The Value of Virtual Tickets – When the Event is Sold Out

Virtual tickets are quickly becoming a valued revenue stream for live events around world. In this case study, we speak with VidSummit event planner Derral Eves about his experience selling virtual tickets for his live Video Marketing Conference. This year I had the pleasure to help Derral live stream the Los Angelos, California based Video Marketing conference held at the Westin Los Angelos Hotel Convention Center. Our goal was to create an engaging video production which would be live streamed to viewers around the world and recorded for on-demand video playback. The event used three live streaming systems to capture content from a main ball room, a theater and a large meeting room (more about the actually technology setup in this blog post).

Virtual tickets for a conference provide paying customers live access to the event from anywhere in the world. This year VidSummit charged viewers a fraction of the conference price, only $149, to watch the entire conference online. It was my job to transport the live viewers into VidSummit by delivering the best video production possible. I had a chance to converse with some of the excited virtual ticket holders on Facebook before the event and many sounded just as excited to be part of VidSummit as the actual in-person attendees. Along with the live stream access, VidSummit also offers a $50 option to access the on-demand video content we recorded as well. This was an option I bought personally knowing that I could not be in all three locations at once and had conflicting interests in atleast two of the various keynote timeslots.

As an event co-ordinator Eve’s has organized some of the Video Marketing Industries top thought leaders including: Gary Vaynerchuck, Shaun McBride, Cyreneq, Nike Pueringer, Luria Petrucci and many others. Flying these big name keynote speakers out to Los Angelos and paying for their time is not cheap. Luckily, VidSummit is a growing conference in a very fast moving industry, so the in-person ticket sales have always covered all expenses. Eve’s explains how live streaming the event allows for the events influence to grow beyond those who can afford to fly out to the California-based conference.

Adding live streaming to the conference allows the event to reach larger audiences but Eve’s was initially concerned about undermining the value of conference tickets which ranges from $400-800. There are so many people interested in this content who cannot afford to fly to Los Angelos, pay for a hotel and miss out on a week of week. So charging the right price for a virtual ticket was essential to growing the influence of the entire event without making people who do attend the conference think twice about watching from home.

“The value of attending a conference like this in person will never be undermined by the live streamed content” says Eves. For many Marketing Professionals attending this event is part of their professional development. By allowing employees to watch the conference from the comfort of their office has extended the reach of VidSummit dramatically. Eve’s explinas that access to live educational content is a growing field and it’s exciting for VidSummit to lead the industry with this type of technology. “Most of our conference attendees purchase a pass that provides on-demand access to all of the content anyway. We call this the ultimate pass. Without the ultimate pass conference attendees can simply purchase an attendee pass but we have seen that so many come back for the on-demand video access because you physically cannot attend all the event talks in-person”.

Questions for Derral:

Is this the first year VidSummit has live streamed the conference?

“Yes, this is the first year we have been able to live stream the event. The thing that we have been doing is trying to get this message out to more people. We can only fit so many people in one room and we knew we had to do this online. We have sold replay in the past and we have actually been quite profitable with that but the problem is building the excitement. We wanted to share the excitement of the live event with our online viewers and that is why we went with the Virtual Ticket”

How important are Virtual Ticket sales to the conference?

“Virtual Tickets can make any conference more profitable, because there is fixed overhead and you don’t have to worry about the traditional expenses such as hotel fees. All you have to worry about is having the right equipment with the right partners ”

What is the percentage of conference attendees vs virtual attendees? How many additional conference attendees were added because of the Virtual Tickets?

People at home are able to watch the event in their pajamas from their home. Our viewers are interacting and they are seeing the event from all around the world. Along with the live viewers the video on-demand is a very big deal for us after the conference. The virtual ticket holders get the choice to choose which talks they want to tune into and with the on-demand access everyone has the ability to go back and watch talks that they missed. In fact, 98% of our virtual ticket holders also purchased the on-demand access ($49 upcharge)

Were you at all worried about virutal ticket sales undermining the value of in-person ticket sales?

Absolutely. We had some people who could not make and they bought the virtual tickets. There more happening at the event that you will never get from a virtual ticket. The discussions outside and relationships that are forged you cannot get from a virtual ticket. The only thing I wish we would have done is offer the virtual tickets from day 1. We started selling the tickets a little late and could have capitalized on even more sales.

What tips do you have for others selling virtual tickets at an event?

We knew there would have a lot of people looking for where to go to watch the live event with their virtual tickets. So we put a button right on the home page prompting more sales through the event and directing ticket holders to the correct place to watch the live event. We sold another 100 right after we put at a promotion stream on my social media accounts. It’s probably even more than 100 because my phone is off the hook with emails and sales confirmations right now.