After the devastaing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the live sector has been up and running again for several months.
As the industry prepares for 2022, Event Genius and Festicket have analysed the booking habits of event-goers, asking which country’s fans are booking the most events abroad, where they are travelling to and how much they’re spending.
Festicket discovered that music fans are spending nearly three times more on their event trips compared to pre-Covid bookings. It has reported a 172% increase in the average order value for international bookings between 2019 and 2022, now standing at over €550 for each order's average booking value (ABV).
Domestic bookings have seen a similar rise, encompassing a range of products including tickets, accommodation and travel.
At the forefront of this increase are event-goers from the UK, who make up 31% of all international orders for 2022. The UK is followed by the USA, accounting for 28% of orders, France (5%), Germany (5%), and Ireland (4%). Italy, the Netherlands and Spain are lagging behind.
Spain has, however, seen a huge influx of fans from elsewhere, most notably from the UK, USA, France, Germany, and Ireland. Spanish event bookings make up 68% of all 2022 international bookings, followed by Portugal (7%), USA (7%), Croatia (6%) and Hungary (3%).
The return of live events has also seen a huge increase in alternative payment methods like Festicket’s Payment Plan and Pay with Friends features. 50% of international orders for 2022 events have been placed via a payment plan compared to 12% before Covid.
“As the live event industry continues to open up, we expect it to unleash a wave of pent-up demand from eager event-goers who have been starved of live events for nearly 18 months,” said Festicket and Event Genius’ chief operating officer Reshad Hossenally. “We are already seeing this play out with those events that have been brave enough to go on sale, such as the sell-out Primavera Sound which we were the official payment plan provider for.
“It’s also incredibly promising to see the willingness of fans to spend highly on future trips and that our alternative payment offerings are being well received by event-goers as well helping event organisers boost sales during these challenging times.”
All data is taken from the Festicket, Ticket Arena and Event Genius database, up until September 1, 2021.
