Revenew Playbook: Ticketing Platforms

How to Gain Control and Manage Margins

Ticketing platforms are the backbone of the event industry; they connect event organisers with passionate audiences. Managing the financial side of this equation, however, can be rather complex. Between processing fees, hidden costs, and the need to accommodate diverse payment methods, maximising margins can become complicated. In this post, we'll look into how Revenew can help ticketing platforms unlock new revenue streams, eliminate loss-making payments, and improve the overall payment experience for ticketing platforms and their customers.

The Challenges Ticketing Platforms Face

Ticketing platforms face a unique set of financial hurdles. Below are some of the common pain points our customers encounter:

• Payment Fees: Payment processors often charge a per-transaction fee, which eats into your bottom line.
• Hidden Costs: Integration- and account maintenance fees from different payment providers can stack up quickly.
• Limited Payment Options: Limited options can be a deterrence, especially those who have preferred payment methods.
• Complex Payment Flows: Managing event fees, add-ons, refunds and payouts can become difficult, especially for global providers
• Lack of Payment Transparency: Lack of insight into the true cost of processing different payment methods severely hinders informed decision-making. Recent events, like the controversy surrounding the Oasis concert ticket sale on Ticketmaster, highlight the importance of transparent pricing and a smooth customer experience within the ticketing industry.

These obstacles can significantly impact your ticketing platform's ability to satisfy your customer's needs.

Detailed Payment Insights for Informed Decision-Making

Imagine being able to see exactly what payment processing is costing you, down to the last cent. Imagine being able to compare your customers’ performance side-by-side to know who your most valuable customers are. Revenew Clarity provides a comprehensive overview of your payments’ - and customers’ - performance. Through its comprehensive toolkit, Revenew gives ticketing platforms unrivalled visibility into their payment data and customers, giving them the power to make data-driven decisions that directly impact their bottom line.

By tracking key metrics like revenue, margins, and processing fees at a granular level, platforms can quickly and easily gain visibility into their payments and their customers, and identify areas for optimisation. Similarly, through gaining a clear, data-driven understanding of their payment landscape, ticketing platforms are able to make strategic decisions that drive growth and profitability.

Intelligent Pricing Controls for Profitable Unit Economics

One of the key challenges ticketing platforms encounter is ensuring that every payment is profitable while simultaneously pricing fairly. This can be a delicate balancing act. Revenew's intelligent pricing controls remove the guesswork to help platforms dynamically adjust pricing, eliminate negative margins and ensure profitable unit economics are maintained on every transaction. By having granular control over pricing and the ability to respond to market conditions in real-time, ticketing platforms can optimise pricing strategies to maximise revenue while pricing equitably and maintaining healthy margins. Armed with this new understanding of their payments’ financial performance, ticketing platforms are able to deeply understand customer dynamics and confidently adjust pricing to incentivise growth.

Advanced Payment Flows for Increased Revenue Potential

Traditional ticketing platforms often rely on static pricing and payment flows, limiting their ability to unlock new revenue streams and adapt to ever-changing customer preferences. Revenew's payment flow capabilities have enabled platforms to create more complex and flexible payment experiences that drive increased revenue and customer satisfaction through:

• Supporting multiple tickets purchases from multiple providers simultaneously
• Subscription-based ticketing models that provide recurring revenue streams and encourage customer loyalty
• Flexible payment options such as instalment plans or buy-now-pay-later, making tickets more accessible to a wider audience
• Hold payments in reserve before paying it out to the promoter

By expanding payment flow capabilities in an informed way, ticketing platforms leveraging the Revenew product suite can differentiate themselves from competitors, attract new customers, and generate additional revenue streams that drive long-term growth and profitability. The best part: Regardless of the complexity of the payment flow that is implemented, Revenew will comprehensively report on each payment, providing its full context, as covered in the next section.

Comprehensive Payments Reporting for Streamlined Operations

Payments reporting and processing fees can be a time-consuming and error-prone process for ticketing platforms, diverting valuable resources away from core business activities. Revenew's automated reporting tools simplify this process, helping platforms accurately track and manage their payment data with minimal manual intervention by:

• Automatically reconciling interchange++ (IC++) fees, eliminating the need for manual calculations and reducing the risk of errors
• Identifying and eliminating loss-making payments by flagging transactions that fall below a specified profitability threshold
• Generating reports and analytics that provide a clear, auditable record of all payment activity and associated fees

We have seen this feature be tremendously beneficial to ticketing platforms in helping them optimise their operations, reduce administrative overhead, and focus on delivering exceptional customer experiences.

Seamless Integration with Existing Systems

Revenew's no-code integration make it easy for ticketing platforms to incorporate its tools into their existing technology stack, minimising disruption to ongoing operations and ensuring smooth implementation. Platforms can easily connect Revenew with existing payment gateways, and other business-critical applications to create an efficient payment ecosystem. Integrating Revenew could involve:

• Connecting Revenew with existing payment processors, like Stripe or Adyen, to enable real-time data synchronisation and automated fee reconciliation. Our no-code integration makes it incredibly simple for platforms to sign up in less than 30 seconds - allowing you to gain detailed insights into the profitability of your payments near-instantly. A video demonstration of the sign-up flow can be found below.
• Leveraging Revenew's low-code metadata API to build custom integrations with other business-critical applications to ensure a centralised and streamlined approach to managing payments

By integrating Revenew into their existing technology infrastructure, ticketing platforms can unlock the full potential of Revenew's tools without the need for extensive development resources or system overhauls.

Conclusion

As a ticketing platform, optimising payment processing and maximising margins while pricing in a way that’s equitable is essential for long-term success and growth. Revenew offers a comprehensive suite of tools tailor-made to help platforms streamline financial operations, gain granular payment insights, and implement intelligent pricing strategies to drive profitability.

As the payments landscape continues to evolve, ticketing platforms that partner with Revenew are well-positioned to stay ahead of the curve, drive sustainable growth, and deliver exceptional customer experiences that set them apart from competitors.