For Australian gig-goers, buying a ticket can be a headache before the show has even started. The all-too-familiar dilemma was a focus of Tixel’s Future of Ticketing Report: The Live Equation 2030, launched at Melbourne’s Revolver Upstairs on Wednesday night, where Variety Australia was in the room.
The first hurdle can be a familiar one: waiting for the group chat to make up its mind. Tixel found 22% of Australians will not buy until someone else has committed, while 24% usually take on the job of getting the group together and buying the tickets. Among Gen Z, nearly one in three wait for a friend to lock in before purchasing, and 34% said not having a gig buddy is enough to stop them from going altogether.
During the launch event’s panel discussion, Untitled Group’s promoter Paige Roy described that behaviour as a “lack of urgency” among buyers which has created a major shift in the ticketing world. She also said promoters have less influence over the decision to attend as social media becomes a bigger driver of discovery and conversation around events.
That hesitation can have a knock-on effect. CG Live music manager Toby McKinnon said audiences are regularly leaving it until the last minute. “We can sell 30% of tickets on show day,” he said.
Then there is the scramble when a show sells out.
Tixel found 72% of Australians think bots and brokers are driving inflated resale prices, while 38% said they had paid a significantly inflated price for a resale ticket. For Gen Z, it was 57%.
Tixel’s chief marketing officer, Kevin Azzopardi used a blunt comparison while discussing the system at Revs. “Ticketing is really broken, and those of us who grew up when the system was breaking, we were essentially a frog in the pot watching the water boil. Gen Z had the chance to be outside the pot,” he said.
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Ticket fraud remains part of that broken system. Seventeen per cent of Australians said they had been scammed in the past 12 months, while Gen Z respondents reported a 30% rate of being defrauded or scalped, compared with 13% of people aged over 30.
Jason Webb, Tixel’s COO and co-founder, said in a statement that social media and unregulated platforms are where fans are most likely to be caught out. “When fans get burned, it’s nearly always on social media or unregulated platforms, not on legitimate resale platforms that verify tickets and cap prices,” Webb said.
The same report found 77% of Australians would rather pay more for a verified ticket than risk buying a cheaper one with no guarantee. It is a telling figure: people are prepared to spend, but they want to know the ticket will actually get them through the door.
Still, the appetite for live events has not gone anywhere. Seventy-four per cent of Australians said live events offer a break from algorithms, and 76% attended at least one in the past year. The problem, as the discussion made clear, is getting from the group chat to the venue without the process becoming its own ordeal.