In France, 40% of tickets for sporting events go unsold every night, a shortfall of €6.5 million a day, according to Bpifrance. The same holds true for many concerts, shows and festivals.

Yet many organizers still pick their online ticketing platform on a single criterion: the commission.

The problem is that the price of your ticketing platform doesn’t sell tickets.

What sells tickets happens at every step of the journey. An attendee can drop off because they never saw the event announcement, because they’re hesitant about the price, because the checkout flow is too long, because their payment method isn’t available, or simply because nobody followed up after they abandoned their cart.

E-commerce has been working on these problems for years: fast payment, personalization, automated follow-ups, segmentation and a detailed understanding of the customer. Event ticketing can apply exactly the same principles.

Here are seven concrete ways to sell more tickets with your online ticketing platform, whether you organize matches, concerts, shows or festivals.

1. Reduce friction in the checkout flow

The first ticket you sell is often the easiest. The real challenge starts when the attendee lands on the booking page.

Every extra step can lead to drop-off: mandatory account creation, an overly long form, unclear information, complicated navigation or a payment process that takes too long.

In e-commerce, the goal is simple: shrink the distance between purchase intent and the transaction as much as possible. Ticketing should follow the same logic.

The steps of an effective checkout flow

An effective checkout flow should let the attendee:

• quickly find their event

• choose their category or seat

• see the final price right away

• select their payment method

• complete their purchase in just a few steps

On mobile, this optimization matters even more. Attendees shouldn’t have to think about how to buy their ticket.

With Tickie, the booking flow is designed to minimize this friction, with an optimized mobile checkout and multiple payment methods such as Apple Pay and Google Pay.

The goal isn’t just to have a good-looking online ticketing page. It’s to turn more visitors into buyers.

This logic starts even before tickets go on sale. An organizer who opens ticketing without any contact list depends entirely on social media and advertising. By collecting sign-ups ahead of time, presales, waitlists, on-sale alerts, they start with an audience that’s already interested and lock in their first hours of sales, which are often the most decisive.

2. Recover abandoned carts

An attendee who abandons their cart isn’t necessarily a lost attendee.

They’ve already chosen an event, selected an offer or a seat, and sometimes even started paying. The purchase intent is already there.

The problem is that many organizers do nothing at that point.

In e-commerce, abandoned cart follow-ups have become standard practice. Automated workflows remind customers of their order and bring them straight back to checkout.

The same logic can be applied to ticketing.

A good follow-up shouldn’t just say “You forgot your cart.” It should take the attendee right back to where they left off.

“Your booking for [event name] is still available. Complete your order in just a few seconds.”

The benefit is twofold: you recover a sale that would probably have been lost, and you make the most of traffic you’ve already paid to acquire.

With Tickie, checkout flow data can be used to identify these behaviors and automate the right CRM actions.

3. Use data to sell the right ticket to the right attendee

Not every attendee should get the same message.

A fan who comes to every match doesn’t have the same expectations as someone discovering the club for the first time.

An attendee who always buys VIP seats shouldn’t receive the same communication as a buyer who’s only looking for the cheapest price.

That’s where an event CRM really proves its worth.

The ticketing data to leverage

Ticketing should no longer just be about selling a ticket. It should help you build real knowledge of each attendee:

• purchase history

• attendance frequency

• average spend

• seat categories purchased

• events viewed

• behavior before and after the event

• interest in VIP offers, merchandise or food and drinks

This data then lets you segment your audiences and personalize your campaigns.

The goal is simple: stop talking to everyone the same way.

4. Increase average order value per attendee

Selling more tickets isn’t the only way to grow revenue.

You can also increase the value of each order.

That’s the principle behind upselling and cross-selling, widely used in e-commerce.

In events, it can take several forms:

• upgrade to a higher category

• VIP access

• parking

• food and drinks

• merchandise

• premium experience

• bundle offer

• add-on products or services

The moment of payment is especially valuable: the attendee has already decided to come.

Instead of selling them just a €25 ticket, why not offer them a €35 or €50 experience when it genuinely fits their profile?

The difference seems small on a single order, but across several thousand attendees, it adds up fast.

The same reasoning applies to high-value offers: suites, hospitality areas, corporate packages. They often account for a large share of an event’s revenue, yet they’re still frequently tracked separately, in a spreadsheet, with no link to ticketing. Bringing them together with your ticketing and CRM puts every partner, their purchases and your exchanges in one place.

5. Adapt your offers to the event’s actual sell-through rate

A high-performing ticketing platform shouldn’t just record sales. It should help the organizer steer their event.

How many tickets have been sold? How fast? Which categories are working? Which channels are driving sales? Which customer segments are buying? And above all: where are the seats that risk going unsold?

This data lets you adjust your sales strategy as you go.

A category that’s selling very fast can be priced or positioned differently. Conversely, a category that’s struggling can be the focus of a targeted campaign, a new offer or a repositioning.

The goal isn’t to run promotions all the time. It’s to manage pricing, offers and communication based on actual demand.

Then there are seats that have been sold but go unused. An attendee who can’t make it leaves an empty seat, and their ticket sometimes ends up on an unofficial resale site, at a price the organizer doesn’t control and with a risk of fraud for the buyer.

Setting up official resale on your own official ticketing platform changes the game. The ticket holder puts the ticket back on sale in a secure environment, another attendee buys it, and the seat gets filled. The organizer keeps control of their tickets, knows who is actually walking through the gates, and gains a new contact in their database. A sold ticket is only worth its full value if the attendee shows up: they’re the one who spends, comes back and talks about the event.

6. Turn one-time buyers into regular attendees

A common mistake is to think the sale is over once the ticket is bought.

In reality, it’s the start of the relationship.

After the event, the organizer has a particularly valuable piece of information: this person showed up.

That makes it possible to offer them:

• the next match

• the next concert

• a presale

• a VIP offer

• a season ticket

• a similar event

• a new experience

That’s the whole point of an event CRM.

An attendee who buys once can become a regular customer. But it doesn’t happen automatically.

You need to keep the data, understand the behavior and build the right communication workflows.

A ticketing platform that doesn’t retain this knowledge forces the organizer to start from scratch with every event.

7. Measure the revenue your ticketing generates, not just its cost

This is probably the most important shift in thinking.

Two online ticketing platforms can have different commissions and deliver completely different results.

Comparing only the cost per ticket is like comparing two salespeople on their salary alone without looking at the revenue they bring in.

So the right metric isn’t just “How much does my ticketing cost me?” but rather “How much extra revenue does my ticketing help me generate?”

The metrics to track to manage your ticket sales

You need to look at the entire funnel, from the first visit to the attendee coming back:

• Attract: traffic to the event page

• Convert: conversion rate, cart abandonment rate, payment completion rate

• Maximize value: average order value, add-on sales, revenue per attendee

• Fill: event sell-through rate

• Retain: repeat purchase rate

This is the view that lets you measure a ticketing solution’s true performance: a platform can be good at converting and bad at retaining, and only the full funnel reveals it.

Key takeaways: 7 ways to sell more tickets

Not all of these levers take the same effort. The most effective approach is to start with the ones that deliver quick results, like abandoned cart follow-ups, then add the others event by event.

Ticketing should no longer be just a sales tool

For a long time, ticketing was seen as technical infrastructure: sell a ticket, generate a QR code and control access at the gate.

Today, that model is too limited.

Ticketing sits at the heart of the relationship between organizers and their audience. That means it can have a direct impact on acquisition, conversion, average order value, retention and customer knowledge.

That’s exactly Tickie’s approach.

Our goal isn’t simply to offer yet another online ticketing solution. We’re building infrastructure that helps organizers sell better, know their audience better and increase the revenue generated by every event.

The results are measurable: organizers who use Tickie see on average 19% more sales and 11% more revenue. Istres Handball, a professional top-division club, chose Tickie for its ticketing to bring in gamification and improve its checkout flow. Gaya Comedy Club grew its sales by adding its food and drink products to its booking flow. You can read their testimonials on our homepage.

Because in the end, the point isn’t to choose the cheapest ticketing platform. It’s to choose the one that helps you sell more tickets and get more value from every attendee.

FAQ

How do you optimize ticket sales for an event?

To optimize ticket sales, you need to work on the entire checkout flow, not just the price. Fast mobile payment, offers tailored to each event, abandoned cart follow-ups and communication segmented by purchase history all help you sell more tickets without increasing your acquisition budget.

How do you choose an online ticketing platform for your event?

To choose an online ticketing platform, look at the revenue it generates, not just its commission. Two solutions at the same price can deliver very different results depending on their conversion rate, their ability to drive add-on sales and the data they give back to the organizer.

How do you improve an event’s sell-through rate?

To improve an event’s sell-through rate, track sales by category and act before it’s too late: a targeted campaign to the segments that usually buy that category, a new offer, a price repositioning or a bundle offer. Official resale also lets you put seats that won’t be used back into circulation.

How do you increase average order value per attendee?

To increase average order value, offer add-on products at the moment the ticket is purchased: parking, food and drinks, merchandise, VIP access or a premium experience. These add-on sales increase revenue per attendee without having to sell more tickets.