We’ve been looking at how fans responded to Monday’s government announcement and it’s clear that they are ready and eager to return to live.
It’s an overwhelmingly positive picture, with over sixteen times as many tickets sold since the announcement, compared to the same time last week.
There are over seven times as many users browsing our site, and we’re also seeing nearly twice as many new users as people across the nation look to book in some live entertainment post lockdown.
Fans have become more confident in completing their purchases too, with conversion rates tripling this week.
Yesterday alone we had 2 million fans on our website and saw Creamfields and Reading Festival completely sell out.
When are fans planning to return to live?
The vast majority of tickets (77%) we’ve sold this week are for events happening as close as six months away, so it looks like August is going to be a busy one for fans.
If we look back at the picture last week, the majority (39%) were booking tickets for events over a year away, so we can see purchase confidence has greatly improved.
In fact, we’ve seen a big jump in purchase confidence via our online survey this week too and it’s the highest we’ve seen it since April 2020.
What the survey says…
To assess purchase confidence, we’ve been asking fans how likely they would be to purchase a ticket for an event that is happening in the next six months on a scale of 1 to 10. This week more than half of fans voted ‘10’ in comparison with a third of fans last week.
The survey also shows that twice as many fans are planning to attend more events than they did in pre-lockdown times.
‘Live events’ has jumped into the number one lifestyle purchase choice above holidays and dining out according to our data, and by looking at purchase and traffic this week it really shows.
Back to the booking data…
We’re already selling over twenty times as many tickets than last week for events taking place within the next six months, so as restrictions ease and more events start to take place, we expect to see fans snapping up tickets for events taking place earlier in their calendars.
What are fans browsing for?
Browsing and purchasing is up across the board, and all of our genre guides are getting more traffic, but the word on everyone’s lips is festivals.
We’ve had half a million visits to our Festival Finder guide which is ten times the number of visits as this time last year, so it’s clear that fans are keener than ever to get back into the fields.
Who is booking?
The younger the fan, the more likely they are to have browsed our site and bought tickets this week with over a third of our web traffic and tickets purchased coming from 18–24-year-olds.
What’s next?
After the initial jump in traffic following Monday’s announcement, the number of sessions on our site only continues to grow.
Sessions jumped 41% from the Monday to the Tuesday, tripled on Wednesday as news about scheduled events were released, and then more than doubled again yesterday as more fans chose to secure their tickets for the summer and beyond.
It’s clear to see that the desire from to get back to live events is palpable – we can’t wait either.