May 13, 2025 • 48 mins
FREE TICKETS?! Yes, really. In this episode of Tickets to Travel: The Business of Travel Experiences, we’re joined by the ultimate guest list insider, Lance Dashoff, founder of Loudie — the app that’s quietly revolutionizing how fans score free concert, comedy, and festival tickets across the U.S.
From his early days at WME curating VIP access, to launching a platform that fills empty seats and fuels unforgettable nights out, Lance spills the tea on:
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Why 30–40% of tickets go unsold
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How promoters are secretly using free ticketing to boost bar sales and fan buzz
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The economics behind live events and why not all sold-out shows are actually sold out
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How Loudie helps fans and venues win — without the scammy vibes
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Why travel pros and concierges should start recommending this app yesterday
Whether you’re in LA, NYC, or stuck in traffic on the way to Philly — this is the episode you can’t afford to miss (literally).
Download Loudie, follow us @tix2travelpod on TikTok, IG, and YouTube, and grab your next night out before someone else does.
Because every ticket is a ticket to travel — and sometimes the best ones are free.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back to Tickets to Travel, the Business of Travel Experiences. I'm your host, Mario Bwin, and today we're diving into the four letter word that sparks more joy than sold out free, as in free concert tickets, free comedy nights, free live events that you actually want to go to. We've got the guy behind the curtain with us.
(00:01):
Joining me today is Lance Dash, founder of Loud, the app that's basically your cooler friend who always knows someone with extra tickets. Lance has done it all. Talent booking, artist management, label life, and yes, he was once the legendary guest list guy at WME. Now he's turned that insider access into a platform where fans get into shows for free and promoters get fuller venues.
Everyone wins. We'll get into why 30 to 40% of tickets go unsold. How AI and egos play into pricing disasters, and why sometimes the best nights out are the ones you didn't plan for, but got a free ticket to. And hey, if you are someone who's thinking, this sounds awesome, where do I sign up? Stop what you're doing unless you're driving and download the Loudy app right now.
That's L-O-U-D-I-E. Free tickets are literally just a push notification away because whether you're big into headliners, indie discoveries, or just looking to impress your date without blowing a budget, Cloudy's got you covered. So follow us on all the socials, ticks two, travel pod, and subscribe wherever you get your podcast because.
Tickets to Travel starts now.
Welcome to Tickets to Travel, the Business of Travel Experiences. I'm your host, Mario Bwin, and today we have Lance Doff. Welcome to the pod, Lance. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. You've had a, a long career in just live events and understanding, you know, you're one of my go-to guys when I wanna understand like the music industry and, and how that that works.
I. What was the first concert you ever went to? The first
big concert I ever went to was Janet Jackson. Ah, at Merryweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. My brother took me. Wow. Um, and I, I, I had to have been like, I don't know, I or nine. Really? Yes. And did you have good seats? Uh, we were on the lawn. I remember that around the same time I actually, and a little bit older, one of the first concerts I went to kind of by myself with a bunch of friends in middle school where a dad was kind of there.
Uhhuh, remember? It was the Foo Fighters. Wow. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, and it was a smaller venue at a college kind of near where we lived when like their
first album came out. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. So that, that's impactful. So you, you pro, was that kind of a driver early on in life to be like, I gotta work in this industry?
Yeah, I think so. A little bit. I was always just, you know, intrigued. I. By live events and like a lot of people, you get sucked into the experience. There's nothing like being there live. Right. You sound like Michael Rapinoe. That's what he says. Exactly. So yeah, I think I was just always kind of, yeah, had a desire to move in that direction and I.
Liked the business side, the more I learned about it.
Yeah. Is there a particular experience throughout your career that sort of like says there's really a need for free ticket distribution? Was there something that Yeah. I'm trying to pinpoint the lightning bolt that said I'm gonna go create
loudy. I think in, in retrospect, yes.
Many, many years ago when I was at WME, one of my jobs was I was. Kind of the guest list guy. Ah. So if a client or an agent or just someone needed to take care of someone in la I was kind of the guy that would reach out to that promoter and say, Hey, can you add so and so to the list? Right? And at the time I didn't think much of it, but.
If it was a show that had extra tickets, the promoter might say like, no problem, but like, Hey, do all the assistants wanna come? Or do you want to offer more tickets to right this person? Or like, Hey, we can accommodate way more people. And it wasn't all the time, obviously, 'cause people wanted to go to like very high demand shows, but there were more and more of those shows and I think.
In retrospect, that was kind of the genesis of it, where you were kind like, wait, like I'm helping out, I'm actually helping them out more than they're helping us out. Yeah. Like they need to get bodies in there and this is kind of the like conversation we're having and I think they were probably having that conversation with a lot of people where, right.
Who were absolutely reaching out and saying, Hey, can you take care of me for this and this?
It, it, it's like an unsaid thing if you work on that side. Yes. You have to have a full house because there one, it makes you feel good to attract that artist to come back and play there. But also it's for the bar, it's for the food, it's for all these other ancillary reasons, but that's why the free ticket is there.
It's interesting. That is, you are the guest list guy and you're putting high profile people into the guest list, but even then they were like. We still need help even though, yeah, I mean listen,
obviously there were all types of shows people would ask for, right? Whether it was huge thing at, at that time, staples Center or something smaller at a a GA club.
But it would come up more often than not. And I'd always just kind of sat with me in an interesting way. And then as I started to build a company and what was
(00:22):
the next step like? Obviously you knew that this was happening. Yeah. And you saw this gap in tickets that you could capitalize on in some way because that's, that's another question too, is that I.
You sell free tickets? How do you make money?
Yeah, so we take, uh, a little bit of a processing fee from users when they claim these tickets. Got it. So that's our main revenue driver. We also act, act as an advertising platform for certain shows and events where the same way they're paying for an ad here, we take a fee on that.
Well, I, I'll spare you all the details, but at a certain point I was very much kind of obsessed with. Twitter for a long time, way back was kind of the place. Concert junkies were like discussing concerts, like a lot of things, like there were these niche communities that built on people, like while they're at the show or sharing information about that.
And then I also found like checking in. Interesting. Okay. A lot like there was obviously Foursquare and then
Facebook added and all these ads. Oh. Oh, that's what you mean. Okay. Because I wasn't ever a Twitter slash Foursquare person, but you could,
that was sort of these worlds about shows kind of lived there.
And that's kind of what I tried to build at first. And. Like a many, like many first time entrepreneurs like went way too big. But then I had this idea kind of churning about the ticks for like promoting shows and marketing them. And again, as I was having these conversations with different promoters that I had relationships with, they were like, yeah, here's tickets.
Or they had never even used the, the app or the platform. They didn't care. They just were like, if you can get people here, that's valuable. Sure. And that's where inevitably all the demand went too. Mm-hmm. Like. You know, I had a partner at the, the technology was never great, and also thinking about 10 plus years ago, it's amazing to me now that for example, all the festivals, but like Coachella streaming.
On YouTube. Like that took like, that was like a miracle back in the day when they started to do that. Yeah. Or if you've been to any of these events, you have no service. Right. Or if you go to certain venues, especially again, 10 plus years ago, like the technology has evolved so much now you just take it for granted that your phone works everywhere all the time and you can upload and do whatever, but it wasn't always like that.
Sure. So I had this platform that A, the technology was like a little bit janky at that point on my end. And also people didn't have connectivity, so like. They weren't really using it for any of those features. They were using it to get tickets, and then slowly I worked to just stripping out all those other.
Features and things and just, you know, if you use it today, it's really solely about marketing shows, getting tickets. There's, you know, a community element where you can, yeah, chat and share and buy tickets, but none of the other stuff that, again, you can do at all these other places. That's what it evolved to over time.
I think what you build is, is, is interesting. It's a, it's a gap that I don't think a lot of people know or understand. But you've now pulled back the curtain a little bit to say, Hey, if you wanna go to a show, there's probably a. Free tickets. You just have to know where to look. Yeah, absolutely. Get into concerts, comedy, and festivals for free.
Download loudy where your next night out costs $0 free tickets. Yes, really no scams, no stress, just great shows waiting for you. Download loudy now and get loud for less, actually for nothing. It all starts with a ticket, a concert, a match, A moment you'll never forget. Tick stock is the tech behind the scenes making it easier for event pros and ticket sellers to bring fans closer to what they love more access, less hassle, bigger vibes.
Visit tick stock.com and let the world experience live better. Well, we wanted to talk about free tickets and you know, I think your business model at Loudy is very interesting. I hadn't really heard about it until we became friends and you said, Hey, I have this other business that I'm, I'm developing. Or have developed and it's kind of growing.
And so I'm just curious, you've had, you've also had a background in live events. Uh, what else? You did your talent booking, you worked for
labels. I worked in a management company for many years. Yeah. The agency business as well. What I discovered over time is there's this. Supply of events constantly.
There's a lot of demand and people want to go to all types of shows. Taylor Swift's probably the best example. Yes. Besides that, obviously there's hundreds if not thousands of events taking place all the time that don't have as much demand that are undersold, and that's where I really saw the value of Loudy of.
You know, marketing these shows to fans who may or may not know about it, maybe can't afford the tickets for whatever reason, are on the fence about getting tickets. And I'm able to promote these shows and give away a couple tickets. And in the event that the events not selling as well, we give away hundreds or thousands of tickets to help get people in the door.
If you had to put a number on it, how many tickets or percentage of tickets go unsold? For an event? I know it varies. That's a good question. By music and, um,
I would say on an average, probably anywhere from 60. I, I would say, sorry, 60 to 70% of shows are sold. Okay. Um, so maybe like 30, 40%
(00:43):
go unsold. And what's sort of the pattern that you see?
Is it like, like up and coming bands, established bands? Because you're mainly in music. Yeah. So what, what's been sort of the trend that you see, you're like, oh, I'm gonna get a lot of tickets because of this particular show.
Well, I think it, it can, it can be because of a few variables, right? Like, I think coming out of the pandemic, there was obviously a desire for bands to get back on the road and get in front of fans and make up that revenue they lost over that period of time.
Sure. As a result, um, there was an uptick in just. Events happening all the time and a lot of pens up, demand, 'cause we were all home. But I think as time has gone on, there's still so many of these shows happening. So many bands are still, you know, on the road. And as a result, like there is that demand, like I said.
But you can see a lot of these bands, right? Like the same bands are playing a lot of these big festivals. And if you want to go to Coachella. You know, you can get your taste of a bunch of them, and then that band may be on the road in six months back in LA or wherever you are, and you might not be as interested in, in going to see that.
So I think the, the trend, it's, it's hard to say. It's hard to like pinpoint exactly why certain events. Yeah. Are selling well or, or not, but I think you can kind of narrow it down to a few things. One is like pricing, Uhhuh, is it not priced, you know, accurately? Two is, are they playing too big a venue?
Right? And you see this in the press with different artists who are downsizing or we're playing MSG, but now are playing a smaller venue and maybe for whatever reason the music's not resonating or the marketing wasn't good behind the new album. So there wasn't that demand, they saw it. I think three is competition.
Like in New York, right? Like the Knicks are now in the playoffs and maybe people are, you know, want to more focus on that instead of whatever show's happening. Right. And I think those things kind of all come up in different variations Yeah. In these markets. And that's what leads to things being undersold.
Wow.
So, because of this podcast. I, I meet people at the beginning stages, so whether it's an AI platform that's helping artists price the tickets to, of course, my relationships with ticketing companies and travel companies. And so one thing that, that's, that you said that was really interesting is getting the right price.
And another portion of, of the crowd that I speak to is in the reselling end. So whether it's a bigger distributor or a broker. And so you constantly have the primaries fighting with the resellers obviously, but a lot of it comes down to price. And so what you said will also resonate because when you talk to this ai, one AI platform that I speak to, they're like.
There's lots of bands who think they're a lot more popular than they are, and then they try to book out, maybe not a 500 cap venue, but they're trying to get a slightly bigger, maybe a thousand to 1500 cap venue at some point. And then they end up putting in this investment and they overprice the tickets.
And that really creates the opportunity for to distribute. And so I think it's probably, how would you suggest. Because you have a very unique area where you see unsold tickets. What would be something you would say to an artist to be realistic about selling their their show?
Well, I mean part of it is it comes down to the economics, right?
Of touring and playing certain venues, and I. Right. If you're a huge band with a lot of production, that's expensive. Yeah. And you need to figure out ways to cover your, your expenses in that case. Listen, they have, there's a lot of technology behind it. There's AI companies working on it. Uh, the agencies, the ticketing companies, the management companies all have technology that's kind of seeing where demand is, what other artists are.
Commanding in these markets and what's making sense. Like I said, though, a lot of factors can come into play that Sure. You can't control necessarily. And a lot of what I see, I'll say like primarily is I operate mostly in major markets, a lot in California and the Northeast. You know, I can say that there's instances where in LA for example.
Different competing promoters will contact me about all these shows happening on the same day. Right. And you know, in LA obviously there's, it's a huge music market. There's a gazillion venues, there's outdoor venues, there's, you know, arenas, there's. GA clubs, and what I'll see is, you know, in my mind as collecting all this from all these independent entities, you realize Wow.
Yeah. Like you're just crushing each other. Yes. And that's the reason, primarily why these things aren't selling. It's like there's four competitive dance events happening in the region, and they're all not, they're all like 50% sold.
Wow. Because it's essentially the same audience, right? That would attend all of those different shows.
So it's, it's similar to hotels in a lot of ways, just understanding sort of di demand and, and supply obviously, but the demand piece. So I, I kind of hear you suggesting like they should almost figure out those days when they're. Or nights where there isn't anything happening, and then promote those, or, you know, what would be a, a tactic that, I mean, they're also competitive.
That's why I'm like thinking through the question. Right. And like, they probably don't care.
(01:04):
Well, that data,
like that
information is shared in some capacity because from. Like 30,000 feet up. Right? The agencies and managers all talk to these same venues and promoters, and obviously in some cases it's the same people, same businesses, and they share that data.
But like to a point, some of it's in a silo and like as those things are worked out, they're not necessarily, they don't have that information, right? And they're like, oh shit, big DJ's playing. Same night as another big
dj.
Yeah. Across
town. Yeah. Then you have just audiences battling it out for loyalty and so there's probably a little bit of ego there, right?
Like, well, my client's gonna sell out, right? So I need a li, I'm gonna charge more because this guy sold more records. Or this, you know, has more followers, whatever it might be. I guess what we're saying here is that there's no clear silver bullet to, I mean, make sure that
every show gets, there's so many.
Artists touring and playing so many shows every night that I don't know if it's as simple as like figuring out the right piece that goes here on this night. Yeah. I think they try their best, especially with the bigger artists, but obviously this is happening in real time. But for example, with the Beyonce shows in LA, there's been a lot of press around.
It's not sold out res, the resellers, right? Yeah. And they're obviously taking a bath on these, so it's. Even when something is maybe sold out or there is a ton of demand you, if you wait for the secondary market on the day of, and this is happens everywhere and I think most music fans realize this. And same with sporting events.
You know, you can wait until the day of and get, get something for whatever it was originally sold
for even less. I mean, so you're, you are providing a tremendous service to all of these venues and promoters by distributing tickets that are quote, unquote free. But what happens if it does sell out or your allocation of free tickets right, gets, gets utilized?
What then does it kick over to a reseller or another site or direct to the venue? Direct to the venue?
So we work in two capacities. One is just a promotional vehicle the same way. Easiest way to understand it is a radio station gives away tickets and says, caller number nine gets tickets to whatever the case may be.
Right. Does that happen anymore? I, yeah, and I mean, I think, I think it does, but Yeah, exactly.
Not, not as much as like when we were kids. Yeah. Like when we'd sit there and wait, wait for the DJ to say it, then you would dial in and you would get the free tickets to the concert or whatever. But you're, this is kinda like always on to a right.
And so in a nutshell, I just brought that same concept just to a mobile platform. Yeah. Where you get notifications and it's the same kind of process. Right. So we're. Marketing the show to these people in a certain city the same way the radio station was telling everybody about that show. So in those cases, um, it's promotional.
It can be one pair, it could be 10 pairs, it could be whatever the promoter wants to do. And essentially, once those tickets are claimed, people are directed directly to the primary ticketing site to hopefully buy tickets. Got it. And hopefully drive something to be sold out. The second piece of it is when those shows obviously are underperforming or.
Whatever is close to sell out, but they know they're not gonna get there. Depending on how the engagement is in the app, we can give away more tickets and help get it closer to sell out or help the show be look fuller, right? No artist wants to play to an empty venue, and what we're doing and the service we're really providing is.
These promoters are making, you know, a lot of their money on concessions, parking merchandise. So we're hopefully getting people in the door who will spend money, right.
(01:25):
Ancillary
revenue opportunities based on the free ticket. And, and I know you go to events and you take your kids mm-hmm. And it's hard to not spend money once you're inside.
So that's, that's a
service we're providing. Those hot dogs don't buy themselves, Lance, that's for sure. So you, you're mainly talking about music, but are there applications for sports as well? Because I speak to a lot of sports ticket sellers, and especially brokers, right? Because they have these rights holder relationships where they'll pre-buy a ton of tickets and then of course sell them as, as best that they can.
But to your point, they don't sell out all the time. So how would you position Loudy as a solution for sports sellers?
Yeah. I mean the, the sports model is a bit different, right? Yeah. 'cause they make a lot of money on TV rights. Sure. So, but they still don't want to course because of that, they don't want empty of course.
But like there's this built-in revenue driver, which most concerts don't have. Right. Like they're completely dependent on people being there and spending money. Having said that, yeah. I think there is definitely a place for this, I'd say where we've, I. Made most headway outside of music is comedy. Okay.
Right. Because Right. Some comedy venues are doing multiple shows a night, right. Where you, you know, at 6 30, 9 30, whatever the case may be. And that's where I think we've made most headway. I think for sports it can become tricky because they have ticketing agreements. Yeah. Which we've talked about.
They're a little bit more stringent than of course. Your one-off concert and there's a lot more approval process and the lead controls a lot of how any of that marketing goes.
That's why I bring up the brokers. Yeah. Right. So the brokers, let's say it's a, it's a VIP ticket seller of some type. They still have excess inventory and then because they've already pre-bought from the rights holder.
It's in their best interest to help them out and to, to fill the seats Totally. Or take a very small fee on it. Right. And so, and that could be part of their membership abilities with their customers. Like, Hey, you pay this membership, you can get some free tickets as well. And so I, but marketing them to, so that they get more members at some point, I think would be beneficial to a certain degree.
But I think in, in terms of sports, you know, I, I spoke to someone yesterday where they're talking about like. The FIFA Club World World Cup is this summer. Most people don't know that. Totally. There's a lot of tickets available. And so would that be something that Loudy could help out with?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
We've worked on, especially in these major markets
that, yeah, of course we've worked on food events over the years. Ah. Yeah, big comedy festivals. I'm trying to think of some things that were outside the realm of just your typical Yeah. You know? Yeah. I'd say a lot of food. What's that theater you said?
You said comedy. Do you do theater? Yeah, we do do theater. It's just, it's a little bit more tedious when it's a seated event because you have to like account for each individual person. In a specific seat, whereas a GA venue, it's obviously, it's wide open. Easier to accommodate. Yeah. But yeah, and, and you know, I'm just, as I'm thinking out loud, a lot of like food related, you know, taco festivals Yeah.
And Irish, you know, cultural events and anything. You know, people have contacted us across the board. Yeah. Um, because at the end of the day, like our. Users, they just want to go to. They love live events. They love experiences. They love
experiences.
And they love free. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, we do have, um, we do surveys and it creates an atmosphere for these people where like typically when you're getting free tickets, you have a good experience unless the show's completely terrible for some reason.
Sure. Which has happened. And you get complaints about that. Yeah. Uh, for whatever reason, but. Nine times outta 10 because it was free and it's at great venues, and you had such a fun experience, I you're more inclined to buy tickets and go to something in the future. Right. So it's creating, you know, goodwill towards these
(01:46):
venues.
Yeah, so I la the Loudy community. It's, it's a community that you've created Yeah. In these major marks. And you guys are expanding nationally, obviously, but it's a, it's a type of person, right? Who's for sure who's, who's, yes. They're getting a free ticket or they're purchasing a very low price ticket, but they're also kind of, I mean, you've had a little bit of success on TikTok and other places where.
These free tickets do exist and we don't care. We just want have something to do. And then they share that with others. Yeah,
it's, it's partially that it's a lot of discovery. I know as we're getting older, you might look at like the Coachella lineup or the Lollapalooza lineup or whatever, and you might know the headliners, but you look at some of the other bands and you're probably like, who?
Yeah. Or how do, how do I pronounce that? Yeah. Yeah. And. The people I'd say primarily that are on the app are somewhat in tune to those lesser known bands, but they do have enough popularity that they're playing these festivals and they're touring nationally, internationally, whatever the case may be, and they're into that kind of stuff and are like, wow, let me get.
I'm getting access to up and coming, so and so, you know, we ask people to leave reviews and a lot of times it's like, I had heard of them. I knew one song. It was a great show. So part of it is kind of like this discovery process of up and coming national, regional type acts that are like bubbling. You know, it's not Lady Gaga.
Yeah. But they're on the same bill as
Lady Gaga. Right. And, but also there's a little bit of anxiety from the promoter themselves.
Yeah.
Or the venue for like, you know, just a little bit of insurance here. Let's try to put some free tickets on the market. Totally.
Yeah. I mean, the biggest. I'd say one of the biggest problems that promoter has is just market awareness.
Right? Right. And that's anything today where it's so clouded by everything happening and it gets lost in the social posts or the banner ads or whatever they're doing. Yeah. And Loudy is just an alternative resource for them to like get in front of music fans. We just removed all that noise. Yeah. Where I'm sure you follow some venues or artists and like.
You know, every week there's tons of announcements. Yep. Of the tour, the festival, the new music, whatever it is, and kind of where we've just created this environment where they can come to us and just promote those shows to people that want to go to shows without any of that other
noise. Yeah. No, no, that's, I think that's a resource that more people should know about, at least from an industry perspective.
I think one of the things that comes up a lot in these conversations, because we talk to so many people in ticketing, is transferability. Of the ticket. Mm-hmm. And whether or not a resold ticket is a real ticket, because you could go on any social media platform, just hear the, the nightmares, whether it's the established company like a Ticketmaster or StubHub, all the way down to various brokers that come out.
So how does the. Once you purchase or get access mm-hmm. To a ticket as a Loudy customer, what happens? How do they, how do they get the ticket typically? Yeah,
so it's, it's one of two ways. A lot of what we do is at the box office will call, so when you register as a user, we have the name that matches your id.
So it forces you as a user. You have to go to the box office, show your id. To redeem your tickets, obviously. And it, it's happens rarely, but it has happened where someone who's using the app to resell or stop their tickets will go to the box office, redeem them, and then like resell them in front of the box office, which we blacklist you from the app.
And we don't obviously permit any of that. Our tickets can never be resold. Interesting. So that's one of the main ways that we kind of prevent that. More and more so especially on bigger allotments of tickets, we do distribute digital tickets. Okay. Which what's nice is, and it depends on the setting with the promoter, whether it's ticket master access, you can actually build in a way that you can't let allow them to transfer it or sell it through the platform.
So that prevents it as well. We have some mechanisms in place to prevent any of this kind of stuff. We don't allow you to have multiple accounts in a way we incentivize you to attend because. There's a system in place in the back end that kind of like evenly distributes tickets to people, making sure more people get access.
So like mm-hmm. If your intent is just to take as many tickets and resell, then we kind of prevent that. Or just taking tickets and not using them, I should say. Yeah. But listen, at the end of the day, if someone really wants to go to all the effort to like cheat a system, whether it's anything that exists out, they'll figure out a way.
(02:07):
They'll figure out a way. But we have a lot of things in place to prevent it.
That's interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't know that that you got, because you're right, there's. I mean, uh, so when I speak to some of these resellers, like I always ask them the question like, what was the first ticket you ever sold?
And a lot of it comes down to, well, I got this ticket really cheap and I, I go to another area and then resell it. I got it for five, I'd sell it for 10 or 15. Right? And then, you know, they're teenagers. So what's really stopping someone from doing that? So the fact that you put in these mechanisms to sort of police that early on, because what is the value of a free ticket?
Well, that's the thing too. Keep in mind that a lot of events, and especially if we have a large amount of these free tickets, it's not selling well. So could you make $5 on it? Maybe It seems like a lot of effort to go through to like make a little bit of money. Right? Um, but I, you know, some people, like I said, are determined.
You never know, but. You know, these events, like I said, are for the most part, they're still tickets available at face value.
You know, I, and when I think about your business, it's, um, do, do you grow it more in terms of getting more free ticket supply? I. Or is it growing your audience or is it both at the same time?
It's both. It's,
and there's a third part to it. It's just
adding more shows, even on a promotional basis. Right. So where we've, where I've moved it more recently is being involved in the on sale and the announce. With just like a pair of tickets and obviously every show announces and goes on sale. So that's just adding sheer number of like shows.
Yes, it's helping more and more events that maybe need, need a little bump. And it's, yeah, it's in user growth too. As we expand into more markets, we obviously. Need more people there who are aware of the app, who are interested in shows and want to take tickets. And it's kind of those, those three facets.
Yeah, I obviously, audience expansion is huge, so partnerships are key in a lot of ways, and that, that's where we merged. You know what we talked about a lot in terms of tickets to travel. And so if I was a, a travel seller or a concierge. At a, at a hotel, would you recommend like talking to or using the loudy app to, or at least get the word out to people who are traveling to a certain destination who just don't know what to do
potentially?
Yeah, so within the app, many users actually have a ton of locations set, right? Um, and there are, you know. Some people that, you know, I've just gotten to know throughout the years, who've claimed tickets who do travel a lot and are just interested in like, for whatever reason, work or family life. Like they're, they're in LA a lot.
They're in New York or they, A lot of people who live in New Jersey, for example, and are music fans, will go to Philly, will come here. Right. Yeah. Uh, it's the same in California. There's a lot of people, for example, that live in Santa Barbara. Right. Which is north of la but we'll go to San Diego for the right show.
Huh? We'll go to Santa Ana, we'll go to Anaheim. So there is a, a travel element to it actually, which is, it's been interesting to see. Or we'll go to Vegas, right? A lot of people in Southern California. Drive or fly constantly or for work for whatever reason. So they are interested in shows. There shows in San Diego, wherever the case may be.
Yeah, that's interesting because yeah, so there's two ways to look at it, right? Like where the ticket is the driver of the travel, which essentially that's what you're describing. I was thinking about it in terms of like they're already in destination.
Mm-hmm.
And they have nothing to do and you're competing with.
Uh, I don't know, a bus tour, a ticket to Statue of Liberty, things of that nature. And then you, well, here's a free opportunity that it's gonna enhance your experience here in the destination, whether it be Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, whatever it might be. But you're, you're actually saying that you have some users who.
Look for the free ticket and then decide to spend money on the travel.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don't, I don't know if it's exactly, if they're staying overnight or what the case may be. Right. It's drivable distances. Some of it's drivable. Um, but yeah, it comes up. Listen, we will, I. There's obviously a lot of customer service that comes into play.
(02:28):
Yeah. You know, on average, uh, like for April of this past month, it was, I have to look at the numbers, but like 4,300 people went to shows in just April. And, uh, inevitably there's a lot of customer service and questions and Yeah. Issues that come up and. I'd say one of the more common ones is I'm an hour away.
I'm, I'm a two hour drive. Can you please help me with this? I'm almost there, but I'm, I'm not gonna be there for three, whatever the case may be. Yeah. And it, I'm stuck in traffic. Right. It, you know, there is this, especially with our users who are into these shows and got tickets to something great, but it's three hours away.
They're willing to make that drive and spend that time
doing it. I wanted to kind of cover off on that, just what. How you got to Pollen. Sure. And then what your thoughts were about the experience.
Yeah. So yeah, I landed at Pollen during the pandemic. It was 2021. I had temporarily shut down Loudy for obvious reasons.
Yeah, there were no shows
right there. There was no venues open. That was a very time. So your supply based just disappeared. Yeah. I
mean, especially 2020 with like all these shows scheduled. It was very chaotic, obviously. So. Yeah, Ricky and I connected. I think he had been at the company a few months. Just a few months.
Yeah, of course. And um, yeah, I mean overall I had a great experience. I think we worked on some amazing events and like awesome locations. I think my first literal first day of work I think was in Cabo.
Was that for Cago? It was. Or, uh, what's the other one we used to do down there? It wasn't Cayo. No, it wasn't Cayo.
It was probably, was it the. What was that called? What was the, was it Tiesto or, no, not ieso. Its the cool, I, I actually don't remember. It's the, they had, they're like a surf brand kind. They have different bands and DJs. I mean, you were there. I was there. What?
Who played? I don't know if we ever actually got whatever I was working on at that time off the ground.
I don't know if we had a specific, like Cali Grooves or something. Possibly Cali. I don't know if we had a. It may have been the time where we were kind of like sussing out a location. Okay. You're scoping scoping it and trying to put the economics behind it to see if something was possible. Right. 'cause you were focused on the venues, the club I, I think eventually it possibly did
morph into Dsto.
Okay. Oh, that's okay. That's what you're doing eventually. Yeah. So your first day was in market trying to Yes. Understand.
Yeah,
the venues there just really,
yeah, I really, it was like, you know, well we were all over the place driving to different venues. Ricky was being Ricky, yeah. Flying down there. Um, and yeah, I mean, we, it, it was, it was actually like, I, I don't have anything bad to say about my time there.
Yeah. We got to, you know, like I said, we went to Cabo. I did, you know, we were in Aspen, which I think was Yep. Kigo, yeah. Related. And you worked on New Orleans? Yes. Did work on some things in New Orleans. And I think, you know, ultimately just my opinion on destination festivals, I think it's very dependent on the artist their, the driver of the demand.
Yeah, yeah. Their fan base. I think location matters, but. Listen, I think you can look at all the things that have happened in Mexico, for example, and there's some big winners and there's been some losers mm-hmm. That were canceled. So it's an amazing location. You're on the beach, it's sunny, it's fun. But for whatever reason, and I think you can mostly point to maybe just the artist and the demand, and again, it can go back to a lot of things I mentioned where it's like.
Are they overexposed? And they've played a lot everywhere and they've played all these major markets. So why is someone from New York want to go see them in particular?
(02:49):
Yeah. Or someone who's in Southern California, they're like, I can go to Vegas for cts still. Right. Why am I gonna pay for a thousand dollars to go and see 'em in Cavo?
Yes.
You know, having said that, and you know more about this than anyone, but like. They're saying, you know, more people travel obviously for Taylor Swift and like most events,
yes. I don't like to say this all the time, but Taylor was actually the inspiration for saying there's a market for this type of conversation.
Absolutely. From a professional perspective, because I don't think ever in the history of the travel industry or the live events industry, has there been this, let's talk about the business of it, all the different components, whether it be the ticketing side, the live events side, or. Travel, how people get there, how they contract a hotel, how they contract the venue.
Because I think I learned a lot from you guys, just from the venue perspective. And I felt like the pollen founders who were promoters, right. Their music festival promoters to, yeah, as their origin, they wanted to treat the hotels. Like a, a nightclub venue and it wasn't the same thing. There's a difference in industry, a difference in contracting, but it was that sort of inexperience of them to just automatically think that I.
Covid was gonna be around forever. Right. And everyone was gonna take their call. Once travel started to come back, those conversations about buying out a hotel were very different. Totally. Very different. And so even from a venue perspective, I'm sure that changed a bit too, because you had other competition coming in.
So that period of time, 20 20, 20 21 into 2022, when the, the company imploded, that was a very, that was like lightning in a bottle, right? To launch something that. Truly couldn't exist unless you had, you know, big guns behind you and real know-how, because I think at that point the founders were, they're pushing people around a little bit.
You know, I'm gonna give you money, gimme totally space. I have Justin Bieber. You should allow him to, to do this. And I, I have leverage over you. And then we were also there during the transition, so understanding that that wasn't gonna be enough. It's just having an artist. I mean, having these conversations, well tell the win Las Vegas that we have.
Justin Bieber. I'm like, Justin Bieber wants to stay at the win. They don't care. Right. It's about right what the, the most revenue they can make on that particular night based on the inventory that they have. And so on the venue side, you guys educated me quite a bit and just the, the sort of terms and the way that a promoter deals with a venue of that type.
Do you think that. Type of company can exist now, fast forward a few years. And what do you think, at least from your, your perspective of the business, right? It would, it would be needed
by the way, I remembered why we were down there. I think it was Diplo.
Diplo, yes.
We were working on something, I think at that time.
Yeah. That just came to me. But do I think it can can exist? Yeah. I mean, listen, listen. I think a different variation of it, and to pull it back to Pollen and some of our ex-colleagues is the sphere. Oh. Right, right. A lot of people are traveling out there to go to these shows. Yes. And obviously a unique, one of a kind.
Venue. Venue. Mm-hmm. In a very exciting city. And then I think that that is proving, I. There that that is the destination and you can package it together and people wanna travel. Touching back on what I was saying before, I don't know if every artist makes sense for a three day thing in Mexico, right? Or wherever the case may be.
I just, I we're seeing it doesn't, so again, it's just dependent on who the artist is, who their fan base is, and what that demand, the underlying demand is. Um, but yeah, I do think the sphere is an interesting. Case study for travel right now.
You're right. I mean there's, and talk about competition. There's like, I mean, Las Vegas is on par with New York City in terms of entertainment options every night, so that'd be interesting to, to dig into a bit.
How do you get access to like. Cowboy Carter, like how, what's, what's the pro, what's the challenge of getting the big shows who, again, everyone's been talking about how it's not sold out, but from a business perspective, I'm just curious like how do you get access to that?
The thing is, at that level, there's a lot more approval process and the artists and their management team have a lot more control over tickets.
Where the breadth of my business is at like a club GA level where the promoter has a lot more. Leniency and like has a lot more latitude I should say, to like give away tickets. Yeah. And do what they want to help the make some money on the show, right? Yeah. They're taking all the risk. They have a lot more leadway in giving out tickets when it gets bigger and bigger and, and, and periodically I do work on arena things and stadiums and festivals and things like that.
(03:10):
There's just more of an approval process. You know, we walk this fine line of marketing the show, getting people in there, but like. It's not in the best interest of the artist, obviously, for like the whole world to know that there's free tickets about. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of the beauty of Loudy.
It lives in this kind of siloed ecosystem. Yeah. Where it's not like blasted on TikTok and Yeah. Instagram, but Yeah. You know, especially the bigger shows where it is seated. Mm-hmm. Again, you need to. Find allocations and like Right. The ticketer needs to pick out specific tickets and pull them from the allotments and Yep.
We do it. It's just a bit of, more of a process. But yeah, the artists have way more approval on like, what's gonna happen with those tickets. Yep. Um, and, and like frankly, a lot of those shows, she doesn't need my help. She's, I need her help. Right. Like,
she's got the name, she's got worry. You put on free tickets for Beyonce.
Most people in the world. Yeah. So
it's not a big deal in a lot of their shows. Don't really need it and like also are, again, like the users that are constantly taking tickets, they're going to so many different shows. I think some of them are interested in that kind of stuff, but like, they wanna be on, it's of a discovery platform.
A lot of it is, right? Yeah. Or like, like they're not
true fans, but they're like, you know, I heard a little something about this guy, or this band, free tickets came up. I'm gonna grab my girlfriend and you know, we're gonna roll totally and go check it out. You think it's, it's that type of subculture and I mean,
fandom.
All the data is showing there's less and less arena. Stadium X. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Everything's hard. Very niche, and they have huge audiences, but it's not necessarily you're playing all these MSGs anymore. Yeah. You know, you're playing a ton of, you're doing a residency at Radio City or Brooklyn Steel, or wherever the case may be, and you're packing it out, but it's not, there's not as many acts that command that.
And I think this went into our discussion last time. It's the same with the Super Bowl, right? Like is there one act that. Encompasses
everyone watching.
No,
actually it's funny, you, we, you, you brought that up. So I have, uh, an episode that where he had access to Super Bowl tickets. Okay. And he said when people got in the door, he sold his, he's resell.
He is a broker. When he, when he sold his, all his people were like, yeah, there's a section up at the top that was. Empty, completely empty. You don't see that on television, this and that because the getin price was around like $7,000 when it should have been around $2,000. And they could have filled those pretty easily, but whoever had the, had the rights to, to distribute had already made their money.
And so they didn't really care. Right, right. If it went empty or not for sure. But that's not exactly fan forward versus there's opportunity to have one sold it. Or given it away for free and then completely packed it in. Of course there's some issues and challenges with giving away a Super Bowl ticket, but I don't think a lot of people know that there's a platform that they can
Yeah,
no,
I appreciate you.
Right. Yeah. It's, um, it's growing definitely, and there's a lot more demand, but yeah, there's so much opportunity out there and
yeah, when it comes to distribution in general, whether it be hotels or, or tickets, it's really about supply and, and the quality of the supply. So that's why I asked the question, right?
(03:31):
Like it's. How do you get the free ticket to Beyonce? Because that's a strategy that you can kind of pin down and think through and, you know, maybe someone who listens to this is like, oh, there's a back channel way to provide a special code to whatever it might be. Right. And that's what I'm just trying to uncover there is trying to figure out, because that could be the difference where e even an artist or a, a savvy promoter could say, you know what?
Let's try a very small allocation of free tickets. On the on sale to just drive, not so much for Louy, but just for themselves.
Totally. And I, yeah, as a, as a fan forward initiative. Absolutely. We work, I, I work on those all the time and, and yeah. A lot of times it's shows that are going to sell out and yeah, we get small, all allotments for that.
I also like including sold out shows or shows that are about to be sold out because. Listen. I don't want it to be a platform where it's like every show that's a dog that's not selling well, this is where it goes. I like to mix in stuff that's performing really well, which we do and is gonna sell out.
And it also keeps the users on their toes like Yeah. And interested, right? You can't, it's not interesting that like every, you know, there's unfortunately a lot of shows that need help. But it's good to mix in the bigger tours, the bigger announces, and we do, we do stuff like that. Or if it's getting closer and they're close to sell out and they're like, let's just give away a pair of tickets.
Yeah. Um, yeah, it runs the gamut. It's not a one size, it's not such like one use case. It's all those needs. Thanks, Lance. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it.
No, I, I appreciate you making the time and hopefully you'll come back when you're a billion dollar company and we keep talking about growing, uh, Loudy, so thanks.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
And that's a wrap on today's episode of Tickets to Travel with the one and only Lance Dash off from Loudy, where the ticket price
is unbeatable and the experiences are unforgettable. What did we learn today first, that 30 to 40% of live event tickets go unsold. Even for shows with great talent.
Second, that smart promoters aren't just dropping prices, they're dropping free tickets in the wild to drive foot traffic, fill venues, and boost everything from bar sales to band buzz. And third, sometimes discovering your next favorite artist starts with saying yes to a spontaneous night out. Lance reminded us that free doesn't mean low value, it means opportunity.
It means discovery. It means access, and with loudy it means having the inside scoop on music, comedy, and cultural events across the country, all in the palm of your hand. So here's the move. Download the Loudy app. That's L-O-U-D-I-E. It's free to join. Free to use, and packed with free events. Just waiting to be claimed, whether you're in la, New York, Philly, or just road tripping for a good time.
Every ticket is a ticket to travel. Every
show is a chance to explore, so skip the fomo, embrace the spontaneity, and let your next great night out. Start with Loudy. Until next time, keep exploring, keep dancing and remember. Every ticket is a ticket to travel, and it all starts with you. Thanks and safe travels.
Attention, travel, and ticketing innovators. Whether you're a startup disrupting the industry, or an established company ready to take your distribution strategy to the next level. Expo Travel is your ultimate partner in online travel and ticketing distribution. We specialize in helping businesses of all sizes optimize their operations, expand their reach, and unlock new revenue streams.
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That's XPO travel.com for a consultation, and let's transform the way the world travels. One innovation at a time. Expo travel because the future of travel and ticketing starts with you.
Welcome back to Tickets to Travel, the Business of Travel Experiences. I'm your host, Mario Bwin, and today we're diving into the four letter word that sparks more joy than sold out free, as in free concert tickets, free comedy nights, free live events that you actually want to go to. We've got the guy behind the curtain with us.
(00:01):
Joining me today is Lance Dash, founder of Loud, the app that's basically your cooler friend who always knows someone with extra tickets. Lance has done it all. Talent booking, artist management, label life, and yes, he was once the legendary guest list guy at WME. Now he's turned that insider access into a platform where fans get into shows for free and promoters get fuller venues.
Everyone wins. We'll get into why 30 to 40% of tickets go unsold. How AI and egos play into pricing disasters, and why sometimes the best nights out are the ones you didn't plan for, but got a free ticket to. And hey, if you are someone who's thinking, this sounds awesome, where do I sign up? Stop what you're doing unless you're driving and download the Loudy app right now.
That's L-O-U-D-I-E. Free tickets are literally just a push notification away because whether you're big into headliners, indie discoveries, or just looking to impress your date without blowing a budget, Cloudy's got you covered. So follow us on all the socials, ticks two, travel pod, and subscribe wherever you get your podcast because.
Tickets to Travel starts now.
Welcome to Tickets to Travel, the Business of Travel Experiences. I'm your host, Mario Bwin, and today we have Lance Doff. Welcome to the pod, Lance. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. You've had a, a long career in just live events and understanding, you know, you're one of my go-to guys when I wanna understand like the music industry and, and how that that works.
I. What was the first concert you ever went to? The first
big concert I ever went to was Janet Jackson. Ah, at Merryweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. My brother took me. Wow. Um, and I, I, I had to have been like, I don't know, I or nine. Really? Yes. And did you have good seats? Uh, we were on the lawn. I remember that around the same time I actually, and a little bit older, one of the first concerts I went to kind of by myself with a bunch of friends in middle school where a dad was kind of there.
Uhhuh, remember? It was the Foo Fighters. Wow. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, and it was a smaller venue at a college kind of near where we lived when like their
first album came out. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. So that, that's impactful. So you, you pro, was that kind of a driver early on in life to be like, I gotta work in this industry?
Yeah, I think so. A little bit. I was always just, you know, intrigued. I. By live events and like a lot of people, you get sucked into the experience. There's nothing like being there live. Right. You sound like Michael Rapinoe. That's what he says. Exactly. So yeah, I think I was just always kind of, yeah, had a desire to move in that direction and I.
Liked the business side, the more I learned about it.
Yeah. Is there a particular experience throughout your career that sort of like says there's really a need for free ticket distribution? Was there something that Yeah. I'm trying to pinpoint the lightning bolt that said I'm gonna go create
loudy. I think in, in retrospect, yes.
Many, many years ago when I was at WME, one of my jobs was I was. Kind of the guest list guy. Ah. So if a client or an agent or just someone needed to take care of someone in la I was kind of the guy that would reach out to that promoter and say, Hey, can you add so and so to the list? Right? And at the time I didn't think much of it, but.
If it was a show that had extra tickets, the promoter might say like, no problem, but like, Hey, do all the assistants wanna come? Or do you want to offer more tickets to right this person? Or like, Hey, we can accommodate way more people. And it wasn't all the time, obviously, 'cause people wanted to go to like very high demand shows, but there were more and more of those shows and I think.
In retrospect, that was kind of the genesis of it, where you were kind like, wait, like I'm helping out, I'm actually helping them out more than they're helping us out. Yeah. Like they need to get bodies in there and this is kind of the like conversation we're having and I think they were probably having that conversation with a lot of people where, right.
Who were absolutely reaching out and saying, Hey, can you take care of me for this and this?
It, it, it's like an unsaid thing if you work on that side. Yes. You have to have a full house because there one, it makes you feel good to attract that artist to come back and play there. But also it's for the bar, it's for the food, it's for all these other ancillary reasons, but that's why the free ticket is there.
It's interesting. That is, you are the guest list guy and you're putting high profile people into the guest list, but even then they were like. We still need help even though, yeah, I mean listen,
obviously there were all types of shows people would ask for, right? Whether it was huge thing at, at that time, staples Center or something smaller at a a GA club.
But it would come up more often than not. And I'd always just kind of sat with me in an interesting way. And then as I started to build a company and what was
(00:22):
the next step like? Obviously you knew that this was happening. Yeah. And you saw this gap in tickets that you could capitalize on in some way because that's, that's another question too, is that I.
You sell free tickets? How do you make money?
Yeah, so we take, uh, a little bit of a processing fee from users when they claim these tickets. Got it. So that's our main revenue driver. We also act, act as an advertising platform for certain shows and events where the same way they're paying for an ad here, we take a fee on that.
Well, I, I'll spare you all the details, but at a certain point I was very much kind of obsessed with. Twitter for a long time, way back was kind of the place. Concert junkies were like discussing concerts, like a lot of things, like there were these niche communities that built on people, like while they're at the show or sharing information about that.
And then I also found like checking in. Interesting. Okay. A lot like there was obviously Foursquare and then
Facebook added and all these ads. Oh. Oh, that's what you mean. Okay. Because I wasn't ever a Twitter slash Foursquare person, but you could,
that was sort of these worlds about shows kind of lived there.
And that's kind of what I tried to build at first. And. Like a many, like many first time entrepreneurs like went way too big. But then I had this idea kind of churning about the ticks for like promoting shows and marketing them. And again, as I was having these conversations with different promoters that I had relationships with, they were like, yeah, here's tickets.
Or they had never even used the, the app or the platform. They didn't care. They just were like, if you can get people here, that's valuable. Sure. And that's where inevitably all the demand went too. Mm-hmm. Like. You know, I had a partner at the, the technology was never great, and also thinking about 10 plus years ago, it's amazing to me now that for example, all the festivals, but like Coachella streaming.
On YouTube. Like that took like, that was like a miracle back in the day when they started to do that. Yeah. Or if you've been to any of these events, you have no service. Right. Or if you go to certain venues, especially again, 10 plus years ago, like the technology has evolved so much now you just take it for granted that your phone works everywhere all the time and you can upload and do whatever, but it wasn't always like that.
Sure. So I had this platform that A, the technology was like a little bit janky at that point on my end. And also people didn't have connectivity, so like. They weren't really using it for any of those features. They were using it to get tickets, and then slowly I worked to just stripping out all those other.
Features and things and just, you know, if you use it today, it's really solely about marketing shows, getting tickets. There's, you know, a community element where you can, yeah, chat and share and buy tickets, but none of the other stuff that, again, you can do at all these other places. That's what it evolved to over time.
I think what you build is, is, is interesting. It's a, it's a gap that I don't think a lot of people know or understand. But you've now pulled back the curtain a little bit to say, Hey, if you wanna go to a show, there's probably a. Free tickets. You just have to know where to look. Yeah, absolutely. Get into concerts, comedy, and festivals for free.
Download loudy where your next night out costs $0 free tickets. Yes, really no scams, no stress, just great shows waiting for you. Download loudy now and get loud for less, actually for nothing. It all starts with a ticket, a concert, a match, A moment you'll never forget. Tick stock is the tech behind the scenes making it easier for event pros and ticket sellers to bring fans closer to what they love more access, less hassle, bigger vibes.
Visit tick stock.com and let the world experience live better. Well, we wanted to talk about free tickets and you know, I think your business model at Loudy is very interesting. I hadn't really heard about it until we became friends and you said, Hey, I have this other business that I'm, I'm developing. Or have developed and it's kind of growing.
And so I'm just curious, you've had, you've also had a background in live events. Uh, what else? You did your talent booking, you worked for
labels. I worked in a management company for many years. Yeah. The agency business as well. What I discovered over time is there's this. Supply of events constantly.
There's a lot of demand and people want to go to all types of shows. Taylor Swift's probably the best example. Yes. Besides that, obviously there's hundreds if not thousands of events taking place all the time that don't have as much demand that are undersold, and that's where I really saw the value of Loudy of.
You know, marketing these shows to fans who may or may not know about it, maybe can't afford the tickets for whatever reason, are on the fence about getting tickets. And I'm able to promote these shows and give away a couple tickets. And in the event that the events not selling as well, we give away hundreds or thousands of tickets to help get people in the door.
If you had to put a number on it, how many tickets or percentage of tickets go unsold? For an event? I know it varies. That's a good question. By music and, um,
I would say on an average, probably anywhere from 60. I, I would say, sorry, 60 to 70% of shows are sold. Okay. Um, so maybe like 30, 40%
(00:43):
go unsold. And what's sort of the pattern that you see?
Is it like, like up and coming bands, established bands? Because you're mainly in music. Yeah. So what, what's been sort of the trend that you see, you're like, oh, I'm gonna get a lot of tickets because of this particular show.
Well, I think it, it can, it can be because of a few variables, right? Like, I think coming out of the pandemic, there was obviously a desire for bands to get back on the road and get in front of fans and make up that revenue they lost over that period of time.
Sure. As a result, um, there was an uptick in just. Events happening all the time and a lot of pens up, demand, 'cause we were all home. But I think as time has gone on, there's still so many of these shows happening. So many bands are still, you know, on the road. And as a result, like there is that demand, like I said.
But you can see a lot of these bands, right? Like the same bands are playing a lot of these big festivals. And if you want to go to Coachella. You know, you can get your taste of a bunch of them, and then that band may be on the road in six months back in LA or wherever you are, and you might not be as interested in, in going to see that.
So I think the, the trend, it's, it's hard to say. It's hard to like pinpoint exactly why certain events. Yeah. Are selling well or, or not, but I think you can kind of narrow it down to a few things. One is like pricing, Uhhuh, is it not priced, you know, accurately? Two is, are they playing too big a venue?
Right? And you see this in the press with different artists who are downsizing or we're playing MSG, but now are playing a smaller venue and maybe for whatever reason the music's not resonating or the marketing wasn't good behind the new album. So there wasn't that demand, they saw it. I think three is competition.
Like in New York, right? Like the Knicks are now in the playoffs and maybe people are, you know, want to more focus on that instead of whatever show's happening. Right. And I think those things kind of all come up in different variations Yeah. In these markets. And that's what leads to things being undersold.
Wow.
So, because of this podcast. I, I meet people at the beginning stages, so whether it's an AI platform that's helping artists price the tickets to, of course, my relationships with ticketing companies and travel companies. And so one thing that, that's, that you said that was really interesting is getting the right price.
And another portion of, of the crowd that I speak to is in the reselling end. So whether it's a bigger distributor or a broker. And so you constantly have the primaries fighting with the resellers obviously, but a lot of it comes down to price. And so what you said will also resonate because when you talk to this ai, one AI platform that I speak to, they're like.
There's lots of bands who think they're a lot more popular than they are, and then they try to book out, maybe not a 500 cap venue, but they're trying to get a slightly bigger, maybe a thousand to 1500 cap venue at some point. And then they end up putting in this investment and they overprice the tickets.
And that really creates the opportunity for to distribute. And so I think it's probably, how would you suggest. Because you have a very unique area where you see unsold tickets. What would be something you would say to an artist to be realistic about selling their their show?
Well, I mean part of it is it comes down to the economics, right?
Of touring and playing certain venues, and I. Right. If you're a huge band with a lot of production, that's expensive. Yeah. And you need to figure out ways to cover your, your expenses in that case. Listen, they have, there's a lot of technology behind it. There's AI companies working on it. Uh, the agencies, the ticketing companies, the management companies all have technology that's kind of seeing where demand is, what other artists are.
Commanding in these markets and what's making sense. Like I said, though, a lot of factors can come into play that Sure. You can't control necessarily. And a lot of what I see, I'll say like primarily is I operate mostly in major markets, a lot in California and the Northeast. You know, I can say that there's instances where in LA for example.
Different competing promoters will contact me about all these shows happening on the same day. Right. And you know, in LA obviously there's, it's a huge music market. There's a gazillion venues, there's outdoor venues, there's, you know, arenas, there's. GA clubs, and what I'll see is, you know, in my mind as collecting all this from all these independent entities, you realize Wow.
Yeah. Like you're just crushing each other. Yes. And that's the reason, primarily why these things aren't selling. It's like there's four competitive dance events happening in the region, and they're all not, they're all like 50% sold.
Wow. Because it's essentially the same audience, right? That would attend all of those different shows.
So it's, it's similar to hotels in a lot of ways, just understanding sort of di demand and, and supply obviously, but the demand piece. So I, I kind of hear you suggesting like they should almost figure out those days when they're. Or nights where there isn't anything happening, and then promote those, or, you know, what would be a, a tactic that, I mean, they're also competitive.
That's why I'm like thinking through the question. Right. And like, they probably don't care.
(01:04):
Well, that data,
like that
information is shared in some capacity because from. Like 30,000 feet up. Right? The agencies and managers all talk to these same venues and promoters, and obviously in some cases it's the same people, same businesses, and they share that data.
But like to a point, some of it's in a silo and like as those things are worked out, they're not necessarily, they don't have that information, right? And they're like, oh shit, big DJ's playing. Same night as another big
dj.
Yeah. Across
town. Yeah. Then you have just audiences battling it out for loyalty and so there's probably a little bit of ego there, right?
Like, well, my client's gonna sell out, right? So I need a li, I'm gonna charge more because this guy sold more records. Or this, you know, has more followers, whatever it might be. I guess what we're saying here is that there's no clear silver bullet to, I mean, make sure that
every show gets, there's so many.
Artists touring and playing so many shows every night that I don't know if it's as simple as like figuring out the right piece that goes here on this night. Yeah. I think they try their best, especially with the bigger artists, but obviously this is happening in real time. But for example, with the Beyonce shows in LA, there's been a lot of press around.
It's not sold out res, the resellers, right? Yeah. And they're obviously taking a bath on these, so it's. Even when something is maybe sold out or there is a ton of demand you, if you wait for the secondary market on the day of, and this is happens everywhere and I think most music fans realize this. And same with sporting events.
You know, you can wait until the day of and get, get something for whatever it was originally sold
for even less. I mean, so you're, you are providing a tremendous service to all of these venues and promoters by distributing tickets that are quote, unquote free. But what happens if it does sell out or your allocation of free tickets right, gets, gets utilized?
What then does it kick over to a reseller or another site or direct to the venue? Direct to the venue?
So we work in two capacities. One is just a promotional vehicle the same way. Easiest way to understand it is a radio station gives away tickets and says, caller number nine gets tickets to whatever the case may be.
Right. Does that happen anymore? I, yeah, and I mean, I think, I think it does, but Yeah, exactly.
Not, not as much as like when we were kids. Yeah. Like when we'd sit there and wait, wait for the DJ to say it, then you would dial in and you would get the free tickets to the concert or whatever. But you're, this is kinda like always on to a right.
And so in a nutshell, I just brought that same concept just to a mobile platform. Yeah. Where you get notifications and it's the same kind of process. Right. So we're. Marketing the show to these people in a certain city the same way the radio station was telling everybody about that show. So in those cases, um, it's promotional.
It can be one pair, it could be 10 pairs, it could be whatever the promoter wants to do. And essentially, once those tickets are claimed, people are directed directly to the primary ticketing site to hopefully buy tickets. Got it. And hopefully drive something to be sold out. The second piece of it is when those shows obviously are underperforming or.
Whatever is close to sell out, but they know they're not gonna get there. Depending on how the engagement is in the app, we can give away more tickets and help get it closer to sell out or help the show be look fuller, right? No artist wants to play to an empty venue, and what we're doing and the service we're really providing is.
These promoters are making, you know, a lot of their money on concessions, parking merchandise. So we're hopefully getting people in the door who will spend money, right.
(01:25):
Ancillary
revenue opportunities based on the free ticket. And, and I know you go to events and you take your kids mm-hmm. And it's hard to not spend money once you're inside.
So that's, that's a
service we're providing. Those hot dogs don't buy themselves, Lance, that's for sure. So you, you're mainly talking about music, but are there applications for sports as well? Because I speak to a lot of sports ticket sellers, and especially brokers, right? Because they have these rights holder relationships where they'll pre-buy a ton of tickets and then of course sell them as, as best that they can.
But to your point, they don't sell out all the time. So how would you position Loudy as a solution for sports sellers?
Yeah. I mean the, the sports model is a bit different, right? Yeah. 'cause they make a lot of money on TV rights. Sure. So, but they still don't want to course because of that, they don't want empty of course.
But like there's this built-in revenue driver, which most concerts don't have. Right. Like they're completely dependent on people being there and spending money. Having said that, yeah. I think there is definitely a place for this, I'd say where we've, I. Made most headway outside of music is comedy. Okay.
Right. Because Right. Some comedy venues are doing multiple shows a night, right. Where you, you know, at 6 30, 9 30, whatever the case may be. And that's where I think we've made most headway. I think for sports it can become tricky because they have ticketing agreements. Yeah. Which we've talked about.
They're a little bit more stringent than of course. Your one-off concert and there's a lot more approval process and the lead controls a lot of how any of that marketing goes.
That's why I bring up the brokers. Yeah. Right. So the brokers, let's say it's a, it's a VIP ticket seller of some type. They still have excess inventory and then because they've already pre-bought from the rights holder.
It's in their best interest to help them out and to, to fill the seats Totally. Or take a very small fee on it. Right. And so, and that could be part of their membership abilities with their customers. Like, Hey, you pay this membership, you can get some free tickets as well. And so I, but marketing them to, so that they get more members at some point, I think would be beneficial to a certain degree.
But I think in, in terms of sports, you know, I, I spoke to someone yesterday where they're talking about like. The FIFA Club World World Cup is this summer. Most people don't know that. Totally. There's a lot of tickets available. And so would that be something that Loudy could help out with?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
We've worked on, especially in these major markets
that, yeah, of course we've worked on food events over the years. Ah. Yeah, big comedy festivals. I'm trying to think of some things that were outside the realm of just your typical Yeah. You know? Yeah. I'd say a lot of food. What's that theater you said?
You said comedy. Do you do theater? Yeah, we do do theater. It's just, it's a little bit more tedious when it's a seated event because you have to like account for each individual person. In a specific seat, whereas a GA venue, it's obviously, it's wide open. Easier to accommodate. Yeah. But yeah, and, and you know, I'm just, as I'm thinking out loud, a lot of like food related, you know, taco festivals Yeah.
And Irish, you know, cultural events and anything. You know, people have contacted us across the board. Yeah. Um, because at the end of the day, like our. Users, they just want to go to. They love live events. They love experiences. They love
experiences.
And they love free. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, we do have, um, we do surveys and it creates an atmosphere for these people where like typically when you're getting free tickets, you have a good experience unless the show's completely terrible for some reason.
Sure. Which has happened. And you get complaints about that. Yeah. Uh, for whatever reason, but. Nine times outta 10 because it was free and it's at great venues, and you had such a fun experience, I you're more inclined to buy tickets and go to something in the future. Right. So it's creating, you know, goodwill towards these
(01:46):
venues.
Yeah, so I la the Loudy community. It's, it's a community that you've created Yeah. In these major marks. And you guys are expanding nationally, obviously, but it's a, it's a type of person, right? Who's for sure who's, who's, yes. They're getting a free ticket or they're purchasing a very low price ticket, but they're also kind of, I mean, you've had a little bit of success on TikTok and other places where.
These free tickets do exist and we don't care. We just want have something to do. And then they share that with others. Yeah,
it's, it's partially that it's a lot of discovery. I know as we're getting older, you might look at like the Coachella lineup or the Lollapalooza lineup or whatever, and you might know the headliners, but you look at some of the other bands and you're probably like, who?
Yeah. Or how do, how do I pronounce that? Yeah. Yeah. And. The people I'd say primarily that are on the app are somewhat in tune to those lesser known bands, but they do have enough popularity that they're playing these festivals and they're touring nationally, internationally, whatever the case may be, and they're into that kind of stuff and are like, wow, let me get.
I'm getting access to up and coming, so and so, you know, we ask people to leave reviews and a lot of times it's like, I had heard of them. I knew one song. It was a great show. So part of it is kind of like this discovery process of up and coming national, regional type acts that are like bubbling. You know, it's not Lady Gaga.
Yeah. But they're on the same bill as
Lady Gaga. Right. And, but also there's a little bit of anxiety from the promoter themselves.
Yeah.
Or the venue for like, you know, just a little bit of insurance here. Let's try to put some free tickets on the market. Totally.
Yeah. I mean, the biggest. I'd say one of the biggest problems that promoter has is just market awareness.
Right? Right. And that's anything today where it's so clouded by everything happening and it gets lost in the social posts or the banner ads or whatever they're doing. Yeah. And Loudy is just an alternative resource for them to like get in front of music fans. We just removed all that noise. Yeah. Where I'm sure you follow some venues or artists and like.
You know, every week there's tons of announcements. Yep. Of the tour, the festival, the new music, whatever it is, and kind of where we've just created this environment where they can come to us and just promote those shows to people that want to go to shows without any of that other
noise. Yeah. No, no, that's, I think that's a resource that more people should know about, at least from an industry perspective.
I think one of the things that comes up a lot in these conversations, because we talk to so many people in ticketing, is transferability. Of the ticket. Mm-hmm. And whether or not a resold ticket is a real ticket, because you could go on any social media platform, just hear the, the nightmares, whether it's the established company like a Ticketmaster or StubHub, all the way down to various brokers that come out.
So how does the. Once you purchase or get access mm-hmm. To a ticket as a Loudy customer, what happens? How do they, how do they get the ticket typically? Yeah,
so it's, it's one of two ways. A lot of what we do is at the box office will call, so when you register as a user, we have the name that matches your id.
So it forces you as a user. You have to go to the box office, show your id. To redeem your tickets, obviously. And it, it's happens rarely, but it has happened where someone who's using the app to resell or stop their tickets will go to the box office, redeem them, and then like resell them in front of the box office, which we blacklist you from the app.
And we don't obviously permit any of that. Our tickets can never be resold. Interesting. So that's one of the main ways that we kind of prevent that. More and more so especially on bigger allotments of tickets, we do distribute digital tickets. Okay. Which what's nice is, and it depends on the setting with the promoter, whether it's ticket master access, you can actually build in a way that you can't let allow them to transfer it or sell it through the platform.
So that prevents it as well. We have some mechanisms in place to prevent any of this kind of stuff. We don't allow you to have multiple accounts in a way we incentivize you to attend because. There's a system in place in the back end that kind of like evenly distributes tickets to people, making sure more people get access.
So like mm-hmm. If your intent is just to take as many tickets and resell, then we kind of prevent that. Or just taking tickets and not using them, I should say. Yeah. But listen, at the end of the day, if someone really wants to go to all the effort to like cheat a system, whether it's anything that exists out, they'll figure out a way.
(02:07):
They'll figure out a way. But we have a lot of things in place to prevent it.
That's interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't know that that you got, because you're right, there's. I mean, uh, so when I speak to some of these resellers, like I always ask them the question like, what was the first ticket you ever sold?
And a lot of it comes down to, well, I got this ticket really cheap and I, I go to another area and then resell it. I got it for five, I'd sell it for 10 or 15. Right? And then, you know, they're teenagers. So what's really stopping someone from doing that? So the fact that you put in these mechanisms to sort of police that early on, because what is the value of a free ticket?
Well, that's the thing too. Keep in mind that a lot of events, and especially if we have a large amount of these free tickets, it's not selling well. So could you make $5 on it? Maybe It seems like a lot of effort to go through to like make a little bit of money. Right? Um, but I, you know, some people, like I said, are determined.
You never know, but. You know, these events, like I said, are for the most part, they're still tickets available at face value.
You know, I, and when I think about your business, it's, um, do, do you grow it more in terms of getting more free ticket supply? I. Or is it growing your audience or is it both at the same time?
It's both. It's,
and there's a third part to it. It's just
adding more shows, even on a promotional basis. Right. So where we've, where I've moved it more recently is being involved in the on sale and the announce. With just like a pair of tickets and obviously every show announces and goes on sale. So that's just adding sheer number of like shows.
Yes, it's helping more and more events that maybe need, need a little bump. And it's, yeah, it's in user growth too. As we expand into more markets, we obviously. Need more people there who are aware of the app, who are interested in shows and want to take tickets. And it's kind of those, those three facets.
Yeah, I obviously, audience expansion is huge, so partnerships are key in a lot of ways, and that, that's where we merged. You know what we talked about a lot in terms of tickets to travel. And so if I was a, a travel seller or a concierge. At a, at a hotel, would you recommend like talking to or using the loudy app to, or at least get the word out to people who are traveling to a certain destination who just don't know what to do
potentially?
Yeah, so within the app, many users actually have a ton of locations set, right? Um, and there are, you know. Some people that, you know, I've just gotten to know throughout the years, who've claimed tickets who do travel a lot and are just interested in like, for whatever reason, work or family life. Like they're, they're in LA a lot.
They're in New York or they, A lot of people who live in New Jersey, for example, and are music fans, will go to Philly, will come here. Right. Yeah. Uh, it's the same in California. There's a lot of people, for example, that live in Santa Barbara. Right. Which is north of la but we'll go to San Diego for the right show.
Huh? We'll go to Santa Ana, we'll go to Anaheim. So there is a, a travel element to it actually, which is, it's been interesting to see. Or we'll go to Vegas, right? A lot of people in Southern California. Drive or fly constantly or for work for whatever reason. So they are interested in shows. There shows in San Diego, wherever the case may be.
Yeah, that's interesting because yeah, so there's two ways to look at it, right? Like where the ticket is the driver of the travel, which essentially that's what you're describing. I was thinking about it in terms of like they're already in destination.
Mm-hmm.
And they have nothing to do and you're competing with.
Uh, I don't know, a bus tour, a ticket to Statue of Liberty, things of that nature. And then you, well, here's a free opportunity that it's gonna enhance your experience here in the destination, whether it be Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, whatever it might be. But you're, you're actually saying that you have some users who.
Look for the free ticket and then decide to spend money on the travel.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don't, I don't know if it's exactly, if they're staying overnight or what the case may be. Right. It's drivable distances. Some of it's drivable. Um, but yeah, it comes up. Listen, we will, I. There's obviously a lot of customer service that comes into play.
(02:28):
Yeah. You know, on average, uh, like for April of this past month, it was, I have to look at the numbers, but like 4,300 people went to shows in just April. And, uh, inevitably there's a lot of customer service and questions and Yeah. Issues that come up and. I'd say one of the more common ones is I'm an hour away.
I'm, I'm a two hour drive. Can you please help me with this? I'm almost there, but I'm, I'm not gonna be there for three, whatever the case may be. Yeah. And it, I'm stuck in traffic. Right. It, you know, there is this, especially with our users who are into these shows and got tickets to something great, but it's three hours away.
They're willing to make that drive and spend that time
doing it. I wanted to kind of cover off on that, just what. How you got to Pollen. Sure. And then what your thoughts were about the experience.
Yeah. So yeah, I landed at Pollen during the pandemic. It was 2021. I had temporarily shut down Loudy for obvious reasons.
Yeah, there were no shows
right there. There was no venues open. That was a very time. So your supply based just disappeared. Yeah. I
mean, especially 2020 with like all these shows scheduled. It was very chaotic, obviously. So. Yeah, Ricky and I connected. I think he had been at the company a few months. Just a few months.
Yeah, of course. And um, yeah, I mean overall I had a great experience. I think we worked on some amazing events and like awesome locations. I think my first literal first day of work I think was in Cabo.
Was that for Cago? It was. Or, uh, what's the other one we used to do down there? It wasn't Cayo. No, it wasn't Cayo.
It was probably, was it the. What was that called? What was the, was it Tiesto or, no, not ieso. Its the cool, I, I actually don't remember. It's the, they had, they're like a surf brand kind. They have different bands and DJs. I mean, you were there. I was there. What?
Who played? I don't know if we ever actually got whatever I was working on at that time off the ground.
I don't know if we had a specific, like Cali Grooves or something. Possibly Cali. I don't know if we had a. It may have been the time where we were kind of like sussing out a location. Okay. You're scoping scoping it and trying to put the economics behind it to see if something was possible. Right. 'cause you were focused on the venues, the club I, I think eventually it possibly did
morph into Dsto.
Okay. Oh, that's okay. That's what you're doing eventually. Yeah. So your first day was in market trying to Yes. Understand.
Yeah,
the venues there just really,
yeah, I really, it was like, you know, well we were all over the place driving to different venues. Ricky was being Ricky, yeah. Flying down there. Um, and yeah, I mean, we, it, it was, it was actually like, I, I don't have anything bad to say about my time there.
Yeah. We got to, you know, like I said, we went to Cabo. I did, you know, we were in Aspen, which I think was Yep. Kigo, yeah. Related. And you worked on New Orleans? Yes. Did work on some things in New Orleans. And I think, you know, ultimately just my opinion on destination festivals, I think it's very dependent on the artist their, the driver of the demand.
Yeah, yeah. Their fan base. I think location matters, but. Listen, I think you can look at all the things that have happened in Mexico, for example, and there's some big winners and there's been some losers mm-hmm. That were canceled. So it's an amazing location. You're on the beach, it's sunny, it's fun. But for whatever reason, and I think you can mostly point to maybe just the artist and the demand, and again, it can go back to a lot of things I mentioned where it's like.
Are they overexposed? And they've played a lot everywhere and they've played all these major markets. So why is someone from New York want to go see them in particular?
(02:49):
Yeah. Or someone who's in Southern California, they're like, I can go to Vegas for cts still. Right. Why am I gonna pay for a thousand dollars to go and see 'em in Cavo?
Yes.
You know, having said that, and you know more about this than anyone, but like. They're saying, you know, more people travel obviously for Taylor Swift and like most events,
yes. I don't like to say this all the time, but Taylor was actually the inspiration for saying there's a market for this type of conversation.
Absolutely. From a professional perspective, because I don't think ever in the history of the travel industry or the live events industry, has there been this, let's talk about the business of it, all the different components, whether it be the ticketing side, the live events side, or. Travel, how people get there, how they contract a hotel, how they contract the venue.
Because I think I learned a lot from you guys, just from the venue perspective. And I felt like the pollen founders who were promoters, right. Their music festival promoters to, yeah, as their origin, they wanted to treat the hotels. Like a, a nightclub venue and it wasn't the same thing. There's a difference in industry, a difference in contracting, but it was that sort of inexperience of them to just automatically think that I.
Covid was gonna be around forever. Right. And everyone was gonna take their call. Once travel started to come back, those conversations about buying out a hotel were very different. Totally. Very different. And so even from a venue perspective, I'm sure that changed a bit too, because you had other competition coming in.
So that period of time, 20 20, 20 21 into 2022, when the, the company imploded, that was a very, that was like lightning in a bottle, right? To launch something that. Truly couldn't exist unless you had, you know, big guns behind you and real know-how, because I think at that point the founders were, they're pushing people around a little bit.
You know, I'm gonna give you money, gimme totally space. I have Justin Bieber. You should allow him to, to do this. And I, I have leverage over you. And then we were also there during the transition, so understanding that that wasn't gonna be enough. It's just having an artist. I mean, having these conversations, well tell the win Las Vegas that we have.
Justin Bieber. I'm like, Justin Bieber wants to stay at the win. They don't care. Right. It's about right what the, the most revenue they can make on that particular night based on the inventory that they have. And so on the venue side, you guys educated me quite a bit and just the, the sort of terms and the way that a promoter deals with a venue of that type.
Do you think that. Type of company can exist now, fast forward a few years. And what do you think, at least from your, your perspective of the business, right? It would, it would be needed
by the way, I remembered why we were down there. I think it was Diplo.
Diplo, yes.
We were working on something, I think at that time.
Yeah. That just came to me. But do I think it can can exist? Yeah. I mean, listen, listen. I think a different variation of it, and to pull it back to Pollen and some of our ex-colleagues is the sphere. Oh. Right, right. A lot of people are traveling out there to go to these shows. Yes. And obviously a unique, one of a kind.
Venue. Venue. Mm-hmm. In a very exciting city. And then I think that that is proving, I. There that that is the destination and you can package it together and people wanna travel. Touching back on what I was saying before, I don't know if every artist makes sense for a three day thing in Mexico, right? Or wherever the case may be.
I just, I we're seeing it doesn't, so again, it's just dependent on who the artist is, who their fan base is, and what that demand, the underlying demand is. Um, but yeah, I do think the sphere is an interesting. Case study for travel right now.
You're right. I mean there's, and talk about competition. There's like, I mean, Las Vegas is on par with New York City in terms of entertainment options every night, so that'd be interesting to, to dig into a bit.
How do you get access to like. Cowboy Carter, like how, what's, what's the pro, what's the challenge of getting the big shows who, again, everyone's been talking about how it's not sold out, but from a business perspective, I'm just curious like how do you get access to that?
The thing is, at that level, there's a lot more approval process and the artists and their management team have a lot more control over tickets.
Where the breadth of my business is at like a club GA level where the promoter has a lot more. Leniency and like has a lot more latitude I should say, to like give away tickets. Yeah. And do what they want to help the make some money on the show, right? Yeah. They're taking all the risk. They have a lot more leadway in giving out tickets when it gets bigger and bigger and, and, and periodically I do work on arena things and stadiums and festivals and things like that.
(03:10):
There's just more of an approval process. You know, we walk this fine line of marketing the show, getting people in there, but like. It's not in the best interest of the artist, obviously, for like the whole world to know that there's free tickets about. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of the beauty of Loudy.
It lives in this kind of siloed ecosystem. Yeah. Where it's not like blasted on TikTok and Yeah. Instagram, but Yeah. You know, especially the bigger shows where it is seated. Mm-hmm. Again, you need to. Find allocations and like Right. The ticketer needs to pick out specific tickets and pull them from the allotments and Yep.
We do it. It's just a bit of, more of a process. But yeah, the artists have way more approval on like, what's gonna happen with those tickets. Yep. Um, and, and like frankly, a lot of those shows, she doesn't need my help. She's, I need her help. Right. Like,
she's got the name, she's got worry. You put on free tickets for Beyonce.
Most people in the world. Yeah. So
it's not a big deal in a lot of their shows. Don't really need it and like also are, again, like the users that are constantly taking tickets, they're going to so many different shows. I think some of them are interested in that kind of stuff, but like, they wanna be on, it's of a discovery platform.
A lot of it is, right? Yeah. Or like, like they're not
true fans, but they're like, you know, I heard a little something about this guy, or this band, free tickets came up. I'm gonna grab my girlfriend and you know, we're gonna roll totally and go check it out. You think it's, it's that type of subculture and I mean,
fandom.
All the data is showing there's less and less arena. Stadium X. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Everything's hard. Very niche, and they have huge audiences, but it's not necessarily you're playing all these MSGs anymore. Yeah. You know, you're playing a ton of, you're doing a residency at Radio City or Brooklyn Steel, or wherever the case may be, and you're packing it out, but it's not, there's not as many acts that command that.
And I think this went into our discussion last time. It's the same with the Super Bowl, right? Like is there one act that. Encompasses
everyone watching.
No,
actually it's funny, you, we, you, you brought that up. So I have, uh, an episode that where he had access to Super Bowl tickets. Okay. And he said when people got in the door, he sold his, he's resell.
He is a broker. When he, when he sold his, all his people were like, yeah, there's a section up at the top that was. Empty, completely empty. You don't see that on television, this and that because the getin price was around like $7,000 when it should have been around $2,000. And they could have filled those pretty easily, but whoever had the, had the rights to, to distribute had already made their money.
And so they didn't really care. Right, right. If it went empty or not for sure. But that's not exactly fan forward versus there's opportunity to have one sold it. Or given it away for free and then completely packed it in. Of course there's some issues and challenges with giving away a Super Bowl ticket, but I don't think a lot of people know that there's a platform that they can
Yeah,
no,
I appreciate you.
Right. Yeah. It's, um, it's growing definitely, and there's a lot more demand, but yeah, there's so much opportunity out there and
yeah, when it comes to distribution in general, whether it be hotels or, or tickets, it's really about supply and, and the quality of the supply. So that's why I asked the question, right?
(03:31):
Like it's. How do you get the free ticket to Beyonce? Because that's a strategy that you can kind of pin down and think through and, you know, maybe someone who listens to this is like, oh, there's a back channel way to provide a special code to whatever it might be. Right. And that's what I'm just trying to uncover there is trying to figure out, because that could be the difference where e even an artist or a, a savvy promoter could say, you know what?
Let's try a very small allocation of free tickets. On the on sale to just drive, not so much for Louy, but just for themselves.
Totally. And I, yeah, as a, as a fan forward initiative. Absolutely. We work, I, I work on those all the time and, and yeah. A lot of times it's shows that are going to sell out and yeah, we get small, all allotments for that.
I also like including sold out shows or shows that are about to be sold out because. Listen. I don't want it to be a platform where it's like every show that's a dog that's not selling well, this is where it goes. I like to mix in stuff that's performing really well, which we do and is gonna sell out.
And it also keeps the users on their toes like Yeah. And interested, right? You can't, it's not interesting that like every, you know, there's unfortunately a lot of shows that need help. But it's good to mix in the bigger tours, the bigger announces, and we do, we do stuff like that. Or if it's getting closer and they're close to sell out and they're like, let's just give away a pair of tickets.
Yeah. Um, yeah, it runs the gamut. It's not a one size, it's not such like one use case. It's all those needs. Thanks, Lance. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it.
No, I, I appreciate you making the time and hopefully you'll come back when you're a billion dollar company and we keep talking about growing, uh, Loudy, so thanks.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
And that's a wrap on today's episode of Tickets to Travel with the one and only Lance Dash off from Loudy, where the ticket price
is unbeatable and the experiences are unforgettable. What did we learn today first, that 30 to 40% of live event tickets go unsold. Even for shows with great talent.
Second, that smart promoters aren't just dropping prices, they're dropping free tickets in the wild to drive foot traffic, fill venues, and boost everything from bar sales to band buzz. And third, sometimes discovering your next favorite artist starts with saying yes to a spontaneous night out. Lance reminded us that free doesn't mean low value, it means opportunity.
It means discovery. It means access, and with loudy it means having the inside scoop on music, comedy, and cultural events across the country, all in the palm of your hand. So here's the move. Download the Loudy app. That's L-O-U-D-I-E. It's free to join. Free to use, and packed with free events. Just waiting to be claimed, whether you're in la, New York, Philly, or just road tripping for a good time.
Every ticket is a ticket to travel. Every
show is a chance to explore, so skip the fomo, embrace the spontaneity, and let your next great night out. Start with Loudy. Until next time, keep exploring, keep dancing and remember. Every ticket is a ticket to travel, and it all starts with you. Thanks and safe travels.
Attention, travel, and ticketing innovators. Whether you're a startup disrupting the industry, or an established company ready to take your distribution strategy to the next level. Expo Travel is your ultimate partner in online travel and ticketing distribution. We specialize in helping businesses of all sizes optimize their operations, expand their reach, and unlock new revenue streams.
And for startups looking to grow, we partnered with Top Venture Capital syndicates to help you secure the funding you need to turn bold ideas into thriving businesses from refining businesses to. Scaling operations and raising capital Expo Travel is here to drive your success. Visit Expo Travel today.
That's XPO travel.com for a consultation, and let's transform the way the world travels. One innovation at a time. Expo travel because the future of travel and ticketing starts with you.
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