deserve its own series of blog posts, but right now you can’t help but respect the turnaround that they NFL and its teams have managed.

$16B in revenue, rating increases, new stars, and more.

The article above does raise a lot of good questions about where the business will go next with gambling, chord cutting, and changing tastes of modern consumers.

But as we head into the Super Bowl, we can learn a lot from the NFL like how consistency and focus can help you weather a storm; how to monetize an audience; and how to respond to drops in business.

Plus, this year’s Super Bowl is an especially hot ticket! 

My question to you is who do you have in the game and what’s the score? I’ll come up with some prize for the person that picks the winner and is closest to the score. I don’t know what it will be, but we can figure out something fun…maybe buy you a drink or something.

3. StubHub could face legal action in the UK for deceptive pricing:

I’m not an anti-trust lawyer, but my lady is…so I don’t know the legal ramifications of the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority’s investigation into the merger of StubHub and Viagogo, but I can guess stories like this don’t help the merger in any market that is investigating it.

Unless you live in the United States where anti-trust enforcement hasn’t really been very strict for 30+ years and the rule of law seems to be optional in a lot of cases lately.

The context of a story likely helps a lot of you:

In the UK, the secondary market isn’t as big of a part of the ecosystem as it is in the United States. While resale has become more common over the last few years, professional trading is often frowned upon.

My argument to the traders that I am in touch with has often been that if you want to work in resale and be a valued part of the system, you have to work to constantly improve your value, deliver something differentiated from the primary market, and be above board in your business practices.

So a story like this hits right at the heart of what folks dislike about professional “touts” and the secondary market in general.

Add this to the public’s distrust of Viagogo and you can see that this isn’t helpful to any ongoing investigation of their merger or further or greater public acceptance of the secondary market in the UK or other countries around the world.

4. Live Nation’s updated consent decree is filed:

There was a few things going on with Live Nation this week that probably were worth paying attention to:

First, the consent decree. The new filing shows that Live Nation and Ticketmaster broke the decree on, at least, 6 occasions.

Live Nation pushes back talking about 6 alleged instances in around 5,000 deals.

A new $1M penalty for each transgression, a deal cut quickly, and dropped at a time totally designed for people not to notice it!

It looks like a victory for Live Nation to me!

Second, Live Nation is building a war chest to acquire more businesses. 

There is a lot of consolidation in the ticketing technology area going on right now and I don’t know if or when there will be some sort of correction.

What all of this massive amount of consolidation signals to me is that there is room for smaller and nimble competitors to swoop in and win a lot of business because as these companies grow larger, it is going to be incredibly difficult for these companies to service everyone effectively.

Finally, Live Nation completes the acquisition of the UK’s largest concert promoter. 

Over the next few years, this will bear watching because industry practices and consumer protection laws are much different in the UK and how this impacts the distribution of shows and Ticketmaster’s ability to win more business in the UK bears watching.

5. The CoronaVirus is causing troubles for sports business:

A few weeks back I had Greg Turner come on the podcast to share a bunch of stuff about China with us. Due to the nature of the Chinese internet and the way that they control access to websites and other things, that conversation was corrupted due to some technical difficulties and we figured out a way to rerecord our conversation to make sure we could have a proper chat.

On this new conversation we talked about a bunch of stuff, but we got into the conversation about the virus and how it is causing the cancellation of the X Games, the World Indoor Athletic Championships, and the Chinese Basketball Association is postponing play during the crisis.

Greg has a lot of insight into the situation in China, but seeing the AFL’s conversation around their annual China game continued to raise these issues for me and begged a couple of questions:

What’s the long-term impact of a virus or outbreak like this?

How do we prepare for these types of outbreaks when we can’t and don’t know when they will happen? 

What would you do if something like this started during a big event like the Olympics? 

These are complex questions and they mirror in many ways the questions I raised when considering the impact of climate change on events a few weeks back.

—————————————————————————————————————-

What am I up to this week?

I’m posting a few podcasts including Episode 100. Who will my special guest be? You’ll have to listen to find out!

I recaped INTIX on my blog and TicketNews as well.

I’m in DC this week! If you are in town, let me know.

My travel schedule is starting to take shape and I can confirm I’ll be in London from 10-16 April with a trip to the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium at the top of my must-do list!

I’m also planning a series of workshops for the spring in London, Manchester, and Edinburgh. The details on this are still being mapped out, but if you are in the area of one of these places and want to be kept in the loop on these special events, reply to this email.

I’m working with some sponsors that will enable me to offer tickets to these events on an invitation basis. So, get your interest into me and let me know I’m looking at the right places to take my show on the road. 

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Talking Tickets 31 January 2020 was originally published on Wakeman Consulting Group

[davewakeman]

Talking Tickets: 24 January 2020--Back From INTIX

Hey!

Well, I’m sorry for the delay in today’s newsletter! I didn’t get back from INTIX until late and I couldn’t get everything pulled together as quickly as normal.

To the standing room only crowd to see our panel on Tuesday and to the hearty souls that stuck around all day yesterday, from me, Simon, Gabe, Frederic, Guislaine, Angela, and Martin…thank you!

Next week, I’m home in Washington, DC. I’m planning a few new things around the 100th episode of “The Business of Fun” podcast which should be out next week!

To the tickets!

—————————————————————————————————

1. Pearl Jam’s fan club on-sale and Verified Fan on-sale hit some rough spots:

Lots of folks have been asking me about this situation knowing that I’m a Pearl Jam fan and I worked on this campaign involving Ed, which you can still donate to.

A couple of things about this situation:

1. The secondary market has been going after this Pearl Jam tour and I have to say I think it is the wrong hill to die on.

I’m a known advocate of the secondary market, but I think picking the battle about transparency, transfer, and other issues against an artist that has cultivated a fan club and fan base that almost guarantees sell-outs on every tour is a tough sell.

2. I’ve talked to some folks in box office operations and management and while they tell me that using Verified Fan does help manage the on-sale process, the process still seems to be filled with hiccups and challenges that are ripe for highlighting, add to the perception of deception, and frustrate consumers.

3. I still need a pair for MSG!

2. StubHub is in the news:

There were a few stories involving StubHub this week and I can’t say that the timing for these things is really that good.

In fact, heading into finalizing their merger with Viagogo, these stories likely can’t be good for that!

First, you can now finance your ticket purchases on StubHub after the company partners with Affirm.

To me, this feels like one of those situations where just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

Interest rates between 10-30% are given, but I have a suspicion that in most cases that a lot of those folks using the service are going to find their interest more towards the 30% interest rate.

My man, Corey Leff, also shared some information in his Early Entrantsnewsletter about layoffs at StubHub of up to 100 folks with an analysis that Viagogo may have overpaid and that the deal may not go through as quickly as thought.

(I’m not sure where you would have heard that before, but if you go to your Talking Tickets archives or your DaveWakeman.com blog posts…I bet you you can find some stuff!)

To me, this is the law of unintended consequences in action and we are likely to see higher fees on StubHub and other actions taken to balance their books.

These things combined may make customers view the platform differently and supplier as well. So it will be worth paying attention to consumer behavior and the way that the platform interacts with suppliers, professionals and amateurs.

3. Treating the root cause of tickets and attendance: 

I linked to a Medium post from Matt at True Tickets because I am a big fan of talking about the root causes of issues that we are dealing with.

In my panel at INTIX, I came to the conclusion that in many cases strategy isn’t discussed enough in the ticket industry or strategy doesn’t trickle down to folks nearly often enough.

What this means is that in many cases, the solutions that are implemented ease the short-term pain of a problem.

In Matt’s piece, he offers up the call-to-action to question our assumptions and try to solve the root cause of many of these issues.

And, I second that call-to-action and I think you’ll have noticed that theme come up quite regularly over the last few weeks and months on the podcast, in the newsletter, and on the blog.

My question to you is what assumptions are you making about your business? Or, what are some of the big issues that you are working to resolve? Let me know!

4. INTIX was big this year: 

Maureen Andersen tells me that this is the biggest crowd at INTIX in many years and I don’t know the exact numbers, but somewhere around 1,400 or 1,500 was the number that I heard at certain points.

Like I said in the intro, thank you to the hundreds of folks that came to my sessions, said hello, visited me at the Booking Protect stand, and made my trip to NYC a success. (Spoiler: if anyone wants me to come to NYC for anything, I’m there!)

I’ll have a recap up this afternoon on my site and with Ticket News. But Eric Fuller recaps the conference from his point of view and I’d offer this newsletter up as a way for you to share with me the things you felt were important about INTIX this year.

5. Supporting the arts is good for business:

My friend, Christina, is the director of partnerships at the NY Philharmonic. Which is a phenomenal institution!

We were talking about the challenge of funding the arts and ensuring that people are exposed to the arts.

I like this piece because it highlights some of the benefits that businesses accrue when funding the arts.

As I discussed with Christina, I think the big challenge is that folks are giving more money to fewer organizations or the same money but spreading it less widely.

But understanding that those organizations can benefit and that you have unique value provides an opportunity to do really cool things.

I guess the reason I dropped this into my newsletter this week is that being in NYC this week reminded me of a few things:

* How great NYC is! * How powerful the experiences and human connections we can create in the arts and entertainment are. * How much larger our impact can be if we spend time to focus on the people we are trying to serve.

I’ll close with this…I was chatting to Michael L from the New Amsterdam box office yesterday. Michael was one of the guys that showed me how a Broadway box office works and he said, “we are old-school guys and we want to create magic for folks.”

It is true and it is powerful and I was reminded of that this week and I guess I just wanted to share that with you!

See you next week! —————————————————————————————————————- What I’m Up To: 

I’ll have some new podcast episodes up over the next day or two. Then episode 100 is coming out and I’m going to have some special things in there and talk about my experience doing the podcast and use it to push forward in some new directions!

If you like this newsletter and read it regularly…please share it with your colleagues. I’ve grown it organically using only your support and your willingness to share it with others.

Keep an eye on my website and blog!

BTW, for those of you following along…I did pay my bet to Corey Gibbs on the National Championship Game. We had two beautiful bottles of wine at Bar Boulud and Marea. No pictures were taken, but that’s because we had two bottles of wine! 

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Talking Tickets: 24 January 2020–Back From INTIX was originally published on Wakeman Consulting Group

[davewakeman]

20 Takeaways From the 2020 INTIX Conference In NYC

I’m back from INTIX 2020 and everything is bigger and better in NYC!

I’m not sure of the final numbers, but I think over 1,400 people attended this year’s conference in midtown Manhattan and I met hundreds of folks on the trade show floor, in sessions, and wandering around.

In fact, I’m still a little dazed from all the connecting and networking.

But I wanted to share with y’all a few takeaways from this year’s conference. In fact, being 2020…why not 20?

1. There was a large international presence: 

I know that making sure all the world’s ticket folks have a home has been the goal of INTIX’s board and CEO, Maureen Andersen, for the last few years and this year’s conference really delivered a much greater international flavor.

I met folks from Iceland, Denmark, England, Central Europe, Canada, and 6 Australians!

2. Leading panels of all international guests helped stimulate new conversations:

I never mentioned this during my trip to INTIX, but I managed to create two panels that had almost all voices that brought an international flavor and it really brought a great dynamic to our conversations.

I never mentioned it to the panelists that the prerequisite was having an international background but Simon, Angela, Martin, Gabe, Guislaine, and Frederic…surprise, you were part of my desire to bring a more diverse and international perspective to my conversations!

3. Danny Frank can throw a party! 

Many people came up to me to talk about the Wednesday night celebration. One person exclaimed, “Danny Frank can throw a party!”

Maybe the Anaheim committee can top Wednesday’s performance?

4. Venue tours were a big hit:

The tour of Radio City Musical Hall was especially popular with folks.

Having been in Radio City and around Radio City a lot of times over the years, hearing how special the experience was for folks reminded me that this is a good lesson for all of us to remain conscious that something that is old hat to us could be a once in a lifetime or first time thing for someone else.

5. Strategy passed many people’s lips:

Strategy and the impact of having the right strategy and communicating it up and down the organization came up at more points than I’d ever heard before.

I was happy because I think making sure that you have a strong strategy that is communicated up and down the organization is likely a real key to success.

6. The keynotes were both big hits:

I’m not sure if it was the first time someone sang to open INTIX, but if it was…it shouldn’t be the last time.

And, after Jimmy Roberts, several people mentioned to me that, “I’m not even a golfer and I can use…”

Which I think is the highlight of a good speaker.

7. The backdrop of NYC added a sense of excitement that people really enjoyed:

Opening night on Broadway was great!

Having the chance to hang out on Broadway with the lights and action of Broadway below everyone was a really great way to open the show and for many people another once in a lifetime experience.

8. Presenting in Manhattan gave folks a thrill:

On more than one occasion, I saw folks tweet or post to social media about their “opening” or “playing” Broadway for the first time.

9. The conversations between the primary and the secondary market are continuing to become more productive:

Nothing happens in a straight line, but I saw a lot more productive conversations taking place between and about the primary market and their relationship with the secondary market than I have before.

That can only benefit the customer because I think both sides of the market can learn from each other.

10. People really have listened and learned from “The Business of Fun”: 

Allow me to plug myself, but I am always amazed and grateful at the response that people give me about listening to my podcast and learning from it.

Over the last several days, I had people reference my conversation with Stephen Glicken from Project Admission, Tony Knopp from Ticketmanager, and many others. And, the fact that people listen and learn from all these great people is

I also had one person have a friend of mine asked if he could get her on the podcast! The answer was, “yes!” Duh!

11. Never forget people:

I was chatting with my friend, Michael L from the New Amsterdam and we got to talking about old school ticket selling.

(Spoiler: he’s one of the folks that taught me about Broadway and Broadway box offices many years ago.)

Our conversation reminded me how important people are and to try and quote Michael, “we are just around to make a little magic.”

12. There were a lot of new faces and voices:

I know that my friend Jacob from FC Copenhagen made his debut. Samuel Biscoe from the UK was there and speaking for the first time, I think. And, I had Frederic Auoad from Stay 22 on my panel.

And, scrolling through the agenda, I think newer voices were a theme.

Which is great.

The more voices, the more diverse the industry and the ideas that have a chance to take hold.

13. So many great tools and technologies are available:

To piggyback and the conversation with Michael L, the technology is a tool to help us do more of the human stuff, but the technology has shot forward and gives us greater freedom than ever before.

I can’t highlight everyone or everything, but Sean Kelly and his team at Vatic have produced some really strong results using dynamic pricing in the arts.

I love the work that Einar and Martin are doing with Activity Stream and talking about the “total marketing” concept.

The things that Rob Walters was sharing with me about Patron Base struck me as cool and exciting, especially as he works to penetrate new markets that they’ve never entered before.

14. Catching up with old friends and learning about their new projects was always great:

I never get to see the full Audience View team at once, but as they were rolling out their rebrand it was fun to catch all of them at once.

The rebrand looks good and finding out that those are light beams and not rock fingers was slightly disappointing, but I still enjoyed learning more about what they are working on now.

It was also great catching up with the team at Today Tix. They were awesome to me when I was going to Australia for the Ticketing Professionals Conference in Sydney in November. And, learning more about how they are expanding their services was great because I see how impactful their work with Harry Potter has been in Australia.

15. If you go, participate:

This is less an observation about this year’s INTIX than it is a general suggestion about the industry. But take the opportunity to be a part of a committee or take action.

I can say without a doubt that my participation has been rewarding both personally and professionally.

I’ve been a part of the technology committee at INTIX.

My good friend, Cat Spencer, is on the board.

I asked Derek Palmer about this while we were in Sydney together…

Everyone agreed, giving back is amazing and makes the value of membership and connection more powerful.

16. There was plenty of bacon at this year’s annual breakfast:

This joke only hits if you were at the 2019 conference in Texas, but there was no bacon in Dallas.

So having the right amount of bacon was one of the NYC committee’s top priorities.

17. INTIX is focused on being a year-round organization: 

From my conversation with members of the board, I know that a priority is to continue to work to be wherever tickets are being talked about.

One big thing that I would encourage all of you to look at is to check out your local chapters and find ways to connect with and get involved in your community.

18. If you are at a conference and you get a chance to see Tessitura’s Erin Koppel present, do it:

In back to back years, she’s put together workshops that keep me engaged. And, she does a fantastic job titling her presentations…which is tough!

So if you see her speaking at a conference, check her out. Helping folks take action and be proactive is a key skill that she has. So check her out.

19. Overall, the content at INTIX continues to add value and reflect the changes that are taking place in the industry:

I noticed a much broader content profile this year from career development, onto helping ensure that all guests are accommodated, to time management, customer service, and much more.

It is great to see the content continue to evolve and adapt to the changing demands of people at all stages of their careers.

20. INTIX is a love letter to the industry: 

The biggest thing I took away from this year’s INTIX was that it is a love letter to the industry and the positive thing is that the conference continues to evolve and reflect that no matter where you are coming from in the industry, there is a place for you and that the power of people creating powerful experiences for other people carries a lot of weight in a world where we are continually pulled apart and in many different directions.

P.S. I have one beef with the swag bag! Where’s my Mets’ t-shirt?!

Also, I’d love it if you’d sign up for my weekly newsletter on all things tickets, live experiences, and live events: Talking Tickets. It’s free!

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20 Takeaways From the 2020 INTIX Conference In NYC was originally published on Wakeman Consulting Group

[davewakeman]

Talking Tickets 10 January 2020

Hey!

I got some really nice notes from a few of you this week with your goals and ambitions for the new year! Thanks for sharing!

I’m continuing to run my special giveaway of an INTIX registration until Monday, January 13th at noon eastern. I’m partnering with my friends at Booking Protect to give someone a chance to get into INTIX this year for FREE! So share this newsletter with friends and colleagues to get another chance to win!

We will also be dropping a really cool anthology in the next few days called, “What matters in tickets now?”

I’m in DC all week but will be in NYC all week the week after. So if you are in NYC the 20-24, let me know and we can grab a drink.

I’m not confirmed yet, but I’m looking at my first international trip of 2020 to Vienna for the Football Business Spring Summit. I have to work out my schedule, but this looks like a great event and friend of the podcast, Bas Schnater, is definitely going to be speaking and hosting a workshop the next day.

Let’s talk some tickets! ____________________________________________

1. Newcastle United has an attendance problem:

This is an interesting podcast because it covers the way that Newcastle gave away loads of tickets to try and change the atmosphere at their stadium.

It seems that the fan base is disgruntled with ownership, but I always wonder how much that would change if the team were doing well.

As a Spurs fan, Daniel Levy gets stick no matter what is happening on the pitch.

For all of us, this example bears paying attention to because if they are successful, it could show a path for using comps or discounts when a team needs a boost or using them in a way that also is a value add for season ticket holders.

I’m still not a huge fan of discounts in many cases, but I’m also always willing to look at new approaches to selling seats and getting people into the building.

2. Jets have the “first” influencer marketing program in pro sports?:

There are 3 things I want to point out here.

First, the Jets don’t have the first influencer marketing program in pro sports. If y’all remember, just a few months ago Man City got their knickers in a bunch when it surfaced that they were using influencers to try and sell out Champions League matches.

Second, none of these metrics amount to much because they are all fuzzy numbers that equate to easy to measure but not meaningful. “Engagement” and “buzz” aren’t adding money to the bottom line.

Third, working to make their games more family-friendly is likely a wise business decision. The commute back and forth to a Jets or Giants game is grueling and as the at-home experience becomes better and better, offering incentives to get people to come to games is going to be more and more necessary.

3. Should the arts be a right?:

This is an interesting story from the UK where MP Tracy Brabin writes about making the arts a right for folks.

In the US, this seems like a crazy idea…I’m certain.

We have become so disconnected from the idea of the arts as a way to gain perspective on new ideas and to understand people different than that the idea of shared art forms probably seems nuts to many of us.

In my travels around the world, I’ve seen the power of art to transform, connect, and explain.

While the idea of the arts as a right is likely to be met with some resistance, since all of us reading this have a connection to tickets and the arts in some way or form, we should be excited about this conversation taking place anywhere in the world because I think exposure to the arts is the first step in creating a healthier arts economy.

4. Baseball’s last celebrity?:

I feel like I’ve written too much about baseball the last few weeks, but then I saw this story and it got me to continue thinking about the state of the game.

I’ve got a podcast posting next week with former baseball sales executive and current professor of sports marketing, Ken Troupe, and we talked about baseball always picking to point out that their revenues are increasing.

Great!

It reminds me of a lot of retail companies that were still showing strong returns until they weren’t.

The idea that Derek Jeter might be baseball’s last true superstar isn’t as far fetched as it seems.

Despite strong revenues and attendance numbers that don’t look all that bad if you don’t look at the real turnstile count, baseball is sitting on a marketing problem. I mean, I live in DC and you could get NLCS tickets for under face value on the secondary market.

It seems to be me that baseball needs to really focus on relevance and accessibility, there is just too much inventory and too many games for the game not to focus on driving folks to go to multiple games a year and ensuring that storytelling is at the heart of the baseball fan’s experience.

5. StubHub has a waiting room to manage demand:

I know that I am sharing a case study from Queue-It. As the kids say, “don’t at me.”

But as I was reading this, I wanted to highlight how the secondary market continues to find ways to improve the customer experience and innovate around making it easier to spend money.

I know that Queue-It works with platforms on the primary and the secondary market, but I like the way that the technology is being used to manage demand and improve the buying experience, especially for high demand events.

In APAC, if I am not mistaken, the relationship between venues, content producers, and StubHub may be more symbiotic and holistic, but I really just wanted to take the time to highlight the necessity of putting the customer and their experience at the heart of all of your decisions.

Because I think that is maybe one of the most important things you can do.

——————————————-

What I’m up to:

I had two podcasts this week:

One with Frederic Aouad of Stay 22. We talk customer service and our upcoming panel at INTIX with Guislaine Bulman and Simon Mabb.

The second was my annual talk about College Football Championship tickets with Corey Gibbs. 

Come see me at INTIX in NYC on 20-23 January.

Want to kick off 2020 right? Why not have me work with you and your team on your 2020 strategy? “The Whiteboard Workshop” is the foundation of my work with clients and it is a full day along with 90-days of follow up with me that focuses on setting you up to focus on the right goals, the correct actions, and having the most impact for your business. 

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Talking Tickets 10 January 2020 was originally published on Wakeman Consulting Group

[davewakeman]

3 Lessons From My Conversation With Danny Frank

Get my newest newsletter: “Talking Tickets”! 5 top stories from the week in tickets with a quick analysis. Sign up before 3 January’s newsletter and have a chance to win a registration to INTIX in NYC 20-23 January 2020. 

I had Danny Frank on “The Business of Fun” this week to talk about the upcoming INTIX conference in NYC from 20-23 January. 

I really didn’t need an excuse to have Danny on the podcast, but INTIX seemed like a good reason.

That said, we were promoting INTIX and we both spoke quite a lot about why you should go to the conference in NYC, but outside of that…here are 3 lessons from my conversation with Danny.

1. Your network can make or break you:

We all know this at some level, but every time someone brings it up, I’m reminded of how true it is.

What’s funny about Danny is that everyone assumed I knew Danny because we seem to be two of the most well-connected people in the world of tickets.

Danny talks about all the people that have had a positive impact on his career and I’ve said it way more often than I like to admit.

Keep in mind, your network matters.

2. Hard tickets still have a place in the world of tickets: 

Danny spoke about how he still loves to send hard tickets to his clients and the emotional connection and story those hard stock tickets give to people.

I’ve seen so many conversations about this…most of them thinly veiled as being “what the customer wants”.

Let’s be real here, teams and venues want the digital ticket because it is easier to track the data of the attendee in most cases. And, all other issues are secondary, but something is lost if you don’t have a hard ticket.

This is why I think there really needs to be a place for both kinds of tickets.

3. Being customer-centric is a necessity in the future:

I’ve talked with Danny about this a few times because I realized we had very similar ideas on this, but the customer is king.

We see this notion playing out in the difficulty that teams are having getting fans to come to games.

In my experience working with the American Express Centurion Cardmembers, knowing that the customer was at the center of everything was some point of debate…it was just the reason for being.

In too many cases, too many of today’s organizations seem to take the consumer for granted and design the experience around what they need and not what the customer needs or wants. Then when the customers respond negatively, they react. But it is already too late.

I could write a whole novel on this topic.

Check out the entire episode….listen all the way through for something special.

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3 Lessons From My Conversation With Danny Frank was originally published on Wakeman Consulting Group