Is the Price Right? How Event Creators Are Pricing Their Online Events

As events have moved online, it’s become increasingly more difficult to know what the worth of your event might be to your audience. But that doesn’t mean you should offer cheap or even free tickets for an experience you’ve worked hard to produce. Looking into averages for online ticket pricing, we see a range from category to category. Online music events average $17 (£13), food and drink events come in at $34 (£26), and health and wellness clock in at $29 (£22). Our pricier tickets tend to be science and technology events, which average $87 (£67), while business and professional tickets cost $91 (£70).

We talked to five different event creators – all of whom host five very different types of events – to see how they value their business and encourage attendees to purchase tickets to their events. Get a sense of ticket pricing and value from a few of our most popular creators from these different categories below:

Wellness: Jasmine RaShae of Soulful Flow Yoga

Can you describe your business?
I am a yoga teacher. I offer weekly online classes and monthly workshops. My niche is that I teach yoga to soul music. 

What is the average price of a ticket?
$5-35 (around £4-27): I offer tiered pricing or donation-based yoga.

Did you host in-person events before COVID? If so, has your ticket pricing changed since moving your events online?
Yes, I did. my prices lowered when we switched to online events.

How did you determine the price to charge for your online event?
I looked at the average rate of an in-person class and came down by half for online classes.

What have you found is the most compelling element to get attendees to purchase tickets to your events?
That they have a choice of how much they pay for the class. Some people have lost jobs so it may not be affordable for them to buy a yoga class. However, I believe yoga and wellness should be equitable for all.

What does an attendee get from your event?
Calm healing community.  I curate a playlist and yoga postures to soul music.

What was the process of turning your event idea into a lucrative business?
I honed into my interests and what could be valuable to consumers online and cultivated the brand and events with a service mindset. 

Any advice for someone just starting out in the events space?
Curate events that light you up! Set a timeline, budget, and know your target audience so that you can market efficiently and create a great experience for attendees.

Music: Vito Rinaldo of TOF Productions

Can you describe your business?
We are an interactive virtual musical nightclub. 

What is the average price of a ticket?
$10 (almost £8) for GA   $20 (£15.50) for VIP/Meet & Greet 

Did you host in-person events before COVID? If so, has your ticket pricing changed since moving your events online?
No, we had our first show on May 7th, 2020. 

How did you determine the price to charge for your online event?
We discussed with friends and audience members, colleagues, and artists to determine what would be a fair price – one that would not be a barrier to people who have financial limitations but also one that would compensate the artist in a way that makes their time and effort worthwhile.

What have you found is the most compelling element to get attendees to purchase tickets to your events?
Great music in an interactive environment. Building a new social group to enjoy music with. 

What does an attendee get from your event?
Joy and a shared musical experience. 

What was the process of turning your event idea into a lucrative business?
We give the vast majority directly to the artist after taking a portion to cover our operating expense.                           

Any advice for someone just starting out in the events space?
Stay true to your dream and if you build it they will come. Also be patient; it takes time to get a foothold.  

Arts + Crafts: Jennifer Fabos Patton of Gallery Girls

Can you describe your business?
We have online drawing and painting events with models. It is a great safe space for people to come and draw or paint. We socialise on the breaks and share work. We also play fun music.

What is the average price of a ticket?
$7-$10 (around £5.50-£8)

Did you host in-person events before COVID? If so, has your ticket pricing changed since moving your events online?
Yes, we had drawing and painting events all over LA, as well as some in San Francisco and Portland. Yes, I lowered the price by at least half.

How did you determine the price to charge for your online event?
Mostly due to wanting to make it a reasonable price for people especially since many were out of work. Basically cut it in half. I don’t have as much overhead and so many people want to do it.

What have you found is the most compelling element to get attendees to purchase tickets to your events?
I had a following and clientele already so I advertise the model and theme or costume. Some get more interest than others.

What does an attendee get from your event?
You would get the best art models to draw and paint. Right now with the virtual online sessions, we have music as well and a sense of a social life too.

What was the process of turning your event idea into a lucrative business?
I saw a need in the city over 16 years ago and started doing it for free in the beginning, then added a tip jar. As it grew over the months and years it became a culture, a community. Now so many people do it, they don’t even know where it started.

Any advice for someone just starting out in the events space?
Find something that people want to do, figure out the best time and day to do it, promote it, and have fun! Also start with a small budget until you start making money.

Food + Drink: Evan Weiss of The Bloody Mary Festival

Can you describe your business?
A cocktail and food tasting festival. A Bloody Mary experience!

What is the average price of a ticket?
$50 (around £39) or $70 (around £61) early entry.

Did you host in-person events before COVID? If so, has your ticket pricing changed since moving your events online?
Yes, but it’s not really comparable. The normal in-person festival costs $50 (general admission) and you get two-and-a-half hours sampling Bloody Marys from 10-15 different vendors.

We feel the virtual event still has the same essence as the live event, which is tasting amazing Bloody Marys, getting a little tipsy, and being around other Bloody Mary lovers. Splitting the $75 (£58) ticket with a friend, makes it $37.50 (£29) which we feel is a good value: five cocktails and a 90-minute virtual event.

How did you determine the price to charge for your online event?
The virtual event ticket costs $75 (£58) and includes five bottles of artisanal Bloody Mary mix from around the country shipped direct to the ticket holder. Each bottle has enough mix for two cocktails, so we marketed the ticket as ‘a ticket for two.’ Also included is Festival swag like tattoos, stickers, and magnets. Then on October 10th, each ticket holder can tune into the virtual Bloody Mary Festival. During the event, attendees will drink the Bloody Marys together and hear from the folks that made them. There will also be a short class on ow to make a killer Bloody Mary. Then we’ll all vote for our favourite.

On our end, shipping is a huge cost for us. We have to ship all of the Bloody Marys to NYC, and then we re-box them and ship them out to our customers.

What does an attendee get from your event?
At the in-person event, an attendee gets unlimited Bloody Marys made by the best bars, restaurants, and craft bottled mixes, and samples from food and beverage companies.

What was the process of turning your event idea into a lucrative business?
It became lucrative when we were able to attract enough sponsors to our in-person events that we were able to accommodate two sessions of the event in one day.

Any advice for someone just starting out in the events space?
It takes time to have a successful profitable event. You will learn a lot each time you do the event.

Business + Professional: Adriana Gascoigne of Girls in Tech

Can you describe your business?
Girls in Tech is a nonprofit organisation that is global – our headquarters are located in San Francisco, CA and at the current moment we have 54 active chapters around the world in 37 countries with over 60k members. We host a variety of events and programs, and initiatives that we produce to focus on supporting women in their careers in the STEM fields in two major ways: Education and skill building, and providing resources for career development and job placement (like mentorship)

What is the average price of a ticket?
There’s a massive range. In a normal year, our Girls in Tech Conference is $300 (around £230). We’ve charged anywhere from $35 to $150 (around £27 to £116) for some of our more robust programs, like our Global Classrooms. Our virtual hackathons and startup challenge are traditionally free of charge. 

Did you host in-person events before COVID? If so, has your ticket pricing changed since moving your events online?
Because of COVID-19 everything is now digital and we’ve had to shift our business model overnight. There’s such a saturation of digital programs – like webinars and masterclasses – that we started charging at the beginning of the year and now everything is pretty much free of charge for anybody who wants to participate. 

COVID is actually a blessing in disguise. The silver lining for us is that we changed our whole business model overnight to digital and we’re realising that’s a smart business move for us. We’re able to produce more and reach a lot more people globally through digital programming and it’s also less expensive overall to produce. So we’ve found there’s a lot of benefits to digital programming.

How did you determine the price to charge for your online event?
At the beginning of quarantine, we found that people were mostly signing up for free events, due to COVID-19 and the switch to online events. But as the year moves on, we’re figuring out a happy medium for next year’s event to offer up a fee that keeps them signing up and actually attending the event. We’re trying to figure out what that number is.

What have you found is the most compelling element to get attendees to purchase tickets to your events?
I think it’s the speakers: high-calibre speakers and content that’s difficult for attendees to access if it weren’t for Girls in Tech. Topics that are relevant and interesting to them, and hot button issues like IoT, AI, machine learning, or cyber currency. Also, giving attendees a better understanding of how to jump into those industries and technical training programs. 

What was the process of turning your event idea into a lucrative business?
Very much because of Eventbrite. We started ticketing in 2007 and we relied on the online tools available to create free events for people to get to know the organisation and understand our value. A combination of Eventbrite and Facebook allowed us to create awareness by using the free virtual tools available, and that really helped me create a litmus test of whether or not this was something people in the community would like and participate in. The first event drew in about 200 women in tech and Silicon Valley so I knew this was something that had legs and could make a positive impact in women’s lives and careers in STEM.

Any advice for someone just starting out in the events space?
Don’t overthink it. A lot of us are risk-averse, but you won’t know if it’s successful unless you go out and try it. Use the litmus test I used with Girls in Tech – whether it’s a panel discussion or event or something you’re really passionate about – just go out and try it. We have all of the tools we need to be successful, especially creating digital events, so go out there, promote it, get the word out, and see who turns up.