Tickets Are Starting To Sell Again, But Still Down 87%
It may include a bit of PR spin, but ticketing platform Eventbrite is sharing what may be the green shoots of recovery following the near-total shutdown of the live events industry due to coronavirus.
Eventbrite says it saw paid ticket volume in May increase by 33% from the previous month, led by a 67% month-to-month increase in paid ticket volume for live, in-person events.
While that sounds encouraging, Eventbrite tempered the news by noting that paid ticket volume for May was down by 87% when measured against May in 2019.
As of Tuesday, Eventbrite’s advance payout balance has been reduced by $26 million since early May with creators funding approximately 98% of advance payout refund volume to date.
Eventbrite noted that tickets to online event in May increased by 17% from the previous month and were up 19-fold from May 2019.
As well, Eventbrite noted that there are encouraging trends in refunds as creators with advance payouts have returned $87 million in ticket refunds since the APO program was paused in March. That represents more than 98% of the nearly 1.2 million APO-event tickets that have been refunded to date, Eventbrite said.
Consumer-initiated chargebacks related to APO-event tickets were $3.2 million as of early June 2020 compared to $2.5 million as of early May 2020.
