The Q3 2023 benchmarking report for UK ticket resellers has just been published. Learn how the top 8 UK ticket resellers perform across the digital space.

The latest Q3 2023 benchmarking report for UK ticket resellers has just been published.  It covers the largest 8 national Ticket resellers, including Ticketmaster, The Ticket Factory, See Tickets, Gigantic, Eventim, Viagogo, TicketSellers, and Live Nation.

The research gives an inside track on who is winning the biggest share of voice online, and quantifies the gaps, risks and missed opportunities for other ticket resellers to win brand exposure, drive online views, and generate ticket sales. The report highlights quick wins that will improve enquiries from your online strategy and identifies the barriers that may be reducing your site’s ability to optimise digital performance.

To see a preview and contents page of the Q3 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.

What The Industry Research Report Covers

The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each retailer based on 50+ metrics and indicators of successful digital strategy, including organic visibility, domain authority, paid media ads, conversion performance, technical performance, site speed, universal search, content, social ads, accessibility, and mobile performance.  

Driving Optimal ROAS from Paid Media Channels

Some of the leading players in the space are high spenders on paid media channels such as Google, Bing & Facebook - but have a poor or sub-optimal conversion improvement strategy. Without an optimised, sophisticated conversion strategy that maximises the conversion rate, the return on investment is unsustainable or will underperform. Scaling spend on paid media is not achievable unless the conversion rate delivers optimal performance in the sector. Some in the space have paid media spend levels from 30k+ per month but dedicate minimal resources and budgets to conversion testing.  Given the cost per clicks on ad networks will continue to rise, we recommend spending at least 10% of your paid media budget on ongoing conversion optimisation testing schedules to ensure your paid media ROI maintains long-term viability, competitive advantage, and sustainability.

Technical Website Compliance

Savvy digital marketers know that having a technically sound website is an essential component of a successful fully integrated digital strategy - plus a site capable of maximising conversion performance.  For ticket resellers, having an easy-to-navigate site is essential for consumers needing to purchase tickets. Particular care should be taken of the pathways to key pages, such as upcoming events and 'my account'.

In our last report, we noted that Live Nation was returning the highest level of 4xx error codes, with a total of 1,059. In Q3, Live Nation has made limited progress, still flagging for 1,029. However, the least technically compliant site is now Ticketmaster, which flags with 9,412 4xx errors. This is a concerningly high level of errors, and indicates a frustrating experience for ticket buyers.

Site Speed & Conversion Rate Performance

When 62% of consumers are less likely to convert if they have a negative mobile site experience, ensuring that your site is quick and easy to load makes a significant improvement on your overall conversion rates. Ticket resellers need to ensure their customers have a positive experience on their mobile site as many customers now rely on purchasing via the mobile site and apps. Plus, when popular events sell out quickly, ticket sellers don't want disappointed fans blaming their missing out on poor site performance!

We have seen universal falls in mobile page speed performance, across all sectors we specialise in. In Q1, mobile page speed scores for ticket resellers ranged from 28 to 67. In Q3, this range fell to 12-54. Eventim, which had the lowest mobile page speed score in Q1, has only seen a very minimal drop in performance, falling only three points to a score of 25. With universal falls in page speed score (at much higher rates than for Eventim), this indicates Eventim have likely made some improvements to their mobile site experience.

Building Competitive Advantage with Domain Authority

Domain authority is an essential metric for measuring the effectiveness of SEO performance, and helps create a reliable overall gauge of how effective your site is at achieving organic traffic, i.e. ‘free’ traffic that isn’t gained through sponsored ads. Ticket resellers should be continually pushing to improve their DA by sharing great-quality content about their upcoming events and payment options. 

A ‘good’ DA really comes down to how your competitors are performing, however, it’s generally considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. As in Q1, DAs for ticket reseller range between 59 and 86, with See Tickets sitting at the highest end of this scale.

Organic Performance – Mobile & Desktop

A strong organic performance is strategically important as it ensures your site ranks above competitors for key, transactional keywords. When 93% of your customers won’t go past the first page of Google, your absence or lack of targeting for essential keywords will cost you conversions. The cost-of-living crisis may have some kickback on to the live event industry, having an impact on ticket resellers. However, with high-profile events, such as the Taylor Swift Eras tour, still selling out rapidly, ticket sellers can still expect to see high levels of traffic for key events.

Four out of our eight ticket resellers have secured more traffic year on year in 2023. Gigantic, which had seen the biggest loss in traffic in Q1, has now gained traffic compared to 2022 levels, securing 23% more visits than last year. The biggest loss in Q3 has been seen by Viagogo, which has seen a drop of 45%. 

Universal Search Opportunity

Google Universal Search Results is an evolving opportunity to make your pages visible on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Universal results often appear before traditional listings and are eye-catching for users. Universal search results refer to rankings on a SERP that are not the traditional ‘blue line’ Google link, and a retailer can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. Ticket resellers should be utilising all universal search features as potential customers will be interested to see how previous customers have found their experience via 'reviews', 'FAQs' and 'people also ask' results.

'People also ask' results were the most widely-appeared for Universal Search opportunity in Q3, with Ticketmaster's 9,100 appearances placing them in the lead. 'Reviews', the second most-used result, saw the most appearances come from Eventim, which has secured 9,700 appearances.

The Longtail Keyword Opportunity

Longtail keywords are often considered high intent and potentially more likely to convert as a searcher is being more specific. Optimising for longtail keywords also puts your content strategy in a strong position to rank for retailer new search terms as they enter Google’s index. Ticket resellers should consider event-specific terms in order to improve appearances for longtail, high conversion-potential tickets.

Ticketmaster has secured the most appearances in the top positions for longtail keywords, with more appearances in the top three than most of their competitors have secured in the top 20. At the lower end of the scale, The Ticket Factory is securing a comparatively high proportion of top three positions, relative to their total keywords ranked. This indicates a well-strategised longtail keyword strategy, in which the site is ranking highly for fewer, as opposed to large quantities.

Facebook Adverts

With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) forecast to hit over 42 million users by 2022, it is not surprising that companies have jumped at the opportunity to advertise on the social media platform. Facebook’s UK digital advertising revenue has been estimated to have breached 2.6b GB pounds in 2019.

We've included examples of Eventim's Facebook ads below. Eventim has used consistent branding to ensure its own brand visibility is clear and has made use of carousel ad formats to promote a range of events from one ad. 

Top Social Shares & Content

When it comes to social media and on-site content strategies, it is important to release content that has a longer shelf life. An article is considered 'Evergreen' if it has maintained its relevancy to an audience for longer. It's great for your retailer engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. Social media is an effective tool for ticket resellers to share information about upcoming events, along with features on artists that will be engaging and entertaining for social media users.

In our research, The Ticket Factory appear to be gaining far fewer engagements on social media than its competitors. While Ticketmaster has the highest audience on Facebook, with 345,300 likes, Live Nation have equalled its 65,100 Instagram followers. Brands with large social followings are more likely to secure organic reach on their content, with a reduced need to rely on paid social to boost visibility.

Website Readability & Accessibility

20% of people in the UK have a disability – 2 million of which are people living with sight loss. In addition, 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some degree of colour vision deficiency. When websites are not designed to meet these needs, retailers lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. All the ticket resellers need to ensure their website is accessible for all customers looking purchase tickets, especially when there is such a huge range of different events to suit a range of potential ticket-buyers.

In Q1, we noted that Eventim were still seeing the highest levels of accessibility barriers, following poor performance in our previous report. In Q3, Eventim became the best-performing ticket reseller for accessibility, eliminating all contrast errors and recording only one error and one alert. Gigantic now has the most cause for concern, having returned 152 alerts in our audit.

Q3 2023 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 8 ticket resellers on, check out our quick-look table below;

GET THE FULL 79-PAGE Q3 2023 REPORT

To get a copy of the full report, please complete the enquiry form. If you want to talk to us about accelerating your digital performance, please call us on 01543 410014 or schedule a call with Mike Movassaghi.

Photo by Danny Howe on Unsplash