The event discovery myth: why event organisers are ditching the big discovery platforms

Short of time? Here are the key takeaways of why more event organisers are ditching discovery platforms

• Event discovery platforms charge high fees (often 10–15% per ticket) on every ticket, even though most sales come from organisers’ own marketing – not from the platforms’ discovery features.
• Only 2% of event organisers say discovery platforms are their most important marketing channel; word of mouth, social media, and email are far more effective.
• Switching to white-label ticketing like Ticket Tailor allows organisers to save thousands, reinvest in proven marketing channels, and retain more revenue.
• Organisers are increasingly using a multi-channel strategy: listing events on discovery sites for visibility, but selling the majority of tickets through a white-label platform on their own site.
• Additional benefits include ownership of customer data, brand control, better tracking, and faster payouts, giving organisers more control and long-term growth potential.

Introduction: what we’re seeing and hearing

At Ticket Tailor we’re witnessing first hand the exodus of event organisers ditching traditional event discovery platforms in favour of white-label solutions. In our recent end of year survey – of 663 event organisers who now use Ticket Tailor, 637 had previously used a ticketing platform that doubles up as event discovery. That’s a staggering 96% of our new event organisers making the switch to a white-labelled solution.

Platforms like Eventbrite, Dice, Universe, See Tickets, Resident Advisor and Ticketmaster promise built-in audiences and event discovery features, but many organisers are finding the costs far outweighs the benefits. Below we explore why promoters are moving to white-label ticketing solutions, how they’re reallocating budgets, the rise of multi-channel ticketing strategies, and the advantages of taking back control of ticket sales.

The cost of discovery: high fees on every single ticket sold

Event discovery platform’s business model is made up of three core value components: 

1. The software cost of creating an event, processing ticket sales and scanning in attendees
2. Payment processing fees (often handled by third-party providers)
3. The perceived marketing benefit of listing your event on their marketplace and having access to their audience databases

The value of these components are then wrapped up in multiple fees (service, processing, etc.) that can total around 10–15% or more of each ticket’s price​. These fees then apply to every ticket sold, regardless of how the buyer found the event. For example, Eventbrite’s US base service fee alone is 3.7% + $1.79 per paid ticket, plus 2.9% for payment processing fees, and this is charged on all ticket sales. So for a $20 ticket the fees total a massive $3.11 (15.5%) - admittedly this can be passed on to ticket buyers, but that’s still ticketing revenue ending up with the ticket company not the organiser.

For organisers, this means a hefty portion of their revenue is lost on fees before they even pay for things like venues, artists, or marketing. 

If these marketplaces were the difference between an empty event or a sell out – then these high fees would surely be warranted, but more and more promoters are questioning whether this is even remotely the case.

The reality of visibility: maximum noise and marginal gains

The promoters we speak to are often coming to us after years of promised email campaigns, marketing pushes and new customers – and are feeling let down as they see their ticket sales flat line, or any successes not being the result of the discovery platform.

The reality of these discovery platforms is that they are juggling the priorities of thousands of event promoters marketing needs - in Eventbrite’s case they have over 4.7 million events listed a year. Given the scale of events they list, the ability to elevate one over others is a complicated task and can only truly impact a slither of their overall listings.

Even by Eventbrite’s own data they estimate that roughly 30% of ticket sales are driven by its marketplace and built-in marketing tools, implying the other 70% of attendees find out about events through the organiser’s own efforts (social media, email lists, ads, word of mouth etc.). Based on conversations we have with event organisers, these figures likely contain a significant number of ticket buyers who know about the event already but simply use event search on Eventbrite to locate the event page – as opposed to truly net new audiences.

The open secret of how to actually sell more tickets

Speak to any event creator or event promoter about the formula for selling tickets to their event and it’s a fairly well trodden path and it has very little to do with an event discovery or listings site. In our survey of over 1,200 event organisers here’s what they tell us about their most important marketing channels:

• Word of mouth (35% of responses) - no other marketing channel is as important for events. Events are, by default, communal and shared experiences. And the most likely way your ticket buyers have heard about your event is through a friend, family member or colleague referring it to them. Eventbrite’s own trends report puts word of mouth as the reason for 47% of ticket sales. So make your event great, get people talking, and ticket buyers will come.
  
  How to get the word-of-mouth marketing machine working for your event
• Organic social media (30% of responses) - owned social media channels are packed full of super-fans and loyal attendees. Promoting your events here is guaranteed to drive a significant percentage of your ticket sales. You can also maximise your organic social media reach through strategic partnerships. For example, if you’re running a music event, then your artist's social accounts will also play a massive role in how social media performs. For food festivals, you might partner with your exhibitors. And for community events, perhaps you can utilise your relationships with local businesses, or even your venue/s.  Finally, why not also consider the impact of your existing fans by encouraging them to share your content?
  
• Email campaigns (21% of responses) - email continues to be a powerful channel for converting ticket buyers. What’s important here is that you have access to your customer data (more on that later).
  
  The 12 best email marketing platforms for events right now
• Paid advertising (12% of responses) - from paid social, influencers or good old-fashioned poster campaigns, paid adverts still hold an important place in an events marketing mix.

As for listing or discovery sites? Less than 2% of Event Creators said this was their most important marketing channel.

Boost your marketing budget by switching to a white-labelled platform

Unhappy with high fees, organisers are turning to white-label ticketing solutions (or self-hosted ticketing) that can drastically reduce per-ticket charges. What’s more, because solutions like Ticket Tailor allow you to set and keep your own booking fees you can use the extra revenue to boost your owned marketing channels. 

Let’s assume we’re talking about a mid-sized festival at 10,000 capacity and a $50 ticket. The fees with Eventbrite will be $50,900 ($5.09 per ticket) according to their pricing page - either paid by the customers or the event organiser. Whereas with Ticket Tailor they’d be just $3,400 for the platform fees and then c.$16,000 in payment processing fees (e.g. Stripe/PayPal) – so just $1.94 per ticket. This would mean an event saving of over $30,000.

A $30,000 saving represents 6% of all revenue generated – and not only can that be the difference between making a profit or not, but is a significant pot of money that can now be reinvested into highly targeted marketing with secure ROI (Return on Investment). For example $10,000 of ad spend on Instagram could buy 2M impressions in a highly targeted location or interest area, or is enough additional budget to invest heavily in a billboard/poster campaign in your local area.

Promoters we speak to are seeing this as a choice between hoping their ticket company will be able to push their event, versus, taking back control of their budgets and investing in channels that they know will hit their target audiences. And after years of feeling let down, this is becoming an easier call to make.

A win-win way forward: Using discovery platforms strategically

Moving away from Eventbrite, See Tickets or DICE, and so on, doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning those platforms entirely. A popular approach we speak to promoters about is multi-channel ticketing that maximises revenue and reach: organisers list their events on the big discovery sites for visibility, but funnel most ticket buyers through their own white-label solution. This way, they get the “best of both worlds” – the event is still discoverable in a major marketplace, but the bulk of sales happen on a lower-fee system like Ticket Tailor.

This has the added benefit of truly understanding the marginal impact of being listed on discovery sites, as you can see how many sales they drive when your existing customers are not already pointed toward these sites. It also has an SEO benefit to have an event visible across various discovery platforms.

Some promoters we work with, will put their events on sale with just Ticket Tailor as their primary seller to see what demand is like. If it’s clear that they’ll sell out through their own marketing channels - then they’ve sold all tickets at a very low cost with Ticket Tailor and maximised profit on the event. If not, and they need extra reach, they’ll start feeding the event on to relevant discovery platforms.

The downside of this approach is that you have to manage allocation and sales across multiple platforms – but Ticket Tailor’s ticket importer makes life easy for bringing everything back to one place.

Additional benefits of taking control of your ticketing with a white-label solution

It’s not just the low fees that are making promoters switch, there are a host of other reasons that are just as compelling to event organisers looking to grow their business. Here are just a few…

Own your own data

Discovery platforms can offer marketing pushes (such as email blasts) by cross-pollinating everyone's ticket buyer data and selling it back to other events as an asset they now have control over. As we’ve already set out above, the majority of these customers have been acquired due to the event's own hard marketing graft - not the discovery platforms. 

With Ticket Tailor we ring fence your data and allow you to grow your customer data as an asset for your own business. As your data set grows you have a unique email list that your competitors can’t access – allowing you to capture as much of their event spend as possible. 

The larger promoters we speak to are cottoning on to the absurdity of paying high fees for access to an audience that they themselves have helped to grow. If anything, shouldn’t these promoters be the ones getting paid for bringing huge audiences to the doors of these discovery platforms - much like social media platforms do to large influencers?

Full brand control

Events often spend considerable time, money and effort on curating a brand that perfectly encapsulates what customers will expect from attending their events.

The problem with driving ticket sales through a discovery platform is that as soon as your customer starts their purchase journey - they are off your website and on a generic looking page - often with competitor events in plain sight to distract them.

With Ticket Tailor you can either seamlessly embed the purchase flow on your site, or create custom branded event pages that look and feel like your brand. This increases your brand awareness, authority of your ticketing journey and SEO of your own website. Ultimately attendees are less likely to get distracted or second-guess the purchase when the process feels like part of the official event page.

Tracking improvements

As white-label ticketing keeps the entire ticketing transaction on your domain it gives you more control over pixel tracking. This in turn gives you more data and granularity on how marketing campaigns are performing. Organisers gain the flexibility to spend their marketing budget where it works best, instead of feeling pressured to pay for a platform’s promotional add-ons that can be opaque in terms of performance.

Control your cash

As platforms like Ticket Tailor use payment processors (like Stripe, PayPal and Square), event organisers are paid out directly when tickets are purchased. Ticket Tailor never touches ticket revenue, and doesn’t have a bank account with ticket revenue in it. This significantly reduces cash flow risks for events.

Companies like Eventbrite often hold funds until after the event and there is a reliance on the ticket company's financial liquidity.

Conclusion: discovery vs control, a new balance in event ticketing

In the UK and US, event organisers are carving out a new balance between discovery and control. By moving to white-label ticketing (or blending it with multi-channel tactics), they are reducing costs, reclaiming their customer relationships, and gaining flexibility in how they promote events. This shift is driven by clear-eyed analysis of ROI: why pay steep fees on every sale when you can spend that money growing your audience directly? Why let a third-party interject its brand and agenda into your ticketing flow when you can craft a seamless experience under your own brand? 

We’re seeing a future where the event discovery platforms become just one of many tools in an organiser’s kit – useful for advertising and finding new attendees, but no longer the default gatekeeper for all ticket sales. Promoters large and small are empowered to run their own ticket shops, much like e-commerce sellers running their own online stores instead of only relying on marketplaces. The result could be a more competitive, organiser-friendly ticketing landscape: one where fees are lower, innovation is higher, and event creators have true ownership of their success.