Below we have some stats about how well we did with ticket sales. We cleared our goal of £800 recoupment (see the big budget breakdown for more info on this) and took £1,019.00 all in. A PDF with all the stats we could get our hands on is embedded at the bottom of this page (online view here).
Ticket sales can always be divided into pre-sale (those sold before the event, usually online) and on the door (OTD, sold as people arrive at the venue).
We decided to sell pre-sale tickets for this event though Resident advisor (event page here) mainly because resident advisor helps combine promotion and ticket selling at the same time. The more tickets you sell, the higher up in the listings for that particular night you generally rise (it doesn't seem to be a direct correlation) and the more people will see your event. The site is also generally quite easy to use, if a bit clunky at times, and also has an app that any door person can download to scan tickets (although this didn't seem to work on the night) and check guest lists.
We were also lucky enough to secure a Resident Advisor Pick - an accolade given to events that the city manager of a given city has chosen because they think it is interesting or exciting. RA have recently hired a new city manager for Glasgow and these picks have improved significantly as a result. Thanks for the pic Rose!
Our venue capacity was 166 people and we managed to sell 105 presale tickets, with a further 28 tickets sold on the door - netting an additional £280. we priced early bird tickets at £6+booking fees, then to £8 closer to the event and charged £10 on the door. One ticket was accidentally sold for £7 when we messed up the ticketing pricing
Ticket sales started off slow (we were nervous) but built towards the event. Something that we heard over and over is that pre-sale tickets have been really slow since the pandemic - people are waiting until near the event to decide their plans. It can make it extra tricky to work out a ticket pricing structure and can make it a bit stressful not knowing how many will actually show up on the day.
Drinks were sold on the night via token at the door - £2.50 for one, 4 for £10 etc. One drink was 1 token or 2 for a double. We don't unfortunately have the exact bar sale figures on the night as this was mostly handled by the venue. However after taking off the cost of supplies the bar profited around £600.
All stats doc (online view here)