Best online ticketing service?

Events
1

I’m gearing up for an upcoming event (Space City Open/Houston Arcade Expo). I’m anticipating high turnout this year and am toying with the idea of doing online ticketing. I’m wondering who out there has experience selling tournament entries with services like eventbrite?

Things I need:

  1. reliable/quick payout so I can pay winners
  2. low fees
  3. waitlist management
  4. refund management

Thanks!

1 Like
2

Eventbrite is worth looking into.

Payouts next day After purchase if you want.

Fees are customizable. You can do some that you pay and some the buyers pay or all you pay and all they pay. They aren’t the cheapest in the world.

Waitlist management has been good for us so far (our first year using them). Pretty self explanatory.

I’ve been able to refund stuff easily.

One big benefit is they fight any and all charge backs for you.

1 Like
3

We’ve used Eventbrite for the last two or three Portland Pinbrawls and it’s been great. We charge $25/entry inclusive of Eventbrite fees, which I think are ~$2.50/entry. We sell out within 5 minutes and have an active waitlist process leading up to the tournament, and we’ve rarely run into issues. Make sure you understand how refunding a ticket interacts with your waitlist or you run the risk of making tickets available to the general public when you don’t mean to. We don’t scan actual tickets for check-in, but I think that functionality is available.

1 Like
4

Yep scanning is definitely available. We passed on that too.

They have boilerplate agreements as well as completely custom ones. They were super easy to work with when we set them up.

1 Like
5

This thread is apropos… I was just asking a friend about Eventbrite. Does anyone know if you can somehow restrict purchasers from buying tickets to more than 1 “event?”

I will be running 2 qualifying sessions for an upcoming tournament and I need a way for people to register for only one of the two sessions. I can always cancel a duplicate registration but the refunding process for that seems like it could be a pain.

6

Ha, I’m doing something similar, but 4 qualifying sessions and players are restricted to two. In tinkering around with eventbrite, my sense is that it is not possible.

7

We used Eventbrite year 1 of Replay and switched to Showclix. I can put anyone in touch with our Showclix rep if you message me.

8

Can’t recommend TicketSpice enough.

  • You’ll find the fees very competitive especially over EventBrite. We don’t even pass the fees along to our customers, we just consider it a convenience for us. 99c/ticket flat rate no min, no monthly.
  • Free tickets have no fees.
  • Included (fee free) 2D ticket scanning application, we use iPod touches with 2D laser sleds and they work great.
  • Easy UI for refunds (partial or full). Some ticket providers (looking at you ShowClix) require your customers to email them for refunds.
  • Works with your payment processor or theirs, theirs offers competitive rates.
  • Customer support is very responsive.
  • Flexible coupon system saved us a ton of time.

We’ll be using it again for Louisville Arcade Expo 2020!

2 Likes
9

Just found a limitation with Eventbrite. You can only have one waitlist per event. So if you have multiple tournaments in the event, you can only setup one waitlist. I put in a feature request to do it per ticket, but who knows if it will be implemented.

Food for thought.

1 Like
10

Thanks for the advice everyone. decided to go with eventbrite this year and will see how it goes. It has all the features I need for my tournament format, and I found setting everything up very simple. if it doesn’t work out, i’ll try one of these other services next year.

1 Like