Should you Control Event Ticket Reselling?

Ticket reselling by the general public is a fact of life now. One way or another, people will find the ways and means to resell their tickets to your event. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There are a lot of good reasons that people resell their tickets.

Unforeseen Schedule Conflicts:

• Life is unpredictable, and sometimes attendees may face unexpected schedule conflicts that prevent them from attending an event or festival they had initially planned to go to. In such cases, resold tickets becomes a way to recoup some of the costs rather than letting the tickets go to waste.
  
  

Financial Hardships:

• Economic challenges or sudden financial constraints may compel individuals to sell their event tickets. When faced with unexpected expenses or changes in financial circumstances, reselling tickets offers a means to recover some funds.
  
  

Health or Personal Emergencies:

• Health issues or personal emergencies can arise, making it impossible for individuals to attend the event they had intended to go to. Reselling tickets allows them to mitigate the financial loss associated with missing the event due to circumstances beyond their control.
  
  

Change in Preferences or Interests:

• Personal preferences or interests can evolve over time. Someone who was excited about a particular event or festival when they purchased the tickets may later find that their interests have shifted. In such cases, reselling the tickets enables them to let someone else enjoy the experience.
  
  

Purchasing Mistakes:

• Occasionally, individuals may buy tickets on impulse or make a mistake in their purchase, such as selecting the wrong date or venue. In these situations, reselling the tickets becomes a way to correct the error and avoid attending an event that doesn't align with their original intentions.
  
  

A lot of these good reasons to resell tickets are problems you want to solve too. When people don’t attend your event you lose vendor and artist sales. Your event can feel more empty and less exciting when paying people don’t show up. And most importantly, you don’t get a chance to wow those missing folks with your hard work.

In short, ticket reselling is good for you and your attendees! If you’re seeing the big picture, we can already help at Eventeny, where ticket reselling is already a part of the event management process.

Click here to learn more 

But, there are bad versions of this too. If it’s not controlled or kept in check things can go very wrong very quickly. Ticket scalping, scalper bots, and ticket brokers can buy up a lot of tickets fast, mark up ticket prices, and hurt your event! It isn't just sporting events at risk either.

Let’s look at some of the ways that unmanaged event ticket reselling can seriously damage your event.

The Problem: Price Fluctuations

• Reselling of event or festival tickets often leads to significant price fluctuations in the secondary market. Attendees who bought tickets at face value may find themselves priced out due to inflated resale prices.
• High resale prices can deter potential attendees, affecting overall event attendance and potentially damaging the event's reputation.
• These price jumps hurt immediately but can have severe consequences for your next event and your event’s reputation.

The Solution: Control if you allow your tickets to be resold. Some event management platforms give you control. This way prices stay steady and your event pricing is set by you and fair.

The Problem: Unfair Access

• Outside ticket reselling platforms sometimes enable scalpers to acquire a large number of tickets, limiting the availability for genuine fans during the initial sale.
• This creates an unfair system where those with deeper pockets have preferential access to tickets, leaving genuine fans frustrated and reducing the diversity of the audience.

The Solution: Keep your ticket sales in once specific place. Can you sell more tickets if you put them in a lot of places, possibly. Is it worth it, no. Your attendees aren’t trying to snatch up tickets anywhere. They’re finding you through your marketing and great word of mouth. Unless you’re Taylor Swift, keep control of those tickets and keep making great work.

The Problem: Fraudulent Practices

• The secondary ticket market is susceptible to fraudulent activities, including the sale of counterfeit tickets. Attendees purchasing such tickets may face disappointment upon entry, harming their overall event experience.
• Fraudulent practices also undermine the trust in the ticketing system, making it challenging for event organizers to establish a secure and reliable ticketing environment.

The Solution: Keeping your ticketing system in a digital format can make reselling much easier to control. Use a platform you’re comfortable with. Also, the better your ticketing company is with customer service, the faster you can resolve any issues that do sneak through.

The Problem: Artist and Promoter Discontent

• Artists and event promoters may become dissatisfied when they see their tickets being resold at significantly higher prices. This can strain relationships between performers, organizers, and the secondary market platforms.
• Promoters may implement measures to combat ticket reselling, but these efforts can be resource-intensive and may not completely eliminate the issue.

The Solution: Communicate, communicate, communicate. Now that you’re taking steps to use ticket reselling as a force for good, let your artists and vendors know! This shows them you trust them and care about them. When you include artists and vendors as a part of your event team they will repay you with loyalty and professionalism.

The Problem: Strained Relationships with Fans

• Ticket reselling can strain the relationship between event organizers and their fan base. Fans who miss out on tickets will not be happy when they see tickets being resold at exorbitant prices.
• Negative sentiment among fans can spread quickly through social media, harming your event's brand and future ticket sales.
• In short, say goodbye to the trust you’ve worked hard to build.

The Solution: At worst, stop ticket reselling completely. Ideally though, control it and use it to your advantage. Your fans will love you for it!

The Problem: Potential Legal Issues

• Yeah, a pretty big problem! Some jurisdictions have introduced or are considering legislation to regulate ticket resale practices. Event organizers may face legal challenges or pressure to take action against resellers, adding an additional layer of complexity to event management.

Educate yourself on how you can keep your event easy for ticket buying, effective for ticket reselling, and a great deal for everyone.

Want to know more about solutions? We have you covered on that too! Just click here.