Twickets

Market

Target market

Twickets aims to target regular event-goers across music, theatre, comedy and sport.

The group with the highest propensity to use Twickets on a regular basis are young dedicated live entertainment fans. Twickets’ market research found that 18-34s buy and sell music and theatre tickets more often than any other age group. In the same research, we found that they also outperform the average frequency of transaction for comedy tickets, whereas the sports ticket market is led by an older age group (35-54s), both in terms of buying and selling.

Being a marketplace Twickets will need to continue to build both awareness and trust amongst buyers and sellers and will aim to have many of its users interacting on both sides.

For buyers, Twickets has already built in filters for location, event type and date enabling them to appeal to all those that are interested in attending live events.
Since buyers know that they are only paying a maximum of face value plus booking fee and are guaranteed that the tickets are genuine it removes the fear of being mis-sold and therefore opens this market.

According to the Association of Independent Festivals only 0.2% of fans who resold a ticket sought to make a profit. The reality is that most fans just want to ensure that they get their money back and ideally the ticket goes to another fan. Twickets' zero commission to sellers and large audience reach enable sellers to get their money back quickly and easily.

Another key marketing focus is to the event owners, where partnerships will be key in ensuring that Twickets have an active pipeline of tickets, as well as access to new event goers that may not be already aware of our service.

A full list of current partners is in the marketing section, but as an example, QPR have provided extensive match day perimeter advertising in the “TV arc”, and behind each of the goals.

Characteristics of target market

The Live Entertainment market is in rude health – UK Music have reported that concert attendance in the UK is at an all-time high, reaching 21 million in 2014, a 23% increase over the past three years. This breaks down as 17.5 million concert attendances and 3.5 million festival attendances.

According to Mintel, the value of the UK’s live music market was worth £1,970m in 2014 and is forecast to continue to grow to £2,552m by 2019. In the UK in 2014, 67 million tickets were sold for live sport events.

In 2014, a whopping 42.8m people attended live football matches. The Premier League (13.9m) and the Championship (9.4m) boasted the 1st and 4th highest aggregate attendances of any domestic football leagues across Europe during the 2013-14 season.

Within this growth market, secondary ticketing (or ticket resale) is the fastest growing sector, and it was estimated in a Parliamentary report last year to be worth up to £1bn a year in the UK alone. However, as we have already shown, the reality is that the market is rigged, and it is not just a UK phenomenon.

The Attorney General in New York recently published a damning report on the secondary sites.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/business/medi...

Doctor Music Concerts in Spain has filed official complaints against a number of secondary ticket outlets across the country. It stated the “flood of resale tickets” for its Springsteen and Adele gigs had “outraged fans, artists and music promoters”.

The same story is true of all markets with an active event scene, and the big four secondary platforms have expanded rapidly into these territories.

Marketing strategy

The Twickets marketing strategy has two key objectives:

- Growth of the registered user base
- Conversion of registered users to active, repeat users

The first element of this strategy is reliant on marketing activity as well as the striking of partnerships with event organisers, with a view to accelerating the already impressive organic growth.

Organic growth is currently adding between 5-10,000 new registered users a month. Minimal marketing has been carried out so far.

The intention would be to implement a disciplined marketing programme in 2016, targeting young, dedicated live entertainment fans with a view to both increasing recognition of the Twickets brand and generating direct leads for specific tickets.

The partnership element of the strategy has already been tested and the potency of the approach proven. For example last summer, Twickets partnered with the Association of Independent Festivals to become its exclusive resale facilitator for (amongst others) the Secret Garden Party. Targets for that month’s revenue were smashed due to it’s enormous success – resulting in the sale of over £100,000 worth of tickets in the week leading up to the event.

The plan has been, and continues to be, to strike more deals of this nature. There is an enormous long tail opportunity here, with hundreds of event organisers across the UK and beyond seeking such a service every year. Creating these partnerships results in a substantial development of both user numbers and access to inventory.

Achievement of the second objective will be reliant on the implementation of a CRM programme, as well as the continued optimisation of the platform’s usability. Online retail success is dependent on getting users to move from initial trial (i.e. their first purchase) to a second transaction.
On a predominantly P2P service such as Twickets, it’s also important to recognise that a “transaction” could just as easily mean offering a ticket for sale as it is to mean buying one.

Competition strategy

Four main secondary ticketing services have been established in the UK, with the stated aim of connecting fans to fans – so that those with tickets, but who cannot attend, can sell to those who want tickets and are prepared to buy them. However, the result has been ever more extortionate ticket prices.

These services’ trading policies are based on achieving the highest price possible for sellers, from which the services themselves derive a cut of 28%.

What’s more, they are allowing themselves to be abused by touts and unscrupulous elements within the live entertainment industry. In short, profiteering and deception are rife, and it’s far from the free and fair ‘open market’ declared by some.

Meanwhile fans are growing restless. One of the most raised issues by fans with artist management companies is ticket resale prices. Premier League football clubs are also finding themselves being lobbied (successfully) by supporters to drop their secondary ticketing partnerships with such platforms.

There is a backlash against these services and a clear desire for a fair solution to resale.

Importantly event owners, too, want an alternative to the big four resellers. Many wish to outsource the reselling function but need to retain control of their pricing and ticket allocation strategies.

The continued abuses of ordinary fans and event owners provide the perfect conditions for market disruption. There is a clear opportunity for a transparent, trusted secondary ticketing service to seize market share.

Twickets is perfectly placed to be that service.

Offering the same resale function as the competition, with the key differentiator of ensuring ticket prices are held at their intended level, we are able to work hand in hand with the entertainment industry.

And for the fan we not only enable them a second chance to buy at face value but also charge standard booking fees whilst offering them protection against fraud.

No other resale platform is able to satisfy both industry and fan.