'The show must go on:' How online ticketing is affecting P.E.I. artists and venues

North Rustico's Watermark Theatre is by no means the smallest venue on P.E.I., but with 100 seats, it's not very big, either.

Watermark's manager of administration and marketing, Lara Dias, calls it "intimate." The theatre is not-for-profit and is open year-round, typically presenting two plays and a music series in the summer, another play in the fall, and an original production at Christmas.

For all those events, you can buy tickets either online or in person — with the convenience factor part of what it takes to get people in the door.

"All of our costs are going up," said Dias, who's been with Watermark since 2021. "We look to see how we can minimize costs without compromising any of the quality of our productions."

Around the time Dias started, the theatre was transitioning away from its old online ticketing platform. That was local company Ticket Wizard, which now focuses primarily on selling for Chase the Ace lotteries.

Up until 2016, P.E.I.'s government operated its own ticketing system, BoxOffice PEI. But some venues considered leaving the platform in 2013 after it started charging fees.

Dias said the Watermark thought about going with Eventbrite, based in San Francisco, "but we didn't want to go to that level just because we knew that there was a lot of fees involved, and we really wanted to stay local."

Enter Locarius

At the same time the Watermark was looking for a new ticketing platform, a local company was bringing one into existence.

Locarius is the creation of Charlottetown tech start-up Three Hippies. Co-founder and vice president Terry Smith told CBC News that just one year after launching, they have about 75 clients across Atlantic Canada, including the Watermark, the Souris Showhall, Copper Bottom Brewing in Montague and the Trailside Music Hall in Charlottetown.

We don't require a physical ticket anymore, and we don't even require them to have it on their phone​​​​​​.— Lara Dias of Watermark Theatre

"We're technology guys. We were looking for something to create and talking with some folks who are having some problems with tickets," said Smith. "So that's why we created Locarius."

Watermark was an early adopter, and Dias said getting in on the ground floor made it easy to tailor the software to their needs.

"They've really listened to our concerns about sort of who our demographic is, what they're comfortable doing online," she said.

Dias said most of the Watermark's patrons skew on the older side, and there was some concern that they might not take to the app. But about 70 per cent of patrons now buy their tickets online.

"We don't require a physical ticket anymore, and we don't even require them to have it on their phone," she said. 

"Because we're a smaller venue, we're able to check in everybody at the door as long as their name is on the list, and that alleviates a lot of anxiety for people having to print out a ticket."

The rise of online platforms — and fees

Across the entertainment industry, giant online ticketing platforms like Eventbrite and Ticketmaster have flourished in recent years. Instead of having to go to the box office during business hours, patrons can now buy tickets online 24/7 from wherever they are.

That added convenience also means added costs in the form of processing fees.

"The ticketing industry is really famous — or infamous — for the fact that they do what's called drip pricing," said Smith.

"Often you'll see the price and then you get through the checkout cart and all these things are added at the end. It's just drip, drip, drip, and all of a sudden your ticket price has ballooned."

Many ticketing platforms charge customers a per-ticket fee. Then, taxes and credit card processing fees are added. Some platforms also charge a subscription fee that venues pay to use the service.

Locarius has eliminated the subscription fee for venues, but they will have to pay a 79-cent base charge on each ticket sold through the app plus a fee that equals 2.79 per cent of each ticket's cost. That's compared to about seven per cent in fees on Eventbrite, and around 30 per cent of each ticket cost made up of extra fees through Ticketmaster. 

Most venues pass these online fees along to patrons, but the Watermark chooses to pay it themselves.

"We eat that cost," Dias said. "So for example, if a ticket is $30, it's the same whether you buy it online or at the door."

Covering costs

Ticket revenue isn't important just for small venues. The Confederation Centre of the Arts, one of the largest venues on the Island with its 1,000-seat Sobey Family Theatre, says 60 per cent of its annual revenue comes from tickets.

Andrew Sprague is the centre's director of communications and community engagement. He told CBC News the Confederation Centre uses U.K.-based software company Spektrix for its ticketing. It doesn't pass along an extra fee to users, but does charge the venue a monthly subscription fee.

To help with costs, the centre charges its own $6 fee on all tickets, with that money going into general revenue.

"Every cent we make here is used to support the activities of the centre," Sprague said. "So on a $50 ticket, we would hope that we would sell enough of those $50 tickets to cover the cost of whatever show we've brought in... to pay our crew, to pay our front-of-house team... to pay our box-office folks."

Tickets for a seat at the centre cost the same whether you buy them online in advance or in person at the box office. Sprague said it doesn't matter much to his venue when tickets are purchased.

"For us, tickets sold is a ticket sold," he said. "Whether someone buys a ticket one hour ahead of the show at the box office or whether they bought it four months ago online, the revenue for us is still revenue."

A new age of ticket fraud

Smith said Locarius eventually plans to use its platform to tackle the growing issue of ticket fraud. 

It hasn't been much of an issue for small local venues so far. But back in 2019, online scalpers tried to sell tickets to the Mamma Mia! show at the Confederation Centre for upwards of $250.

The Locarius platform offers secure digital tickets — meaning only one copy exists, and it can't be printed off or screenshotted.

"When I say electronic ticket, I mean electronic ones and zeros, not a PDF that's printed out," said Smith. "We've read stories about people buying a ticket, getting the PDF, printing it off, and then selling multiple copies… That's the problem we're trying to combat."

Locarius also uses "smart contracts" in the back end of its site, allowing venues to decide whether a ticket can be resold and for how much.

"Think of it as the fine print that might have been printed on the ticket previously." Smith said.

When to buy

Venues and ticketing platforms aren't the only stakeholders when it comes to ticket sales and the fees customers pay.

"For anything that I'm putting on, I rely 100 per cent on ticket sales," said Island producer and performer Craig Fair, who has upcoming shows at both the Trailside Music Hall and the P.E.I. Brewing Company.

For all of them, he takes on about half of the responsibility of selling tickets.

"It is very much on me," he said. "I think about it every day."

Fair pays all his artists and crew a pre-negotiated rate no matter how many tickets are sold, and said most shows need to be somewhere around half-sold to start turning a profit.

"Going into a run of shows that's 20 per cent pre-sold, and then you're hoping that people are going to buy at the door? That's a nightmare," Fair said.

He has had to cancel some poor-selling shows.

"If the pre-sales are not there four weeks before a show opens, I can't move forward," he said. "That means not only losing a large amount of income, but as well making these artists lose this income."

Venues can lose profit

Singer-songwriter Lawrence Maxwell said he's never had to cancel any of his shows, but he's come close.

"I've been in this situation a couple of times when I was unsure as to whether or not the performance could go on because of the number of ticket sales," the Clyde River musician said.

But Maxwell understands why people would wait to buy tickets at the door rather than pay online fees. 

"Those fees are a bit more ambiguous and we're not really sure what constitutes that number, because it seems to fluctuate all the time, show to show, venue to venue," he said.

Maxwell usually asks venues for a flat rate of pay, unless he knows he can sell enough tickets to turn a profit.

"If it were totally up to me, I'd put on a show if there was two people there," he said. "But oftentimes it's the venues that are at a greater risk because they have staff to pay."

With online tickets becoming the norm, Maxwell thinks people should understand what the added fees are for.

I'd rather have a full house on a $20 or $25 ticket, than a half-capacity show for $35 plus all the fees and taxes.— Singer-songwriter Lawrence Maxwell

"The audience has gotten used to those fees, and sometimes we don't necessarily question it," he said. "Even myself, when I go to watch a show, I just have accepted the fact that it's going to cost me more than the poster price, and I just budget that in — almost like I'm budgeting in a tip when I go out to eat."

The changes in the ticketing industry have made Maxwell and other artists think critically about what they're charging for shows, and what fans will pay.

"I'd rather have a full house on a $20 or $25 ticket, than a half-capacity show for $35 plus all the fees and taxes," he said.

At the Watermark, Dias said the theatre did have to raise ticket prices this year because of increased costs but has never cancelled a show due to low advance sales.

"The show must go on," she said. "Whether we have a small audience or not, we still go."