When buying tickets for a concert, festival or event, do you compare the listed ticket prices on various sites?
[More from Mashable: Explore Mashable’s Enhanced Events Board for Your Next Opportunity]
The online ticket-buying space is slowly getting more contenders. Ticketmaster, a company that dates back to the 1970s, was dominant in the online ticketing space for awhile. Then other sites such as Ticketfly (founded in 2008), Eventbrite (2006) and StubHub (2000) came on the scene touting platforms integrated with social media. Some denounced the high fees of other ticketing services, essentially changing the game for online ticket sales.
Tikly is a new ticketing service that's fully integrated with Facebook. Artists, venues and events can sell directly from their Facebook page -- without fans being re-directed to another site. The ticketing service is currently in beta, with 300 clients already using it. Tikly also offers low add-on fees to tickets so that bands feel good about the prices their fans are paying to see them. Fans can buy tickets for shows in advance -- without the costly fees that some sites tack on.
[More from Mashable: Pussy Riot Songs Added to ‘Protest’ Station on Slacker Radio]
Emma Peterson, the 23-year-old founder and CEO of Tikly, said she created the site because she noticed the "ticket industry itself was kind of upside down." And not just from a consumer standpoint, she tells Mashable, but "the ticketing industry works against the organizers."
Peterson is also a tour manager for the band The Nadas. She saw how other ticketing sites charged fans up to 50% of the ticket price in fees, which could lower ticket sales for the band, too. Fans would be dissuaded from buying tickets in advance for smaller venue performances when they could buy tickets at the door without any fees.
She founded Tikly 2011 with business partner Brian Hemesath. The two are part of a startup incubator program in Des Moines, Iowa.
Peterson said they envisioned features for a true live music lover. Tikly's ticket buying experience, she says, aims to be as close to buying a tangible ticket as possible. Tikly provides each ticket a name , description and images, so it's not just a button to click on an app when you check in. Eventually, they want to make the ticketing experience on the site even more interactive with streaming MP3s and the chance to buy band merchandise. Peterson says venues could eventually pre-sell drink tickets so events are even more seamless for consumers.
The Nadas are one of the artists using Tikly in beta. Just visit their Facebook page, click on Tikly and then select the number of tickets you want to purchase and buy them through Facebook.
For bands, Tikly’s format is simple. A set fee is added to each ticket at the check-out, depending on ticket price:
- Tickets under $10 have a $1 per ticket fee
- Tickets $10 to $75 have a 10% per ticket fee
- Tickets over $75 have a flat $7.50 per ticket fee
Tikly is fully integrated with Dwolla, a mobile payment system with a flat fee of $0.25 for anything over $10.
But other ticketing services offer low fees, and tried-and-tested platforms.
Eventbrite tells Mashable that their fees are never more than $9.95 for ticket-buyers. It charges 2.5% of the ticket price plus $0.99 per ticket, capping out at nearly $10 max, even for the priciest tickets. For event organizers posting events on Eventbrite, there is no set-up fee and no fee period for free events.
Ticketfly CMO Gannon Hall tells Mashable, "For organizers, Ticketfly’s fees are variable and depend on the cost of each ticket. It’s a revenue share between the promoter (or sometimes the artist) and Ticketfly, but there is no set percentage fee. There are no flat surcharges and/or set up fees (unlike other platforms).”
From a ticket buyer’s perspective, Ticketfly’s service fees typically range 30 percent lower than those of Ticketmaster, says a spokesperson.
StubHub, like its parent company eBay, manages the marketplace, so buyers and sellers never interact. It's completely free for fans to list tickets for sale, and StubHub does not buy, own or price any tickets, a spokesperson tells Mashable in an email message. But buyers pay StubHub 10% of the ticket price and sellers net 85% of the ticket price.
What sites do you use to purchase tickets? Tell us in the comments.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, AarStudio
This story originally published on Mashable here.