Stuff that occurs to me: venues

Where the boys spend their money. Location: St. Louis, Missouri. (LOC)

Please avoid buying any tickets for any event I do from viagogo.They charge a ridiculous amount and lie about whether a gig is nearly sold out or not.They are advertising one of my gigs as almost sold out when tickets aren't even on sale yet.
— Trevor Nelson (@DJTrevorNelson) October 24, 2018

There are plenty of ways of getting tickets (including free ones) to events that have sold out. Some of them rely on you being famous, beautiful, well-networked or more-than-averagely-confident (or rather, less easily embarrassed by asking for stuff) but here are some suggestions that depend less on your current personal attributes.

Consider the phrase "this event is now completely sold out" to be a fun challenge and adopt the attitude of my grandfather who, according to my grandmother, understood "No entry" signs to mean "come on in Andrew" ;) Be polite, but tenacious.

1. Ring or visit the box office
Venues sell tickets online as do other third party ticket sellers. If either type of site is showing that the event is sold out it's worth ringing up and seeing if there are any that aren't on the system. I've lost count of the number of lovely conversations I've had with box office people telling me that there's actually a glitch and they do have a few tickets left. Third party sites with unsold tickets will usually return these to the main venue for resale so information online can be a bit variable and occasionally inaccurate.

If they've really, really sold out then ask about returns (i.e. purchased tickets that people can no longer use). Ask how these are resold (first come first served, out of a hat, returned to the online booking system for anyone who spots them, offered to the first person on the waiting list etc).

Ring back in a day or two and see if anything's changed.

2. Go by yourself or sit apart from friends
It's often a lot easier to get one seat than it is to get two next to each other. However when a show is very busy you may actually find it difficult to buy that one seat on its own because of the way online booking systems work. If it's part of a pair (but otherwise surrounded by booked seats) then the system might not permit just one to be bought but if you ring the box office they can often sort that out.

Minerva Theatre, Potts Point and Kings Cross, Sydney, May 1939 / photographer Sam Hood

3. Look for "win tickets to ..." tweets and newspaper competitions
If you're really keen you can set up a Google alert which will email you if certain keywords are published on the web, you can also keep an eye on relevant hashtags and the venue's own social media sites as they'll likely retweet opportunities to win tickets. If the event has sponsors it's worth seeing if they offer some freebies themselves.

Just seen this thanks to returned tickets last min. Ab fab. Lovely setting too. Tom Hollander is just bloody brilliant! https://t.co/c7a4N0JBhM
— Ally Sinyard (@allysinyard) September 30, 2016

4. Spare tickets
a) turn up on the day / ring the box office before the show
Sometimes someone in a group won't be able to leave work on time, or they're a bit ill and so people outside the venue might have a spare ticket that they're trying to resell. Make sure you check the date of the ticket before handing over money though. Some venues take a dim view of these kinds of ticket resales so I suppose you might find you're refused entry - generally this depends on the cost and level of security involved. Worth checking beforehand. Be careful about touts and inflated prices.

The box office may have returns, where someone realises they can't make the event and hands back their ticket for resale - make yourself known to the box office on arrival (hopefully you'll previously have rung them to let them know of your interest and to get yourself on any waiting list).

b) people offering tickets online
People can also post their spare tickets to things like Twickets (sold for face value) and they will also mention spares on Twitter etc. There are other organisations like Scarlet Mist and Stub Hub who match ticket sellers to buyers.

See also Eventim UK's FanSALE and See Tickets' Fan to Fan. AEG (who own O2 dome etc) have split from Stub Hub and will offer their own AXS Marketplace service later in 2018.

5. Have a blog and ask for a press pass
This one probably requires the most work as you'll have to already have a blog in place for this to be credible and it might be a bit cheeky if you don't then write about the event. The more "official" the event the less likely this'll work as they'll probably already have their own list of press people. But worth a shot.

6. The venue might release more tickets, put on more shows
Sign up to their mailing list, keep an eye on their social media, create an account with the venue to save time logging in (though in general I hate the whole account thing, but for this I make an exception).

Check the venue's website periodically to see if anything's been added. While writing this post I've just spotted that there are two tickets to #Travesties on sale for a performance at 3.30pm on Sat 1st Oct. Pretty sure they weren't available the last time I checked the site.

Sometimes tickets might be held back from general sale because someone (eg friends of the production team or a celebrity) have expressed an interest in one or more tickets but then may not be able to go, so the tickets can go on general sale.

Looks like 2 seats have become available for Saturday 1 Oct's 3.30pm perf of #Travesties https://t.co/qbaxKNnT3s (rare as hen's teeth!) :) pic.twitter.com/OQ9bju7P5B
— Jo Brodie (@JoBrodie) October 1, 2016

7. National Theatre, London (added 5 July 2018)
I popped in on my way home to ask their box office people what they'd recommend for a friend who's hoping to get a ticket for a sold-out event. They were super-helpful and it turns out that they actually list other ways of getting tickets in their brochure. Interestingly these methods are highlighted more as inexpensive ways to get tickets, rather than as solutions to sold out runs, but it's also of relevance to those who are just struggling to get any ticket.

Some of these methods will be relevant for other theatres too, but of course it will depend on the size of the auditorium and length of the run.

Web: https://nationaltheatre.org.uk / Phone: 020 7452 3000 (Help centre)

Friday rush: every Friday at 1pm a limited number of £20 tickets for the following week's performances are released to buy online. There's even a countdown until the next one! https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/fridayrush You need to pick these up within 90 minutes before the show starts.

Day tickets: A limited number of £18/£15 tickets are available in person on the day of the performance. For very popular shows this may involve turning up at the box office at 9.30 in the morning and queueing (I don't think you have to queue all day, they presumably release some tickets in the morning and then everyone goes home). You can also ring up at 10am and chat to the box office about the popularity of the day tickets for a particular show and get a sense of when to queue the next day.

Returns: as mentioned earlier in this post most theatres will have tickets returned for all sorts of reasons. The NT will try and sell as close to original face value as possible so that they can refund the original customer, so there may be quite a bit of variation in prices depending on what tickets were bought. These tickets are likely to appear at any point in the 90 minutes before a show if people have last-minute problems in getting there (eg babysitter, traffic etc) though it's possible earlier notice will be given.

8. Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, London (added 8 July 2018)

[Note for 2021 that 'Promming' (on-the-day) tickets will be available online only (more details towards the end of this post from the RAH) and you'll need to print tickets or show them on a device on arrival.]

Other than the Last Night of the Proms it is always possible to get a ticket for any Prom performance on the day because over 1,000 standing tickets are reserved solely for Day Promming. These let you stand in the Arena or the upper Gallery and cost £6 in person or £7.12 online (inc fees) at time of writing. Last year it was a fiver and had been so for ages.

Online
"A limited number of Promming tickets will be available to purchase online between 9am-12pm on the day of each concert for £7.12 (including fees).

To buy a Promming ticket, please visit the concert’s event page, all of which are listed in the Proms Season Page, on the morning of the concert."

In person
You collect a numbered ticket from a Steward (at any point during the day from 9am) and only join the actual queue to buy tickets a short while before the doors open. Your numbered ticket lets you slot between people with the lower and higher number than you so there's lots of "I'm 312 what are you?" etc, which is quite jolly.

"All remaining Promming tickets will be sold in person. Tickets are £6 each, limited to one per person, and can be purchased with cash or contactless payment card as the queue enters the building (approximately one hour before each concert and 30 minutes before Late Night Proms).

We are operating a queue numbering system so you don’t have to stand in a queue all day. When you arrive at the venue, ask a Steward for a queue number – these are handed out from 9am – and you can return later to take your numbered place in the queue."

9. Getting free / cheap event tickets
This 20-tweet thread is quite remarkable, covering all sorts of clever ways of finding out about reduced cost events, click the timestamp to open the thread.

I always tell artists to see as much as poss - all artforms, stuff you love, stuff you hate, stuff you don't get - it's all useful. People (rightly) say it's too expensive to see everything, so in the spirit of #LoveTheatreDay here's a thread on how to see theatre for cheap/free!
— Linda Bloomfield (@LindaBxx) November 14, 2018

Discounted or free ticket opportunities

Summary: venues run their own events and also hire space for others to run events. While venues will promote their own events they don't seem to do much promotion for third-party events, why?

As an event-goer my main reasons for wanting to go to an event are that I like the work of the performer(s) or am friends or colleagues with them, that the event sounds interesting even if I don't know anyone involved, that I simply want to go and see an interesting or as yet unvisited venue (that's a reason isn't it?!) or that I've been cheerfully dragged along by a friend.

I rarely give much thought to who the promoter of the event is but apparently this factor can make a big difference to how a venue advertises or promotes an event happening there. Learning this has surprised me a lot and I'm not sure I can really make sense of it, to the point where I think that my perspective must be missing something and perhaps I'm just wrong (if you know, tell me).

Clearly the event promoter can pay for newspaper advertising as that shouldn't fall to the venue but I'm mostly talking about social media (Twitter / Facebook) and email. Things that cost time and effort rather than money.

When I'm at an event I don't know if it's been produced by the venue itself or an outside promoter and don't really care that much about the difference between the two which, for the purposes of event-attending, is irrelevant.

Here's why I think venues should also tweet or blog or post to Facebook about any event that's taking place on their premises, even if they're not the ones producing or promoting it.

a) Offer event-advertising as a perk to the event organiser
"For a [£ reasonable fee] we'll promote your concert for you" - seems like an easy enough thing to upsell if a venue has lots of Twitter followers or Facebook people. A discussion could be had about the timing, content and frequency of tweets (10 am on a Tuesday morning might reach more people than 7pm on a Friday night etc). Or a budget option might be retweeting one or two tweets that mention the event and the venue.

Caveat 1: there can be a bit of red tape in sending a tweet or Facebook post particularly if you have more than one person managing the account. Some organisations have different sign-off procedures but I can't see very many problems with retweeting a simple "this event is happening at this venue" tweet or liking a Facebook post that someone's tagged the venue with.

Caveat 2: to ensure fairness in terms of not tweeting loads about one event to the exclusion of another it's very very simple to search from:CoolVenue EventName to see how many tweets have previously been sent about it. This does take a bit of extra work. But not very much.

Obviously this has to be balanced for a large venue that has a lot of events, otherwise followers will just be swamped by information. One way round this might be to send out a tweet with a picture that shows several events at once, and a link going to a page where the individual events are linked. Incidentally the BFI ~~are~~ were* very good at this and create a tweeted picture with all the films they're showing that day.

*I think they stopped during Covid and didn't restart

b) It might get more people in your venue, eating your food, seeing your flyers
Presumably the more people you get into your venue for any event the more likely they are to see your flyers for your future events, or eat your food and drink while they're there.

c) Helping your audience to experience your venue at its best
Perhaps having more people present increases audience enjoyment slightly as they get to see a whole load of other people filling up your venue and having a good time. More people in the audience could also mean more audience tweeting and instagramming about how great the event and venue are, which you can then show off to people as evidence of awesomeness.

Bonus: all marketing emails should include subscribing information
This isn't that intuitive because if someone receives your email they've subscribed already but I often forward emails to friends so I think it's a good idea to include subscribing, just in case, not just how to unsubscribe.

Perhaps this is all too difficult
Given that the things suggested above aren't routinely done... is it because I've underestimated how much effort is involved in putting on events? All my events are fairly small - 20-100 people, pretty easy - or are there other good reasons why this isn't done very much? Or is it done loads and I'm failing to spot it?!

Stuff that occurs to me