You may suspect that some of your corporate season tickets are going unused. You may even know it for a fact. But do you know how much those tickets actually cost your business?
At first blush, five tickets may sound like a meager expense, but consider the extra fees tied to those stubs — parking costs, processing fees, and more.
So, are season tickets a good investment? The toll on your event budget may be heftier than you think. Our Wasted Spend Calculator helps you learn exactly how much you may be losing.
The Wasted Spend Calculator helps managers visualize the money they may be losing on unused season tickets.
Caption: The Wasted Spend Calculator is an easy way to visualize monetary losses from unused season tickets.
The Wasted Spend Calculator also acts as a conversation starter. Why aren’t employees and clients using their tickets? Perhaps a sports team isn’t performing well, or a ticketing package is out of alignment with a company’s needs. The calculator brings attention to these issues, helping leaders find better solutions.
Unused season tickets are a major money-sucker for enterprises of all sizes. Nationally, 47% percent of corporate season tickets go to waste, and some companies fail to use a whopping 60–75% of their pre-purchased tickets. But most companies land in the middle, leaving 30–50% of tickets on the table.
What’s more, when companies invest in corporate ticket packages, they spend money on more than just seats. Imagine your business purchases 250 tickets for a season, but only 50% are used. Let’s say the average cost of each seat is $100, each ticket has a $10 processing fee, and parking is $25 per vehicle. Even if some ticket holders carpool, the true dollar impact on your company is hefty.
We at Ticketnology want companies to maximize their ticket usage. The Wasted Spend Calculator helps you find out just how much money you may be wasting on unused tickets.
To use the calculator, you need three pieces of information:
The average Cost of Season Ticket Package is the total cost of a package for a season. In most cases, you can find this number on your original invoice or from your account manager.
When inputting the Cost of Season Ticket Package, remember the following:
The Total Number of Tickets in the Season Ticket Package isn’t limited to physical seats. This includes parking passes, club or venue passes, and special pre-game passes.
If you count special events like playoff tickets in your calculation, be consistent in this box and the Cost box above it. Either factor playoffs into both places or exclude them altogether.
To achieve the most accurate wasted-spending total, include every add-on.
The Total Number of Tickets Used is how many tickets translate to attendance. Unfortunately, this is where companies often have ballpark numbers. Manual tracking is difficult, and most ticketing systems don’t provide attendance data from past events.
Without a system like Ticket Booth, most organizations have to play a dangerous guessing game. To estimate more effectively, ticket managers measure one of two ways:
Most often, tracking ticket usage means providing tickets on the assumption that they’ll be used as intended, regardless of in-person scanning.
Most ticketing systems lack solid attendance data, making calculations tedious. Ticket administrators must be diligent and adopt consistent policies. Calculating totals throughout the season (and per game) reduces the hassle later.
For example, a few years ago, a client of ours started tracking attendance data and realized that 52% of their purchased tickets had gone unused, resulting in $17,000 in wasted spending annually. With that number in mind, they decided to stop purchasing entire seasons of tickets and instead purchased a single-team series. The change increased ticket usage, promoted responsible spending, and honored their favorite league.
Another client took a good long look at their attendance data and decided to resell their unused tickets to recoup their investment. Ultimately, they recovered $85,000 and boosted their ticket usage to 80%. During the next two seasons, they adopted stronger internal and client-facing ticket use policies.
Wasted spending drains budgets and puts stress on event management teams. Take ownership of your ticket usage by using the Wasted Spend Calculator.
If you’d like guidance from a ticketing expert, we’re here for you. Book your consultation to learn how to make your season ticket investment work in your company’s favor.
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