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GENERAL >> MAIN BOARD >> Five Stones Secrets to Success (oldham-on-steroids) http://rocksoff.org/cgi-bin/messageboard/YaBB.pl?num=1527720099 Message started by Rev 20 Redlights on May 30th, 2018 at 5:41pm |
Title: Five Stones Secrets to Success (oldham-on-steroids) Post by Rev 20 Redlights on May 30th, 2018 at 5:41pm
1. Dynamic Pricing
2. Flexible Capacity 3. Lucky Dip (top secret revenue enhancer) 4. Secondary Market Control 5. Targeted Marketing Unlike most hardcore fans, I've always been a great admirer of the machinations of both Oldham and oldham-on-steroids (jagger) One of my first posts, 24 years ago on the Undercover mailing list, with everybody else bitching about ticket prices, went something like this: "Hey, I'd be happy if they could get $20,000 per ticket. I wouldn't pay it myself, but I'd be happy for the Stones." Needless to say, this did not win me many new friends LOL. And its been downhill ever since LOL. Anyway, I've been researching the Stones marketing success for many years and thus am in a position to share some insights... (some of this content previously published on IORR) Re: AEG President Rick Mueller "If You Sell Out the First Day, You're Underpriced" Actually, the awful truth is, with dynamic pricing, If You Sell Out Before The Day of the Show, You're Underpriced Combined with dynamic pricing, flexible capacity is used to assure sell-outs But the real kicker is Lucky Dip, which I believe is a system patented by the Stones and currently unavailable to other artists, although it will be licensed to others in the future. Further, Lucky Dip is not a gift or giveaway but rather (and I know this is counter-intuitive) Lucky Dip is actually, combined with dynamic pricing and flexible capacity, a brilliant innovation, controlled by sophisticated algorythms, that maximizes revenue. (end of part 1, please refrain from commenting til i publish the remainder, thanks) |
Title: Re: Five Stones Secrets to Success (oldham-on-steroids) Post by Rev 20 Redlights on May 30th, 2018 at 5:43pm
(I've done a patent search on Lucky Dip and come up empty, although there
are less sophisticated ticketing systems that are indeed covered by patents, So I believe the Lucky Dip patent has been registered in one of the countries that do not allow patent searches, but whose patents are still internationally recognized, the same places where for example apple and google hide some of their patents until they bring the product to market and make the patent public) IORR member XYZ: "rev, I don't see how Lucky Dip is a patentable invention." okay, XYZ, i'll try to be pithy about what is not recognized about Lucky Dip But first, there is even a more "dark", if you will, fourth facet of the strategy. Besides dynamic pricing, flexible capacity, and lucky dip, there is secondary market control, that is, wherever it is legal, moving tickets in and out of the secondary market, aiming to get your fair share of whatever is sold above face value... anyway, Lucky Dip: I will use a simplified static example, with only one stage location possible, no legal way to exploit the secondary market, no current market-survey to better estimate demand, no timing of the Lucky Dip and other ticket release(s), no use of some Lucky Dip as a goodwill gesture, and no special deals for platinum card holders or frequent buyers of, say, Charlene's Chicken Cutlets (tennessee residents only) In our example, it is a 40,000 concert-capacity stadium with 2,000 of those seats being "marginal", that is, extreme side view and/or somewhat obstructed viewing... so what you do is sell 2,000 lucky dips and go for the throat on the other 38,000. obviously, if you've underestimated demand, you immediately have sold 38,000 at a premium price and the 2,000 crap seats at the bargain price, and you've done very well. But really you've blown it! you set the prices too low. you could have made more. so that's why you intentionally first set the initial prices very high. remember, you don't want to sell out til the last day. so a more typical pattern would be: you sell a certain amount each day, and dynamically adjust the price each day to keep on your selling target, day by day. and this is where Lucky Dip comes in... (end of part 2, please refrain from commenting until i finish up, thanks) |
Title: Re: Five Stones Secrets to Success (oldham-on-steroids) Post by Rev 20 Redlights on May 30th, 2018 at 5:45pm
and this is where Lucky Dip comes in. Let's think about Taylor Swift versus
the Stones, and a market where they have about equal demand at equal prices. 45 days before the show, Taylor Swift has to start radically reducing her prices or she's gonna have a lot of empty seats. But the Stones don't! They can hold on to their premium prices much longer because their back-up plan is already in place. Lucky Dippers will be moved into any unsold seats, an equal number of marginal seats will simply disappear from the books, never having really existed. So the boxscore will read, for example, 38,765 out of 38,765 possible. A sell-out! What you're doing is making sure you get the full benefit of those last- minute deep-pockets purchases, e.g., a law firm buying for one of its clients, a rich guy buying for one of his mistresses, etc So, in summary, it is this ability to hold on til the last minute to your premium pricing which is how Lucky Dip maximizes revenue. addendum (a bit of further conversation with IORR member XYZ): XYZ, you are following ticket sales and the secondary market far closer than me for this tour, so i have to accept what you say about demand the last time i closely followed such numbers was for the aptly named Zipcode tour (see my comment on targeted marketing below) in fact on shidoobee for a while i ran a daily market report that tracked both selling prices and amount of tickets on the secondary market on the basis of this market report, i was able to project with a few days to go a virtual sell-out for the first show, while others were still projecting huge sections being tarped-out. i was also able to project very early on that the Orlando show would be far more packed than the Bigger Bang show at the same venue yay me. it was the Zipcode tour that taught me about targeted marketing, which involves such things as civic pride and local sports teams and local businesses and billboards to make the show locally viral even if it is nationally and internationally only a blip thus targeted marketing becomes the fifth spoke on our wheel... (so for the final exam, all you have to remember is...) dynamic pricing, flexible capacity, lucky dip, secondary market control, and targeted marketing |
Title: Re: Five Stones Secrets to Success (oldham-on-steroids) Post by andrews27 on May 30th, 2018 at 7:06pm
They tried a version of Lucky Dip in 1999/No Security. They offered "great seats" sold by phone over 800-numbers (US) during a two-hour MTV or VH-1 video retrospective/new interviews special. I bought two floor seats in row JJ in Pittsburgh. Night of the show, the ushers told all of us in the TV bloc to move ahead quietly into the first 20 or so rows, which were kept empty. We got new seats in row M (from row 36 to row 13) on Keith's side. That was about $110 each - my best Stones seats out of maybe 16 shows since 1975.
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