A message on coronavirus from Ant and LP of Lyte
Live events are an absolutely essential part of our day-to-day lives. They cut across every line that separates us: politics, religion, socioeconomics, race and more. They’re the last, best place where we can experience a sense of real community.
Empty seats at the London Olympics inspired Ant to get into this racket — and now we live in a world where the Summer Olympics are in question. Over the last two weeks, we’ve been saddened to watch so many friends in our industry face unprecedented challenges. We’ve lost sleep over the prospect that some might not make it. We’ve lost even more sleep worrying about the scores of vulnerable hourly workers who may lose their livelihoods over this.
Until reading this article on March 10, we left it to Lyters to decide whether to come into the office because of our team’s concern for the small businesses in communities around our offices in San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and Los Angeles. We did not want to withdraw.
Since this crisis emerged, 100% of the team’s time and energy has been focused on supporting our clients. Candidly, there was no time to issue a statement sooner as we have continually reminded each other that the best thing we can do is quietly execute on behalf of our partners. We also wanted to make sure anything we had to say could actually be helpful. That being said, in the past couple of weeks we learned A LOT while helping our partners manage postponements effectively. Below, we share the emerging trends we’re seeing across the platform, what we can do to help, and some of the contributions we hope to make as we all navigate through this together. This message is the start of a dialogue. More to come.
Just know we are in this with you for the long haul.
Please do not hesitate to contact either of us directly if you have any questions on any of this. For a quicker response, ping LP. Ant’s in the lab working on some product stuff we think will help even more.
With all respect and support,
Ant and LP
Insights & Actions
- Refund rates are lower than you think. Like an on-sale, they come fast, then slow way down. Refund rates across the platform after postponement announcements are hovering right around 20%. While that is not insignificant, most of our partners can manage that satisfying the demand from Exchange reservations we see coming in (see below). Your patrons understand this is out of your control and are riding this out with you when their personal situations permit them to do so. We noticed the highest volume of refunds will occur in the first few days after announcement.
- Consumers are still buying tickets. Transaction volume has increased after postponement announcements. For one of our partners, volume increased 2X in the week following the announcement absorbing a significant percentage of refunds. Across the platform prices are actually up over a year ago and have not dropped, though that masks some meaningful variance between festivals and venues.
- Our solution for postponement is working: We make it frictionless for fans to either request a refund, roll their tickets into the new dates, or make changes to their existing order so that they can attend the rescheduled event. Similarly, in the event of a cancelation, our customers are using this capability to roll 2020 demand into 2021 reservations. This is preserving cash flow and giving fans what they want.
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Resources
- Talking to Our Community: LP is exploring ways to use our Spot Lyte On podcast to run a series of “shorts” to share stories from our business community during this crisis. More on that soon. Reach out to him directly if you’d like to participate. Of course you can listen to the first two “pre-Covid” episodes of Spot Lyte On here, if, like us, you are at home with spare listening time to fill.
- Slack Channel: We have created and will be moderating an invitation-only Slack channel where we can provide a discreet, secure forum for frank and candid conversation with your peers and colleagues about strategies to fight through this, personally and professionally. You can request to be added here.
- White Paper: Our business intelligence team is pulling together deeper analysis and actionable insight from across our platform and network to help you better see your choices. We’ll be rolling this out over the coming days, so stay tuned
- If you’re a promoter contemplating cancellation or postponement, reach out to us at:
Justin, for venues
Angeline, for festivals
