Whenever a superstar's concert tickets are issued, there will always be a lively scene of a few happy and a few sad in the circle of friends. Popularity, Internet speed, and the number of tickets on different ticketing platforms all affect the excited hearts and trembling hands of fans when they grab tickets.
For two consecutive days, the ticket grabbing battles for many celebrity concerts such as Jacky Cheung's Shanghai concert and Jay Chou's Hangzhou concert were also full of gunsmoke, and the ticket grabbing of "slow hands" was on the hot search without accident.
According to the latest "2023 China Performance Ticketing Industry Research Report" released by iResearch, in the first three quarters of last year, the box office revenue of commercial performances across the country was 3154 billion yuan, an increase of 84 compared with the same period in 2019 before the epidemic2%, and has exceeded 200 in 20194.1 billion yuan of annual box office revenue.
The top popular performances are hot, showing a blowout trend in the short term, but at the same time, market pain points such as "difficulty in grabbing tickets" cannot be ignored. What measures are currently being taken by the ticketing market to balance supply and demand? The recovery trend of entertainment performance consumption demand is obvious, is there a differentiation between different performance categories?
Chen Deqiang, consulting director of the TMT business department of iResearch Consulting, said in an interview with reporters that in the past year, large-scale concerts and first-class festival projects have shown a super eye-catching ability to attract money, which should not be underestimated, but there are still disadvantages in terms of traffic and promotion resources for small performances or middle-waist artist performances. In the long run, the short-term demand for blowout live performances will inevitably have a return to rationality.
In the past three years when the pause button has been pressed for large-scale performance activities, music fans' desire for concerts and festivals has reached the extreme. Since the centralized ticketing of large-scale concerts and outdoor ** festivals in the first quarter, the popularity of this type of performance has continued to rise in the first half of 2023. But in stark contrast to large-scale projects, which have a super ability to attract money, small-scale performances have been cold.
Taking livehouse as an example, according to the China Performing Arts Association, the first livehouse venue performances and tours in the second quarter have seen a decline in attention and box office, on the one hand, the head IP concerts and outdoor ** festivals have absorbed many music fans, on the other hand, the waist and below bands and small ** live performances that lack competitive advantages have increased the pressure on survival due to the increase in operating costs such as rent, equipment, publicity and promotion and manpower. According to incomplete statistics, nearly 20 ** bands have canceled their tours in 2023.
China's performance ticketing market can generally be divided into primary market and secondary market. The primary market adopts a single pricing model without premium or discount, and its main role is to sell, issue and check tickets, and the ticket source comes from the organizer to ensure that the tickets are authentic and reliable.
The secondary market is regulated according to the market, and the ticket source is more complex, including individual resale tickets, etc., consumers can directly contact the seller ** sales individual, ticketing ** company, scalper, etc.), and can also reach a transaction through the matchmaking intermediary services provided by the platform. Common platforms include Ferris wheel, idle fish, **, etc.
For popular performances, the secondary market will give a premium, and the profitability of the performance will be improved; For unpopular performances, unsalable tickets are sold at a discount to increase attendance and make up for some losses. The flexible adjustment of the secondary market can balance the relationship between supply and demand to a certain extent.
Taking the box office of performances in the first half of 2023 as an example, the primary market share of the box office accounts for 55%, and the secondary market accounts for 45%. However, it must be emphasized that the advantage of transparent ticket source in the primary market of ticketing is still significant: there is only one **, that is, the organizer. In the secondary ticketing market with strong ticket circulation, the ticket source may come from the organizer's gray area tickets, ticket dealers at all levels, large "scalpers", "scalpers" and individual consumers for resale, coupled with the exchange of ticket sources between sellers, the already scattered ticket sources are superimposed on the complex circulation chain, which will exacerbate the information asymmetry and put the buyer in a weak position.
In response to this kind of problem, major secondary market platforms have also issued relevant regulations to regulate market transactions. For example, the company has adjusted the relevant rules of the "Online Ticketing Industry Management Specification" for many times, mainly by standardizing the qualification review, consumer protection deposit deposit and business behavior of settled sellers to strengthen the management of the ticketing market;
The Ferris wheel also screens illegal ticket sellers and scalpers by setting a high entry threshold for sellers (business license and commercial performance permit are required), and also aggregates many ticket sellers, so that users can compare prices and buy more cost-effective performances with a low-price priority mechanism;
In addition, TicketMaster, a global ticket distribution platform, has launched SafeTIX technology, which uses digitally encrypted barcodes that are refreshed every few seconds so that tickets cannot be copied or shared through traditional means, and the system also provides venues with on-site ticket scanning and verification services to detect fake tickets in real time.
According to the survey, there are currently 862% of users will use multiple platforms to buy tickets, and more than 9% of them will give priority to buying through the first-level ticketing platform when buying popular performances, and then consult and purchase them in the secondary market after failing to grab tickets.
According to iResearch's survey report, the proportion of consumers who accept premium tickets reaches 766%。For particularly favorite gigs or sporting events, 86The acceptable premium range for 1% of consumers is between 10-80%. In terms of satisfying consumers' demand for popular performances and temporary performances, the secondary ticketing market is trying to play a role in adjusting and supplementing.
According to the data of the Lighthouse Professional Edition APP, the box office of live performances (**drama, dance, miscellaneous, variety shows, tourism performances) last year reached a peak growth rate in April, and the proportion of ** performances (**festivals, concerts, **meetings) also jumped from about 55% to 868%。In the second half of the year, the growth rate fell significantly, and the box office fell by 46% month-on-month. According to industry insiders, in the long run, the short-term demand for blowout live performances will inevitably return.
In September 2023, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Ministry of Public Security jointly issued the "Notice on Further Strengthening the Standardized Management of Large-scale Commercial Performance Activities and Promoting the Healthy and Orderly Development of the Performance Market", which clarified that "large-scale performance activities implement a real-name ticket purchase and real-name admission system", and the integration of people, certificates and tickets under the "strong real-name system" has curbed the illegal behavior of scalpers to increase prices and resold to a certain extent, so that the phenomenon of inflated market box office has also been controlled.
On this basis, the ticketing platforms in the major primary markets have also continued to study the queuing and refund mechanisms, trying to achieve a certain degree of flexible adjustment, so as to alleviate the various practical difficulties that the audience may face after purchasing tickets.
In addition, in addition to popular concerts, people are also continuing to tap the market potential of other performance categories. For example, Damai has developed its own content outside of the ticketing market, covering sections such as festivals, theater and art exhibitions. The immersive suspense theater "Secret No. 9" under the "Of Course There is Drama" drama label and the "Youth Art Fair of the Academy of Fine Arts" under the "Art Exhibition Hongtu" exhibition label both met with the public at the end of last year and gained a good reputation. At present, the barley score of "Secret No. 9" is 93 points, Douban score 87 points, box office sales are hot.