How Aussie Music Venues Are Growing Their Business on Eventbrite

Music may be an art, but there’s also a science to running a live music business. Venue operators are flooded with decisions they need to make around artist bookings, staffing, ticket sales, bar stock, marketing, and day-to-day operations. With the survival of their venues on the line, it pays to make informed decisions to stay in the black.

The challenge for live music venues has been capturing the information they need to take the guesswork out of these decisions. Data is often fractured between online sales, box office, paper guest lists, and marketing channels. This means hours of manual work is required to get insight into your business — a process too time-consuming to be of value before the next event.

For Nicholas Jones, Director of Cult Leader and operator of Melbourne venues Cherry Bar and Yah Yah’s, working with an online ticketing platform that still used paper guests lists “didn’t make sense” for their business. Cult Leader moved their venue ticketing to Eventbrite to streamline operations and gain actionable insights by accessing data in one place.

“We didn’t like that door sales and pre-sales were separate with our old ticketing provider,” explains Jones. “Using printed guest lists and tally sheets seemed so archaic with the technology that is available these days. We were looking for a product that could merge our pre-sale information with box office and door sales. Eventbrite not only makes life easier for staff, it also gives us valuable insights that help us run our business.”

Jesse Barbera, Co-Founder of The Happy Horsemen, agrees. His team recently switched to Eventbrite to manage their two Brisbane venues and drive the business forward as they grow. Barbera explains, “We have a new venue about to open in Melbourne, with plans for many more. We needed a ticketing partner that would work with us on our vision and help us scale.”

When staff at Cherry Bar and Yah Yah’s use the Eventbrite Organiser App to check guests in quickly on arrival, their check-in data instantly integrates with Eventbrite reporting. This builds a complete picture of how those fans are engaging with the business, allowing venues to make smarter programming and planning decisions.

Jones explains. “Check-in data gives us great insight for programming. For example, if we see that the majority of people arrive just before the headliner, we know to revisit the support acts. But if we notice that early arrivals spike for a particular act, we can be confident that they will draw enough of a crowd to be invited back or even perform their own show.”

Establishing a venue’s traffic patterns also helps you plan more accurate staffing ratios, to minimise overspending on wage costs. “Looking at data over time, we can accurately predict how many staff we will need — and when we’ll need them,” says Jones.

For businesses like Cult Leader, which operates two venues with shows on the same night, staying on top of all sides of the business can be challenging. Before switching to Eventbrite, Jones had to call his venue to find out how door sales were tracking.

Over the past decade, music consumption has moved online — and so have venue marketing budgets. It makes sense for venues to promote gigs where their fans can be found. That’s where event distribution comes in — selling tickets across the web without redirecting to a third-party ticketing page.

Cherry Bar and Yah Yah’s have a combined Facebook following of over 96,000 fans. Thanks to the Eventbrite integration with Facebook, these fans can buy tickets as soon as they hear about an event — without leaving the platform. Cherry Bar calls this as a “game-changer” for ticket sales, selling out more shows than ever before. The venue sells 12% of all tickets through Facebook Checkout and has seen an average increase in pre-sales of 20-30% per show.

It’s not just Facebook driving this growth. Eventbrite helps organisers sell tickets and list their events on multiple platforms across the web and reach Eventbrite’s 75 million active ticket buyers. For example, Cherry Bar recently hosted a single launch for Melbourne band, The Pretty Littles. The show was a sell-out and 40% of all tickets were purchased from Eventbrite’s automated distribution channels. Instead of being directed to a separate ticketing page, fans purchased directly from Facebook Checkout,Songkick, Spotify, and the Eventbrite app. Without event distribution, most of these tickets would have been sold on the door — or not at all.

By selling more tickets ahead of time, venues like Cherry Bar and Yah Yahs can make smarter decisions based on anticipated capacity. “Online ticket sales mean a lot to the success of a live music venue. We get more customer information, allowing us to increase future sales with opt-in data. You lose that when just people rock up at the door. Fans with tickets are also more committed to coming, which supports our planning and profitability as a business,” says Jones.

The ability to build a loyal fan following and integrate ticketing into digital marketing is one of the reasons The Happy Horsemen made the switch to Eventbrite ticketing for their venues, Black Bear Lodge and The Brightside . Barbera explains, “We rely heavily on digital marketing to promote our music venues. Social media takes up around 80% of this, with the rest falling on venue newsletters — we don’t run any traditional advertising or media.”

It’s no secret that the music industry is cut-throat. For independent venues, there’s increasing competition from bigger players in the market (with deeper pockets) moving downmarket.

The only way for smaller venues to remain competitive and continue attracting top talent is to maintain strong relationships with booking agents. And what’s the best way to do that? Prove your venue can help them turn a profit.

“How we present ourselves to promoters is really important,” says Barbera. “Using a professional, intuitive platform that integrates with our marketing efforts is a big part of that. If we can demonstrate that we’re selling more tickets, they will book more shows. We chose to work with Eventbrite because they can provide that.”

Jones agrees. “I like transparency when building relationships with our music partners. We send booking agents and talent managers a report after every show,” he says.