Is Online Ticketing Right For You?
13-2-15
By: Meaghan McGurgan
Traditional ticketing in Hong Kong has its limits. There are expensive fees to pass onto your audience members. The red tape to get through the process as an organizer is arduous. They put limits on what can and cannot appear on your posters. The websites for traditional ticketing in Hong Kong are not very user friendly, and most importantly it can up to three months to get your money back as an artist from the event. (How are you supposed to make a living with that?)
Online ticketing has had a real boom in the US the past few years and in HK there’s been a big push for it over the past year. You might be wondering what your options are… and whether its right for you? These aren’t all the companies that currently serve Hong Kong but they’re the ones that are the most used. I think there’s an online ticketing service for everyone.
And in case you were wondering about the cash turn around… For most of these online ticketing companies you received your box office in around 16 days after closing.
This one is the big gun. Started as a service for selling Clockenflap tickets it now sells hundreds of tickets a day for events all over Hong Kong. It’s so much more than music! They also have theatre, comedy and performance art pieces up currently. Ticketflap offers a lot of services that the other ticketing places don’t: door service, email and promotion services about your event, and many different payment options like JCB and Union Pay that are great for HK audience members. Martin Haigh, CEO of Ticketflap states, “Most ticketing companies do a great job of facilitating ticket sales by providing a web location for promoters to send their potential ticket buyers to… Ticketflap provides this service but also spends a lot of time promoting the events on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and by sharing them with Facebook and meet-up groups. The incumbent ticketing companies won't or can't provide this valuable service. We also have great relationships with the media and corporates, and actively share special offers with their readers and members.”
Eventbrite is an US based company that was one of the first to bring online ticketing to HK. It’s extremely user friendly from both a producer and audience perspective. You can easily edit and add things onto the event and upload photos and videos onto the event. Marsha Sheah of Eventbrite writes to us, “There are so many events up on Eventbrite daily, you need to really make your event stand out.” Eventbrite is a really great option for free events as they don’t charge a fee for set up or to ticket users and offer the same upload options/social media integration into the event.
Art Mate is a bilingual online ticketing company that mainly serves the Chinese art community and audience. They also have mailing list with thousands of users that they’ll send out information about your event to. Art Mate is interesting because you can register events that are being sold on URBTIX; sell the tickets through Art Mate and connect into the Urbtix selling platform. They’ll even translate your info- so you can reach out to different audiences. All sounds good right? But the big downside to this company is that all producers and venues have to pay a registration fee to get listed. Who has an extra 2K lying around? Not me...
TicketingOver was started as a bilingual online ticketing service for small independent artists in Hong Kong. Similar to Eventbrite, you upload your event onto the website through a backend system and can monitor your ticket sales. It doesn’t have the flash of some sights but it’s functional, has no registration fee for producers and doesn’t charge a large processing fee to customers. “We’re all about the word NO. NO set-up charges. NO hidden costs to you as event organizer. NO hidden costs to your customers. NO exclusivity required. NO minimum commitment period.” No exclusivity means you can use TicketingOver on top of selling your tickets through a traditional method like Urbtix.
They’re known as the “fair trade ticket” company. They’re socially conscious, help support green sustainable events and are a great choice for fairs and festivals. Evie from BPT wrote to us, “We can help you with EVERY aspect of your event. From backyard first-timers to touring giants, we've done it all. Our 24/7 staff has been helping venues, events and producers with their events for more than a decade. We offer support in 4 different languages and most emails are replied to in less than 30 minutes.”
I hope this may have solved all your questions about online ticketing. Did I miss your favorite platform? Tell me all about it in the comments!
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