In their recent Marketplace 100 report, Andreessen Horowitz highlighted ticketing companies as having a particularly strong presence on the list, benefitting from the rising tide of pent-up demand for events post-pandemic. In today’s Insight Flash, we dig further into the space, looking at Event Ticket Sales subindustry trends versus overall Leisure & Recreation, and comparing some of the companies on the Marketplace 100 to larger competitors when it comes to wallet share and transaction sizes.
Although a large part of the Leisure & Recreation industry has benefitted from a post-pandemic spending wave, Event Ticket Sales have been particularly robust since Fall 2022. In September, Event Ticket sales rose to 40.3% of total Leisure & Recreation spend, up by a delta of 3.7% from the prior September. Share accelerated to 45.1% in November (an 8.2% delta versus the prior year), continuing with robust y/y deltas for the next four months.
Subindustry Spend Share
One intricacy of event ticket sales is that many venues or artists list their events for purchase with only one specific site. Although resale marketplaces have become more common and many primary sites are offering resale options, it could be the case that consumers are less loyal to a specific marketplace and more likely to just buy tickets directly on the primary site. However, the data indicates that this is not the case, and that there is a surprising amount of concentration in customer spend. Unsurprisingly, this concentration is strongest in resellers like StubHub, whose customers spend 73% of their event ticket dollars on the platform. But even sites like Telecharge focused on direct sales from venues get 57% of their customers’ event ticket spend.
Share of Wallet
There are also differences in the price points across Event Ticket Sales sites. For instance, almost a quarter of purchases at Viagogo are over $500. 20% of purchases for both StubHub and SeatGeek are over the $500 threshold, and 15% of Telecharge purchases are greater than $500. TickPick at 13% and Gametime at 11% see some transactions over $500. But Tixr, TodayTix, and DICE.FM all have less than 5% of ticket purchases over $500.
Ticket Buckets
