You and a Friend Could Go to Every Resound Show Next Year for $500

Austin bookers’ Sorted Pass joins growing number of ticket bundles

We’re long past the days where loyal concertgoers needed a sleeping bag and wads of cash to be certain they could score tickets to the next can’t-miss show.

In a post-pandemic world where music giants are returning to concerts in fits and starts, promoters and tech companies in Austin continue to innovate with new models for enticing, and rewarding, their most loyal customers.

Last month, independent promotion company Resound Presents – which books across local venues like Mohawk and Empire Control Room alongside San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas locales – announced its Sorted Pass. (As in, “tell your friends I’M SORTED!”) The bundle provides two tickets to every show on the promoters’ 2023 calendar, advertised as a $14,000 value for a one-time $500 cost. The offer, of which a limited number are available, doesn’t include bookings at Austin’s ACL Live at the Moody Theater or the Paramount Theatre.

That promotion came a few months after leading national promoter Live Nation offered up its Club Pass, which gave buyers entry into every show held at select clubs during October through the end of the year. Local Live Nation-owned participants included Emo’s and Scoot Inn, with separate $59 passes available for each club.

These loyalty programs, in many ways, model the season ticket approach that has been a building block of sporting events for decades, as well as fine arts nonprofit groups for theater, opera, and symphony programming. Offering an entire season or blocks of tickets to loyal fans – at discounted rates – lets presenters build reliable year-long revenue without having to sell every ticket for every event at a higher marketing cost.

For Resound, the Sorted Pass reboots a fan club pass started by the company’s prior iteration as Margin Walker Presents years ago. That promotion, which cost $200 and offered fans a set amount of tickets each month, was being reworked to be easier to use when the pandemic wiped out the concert business across the country in 2020.

Ian Orth, Resound’ managing partner and creative director, said the individual codes Sorted Pass purchasers are given will make it easier to use than past fan club internations. Overall, the pass removes a barrier for dedicated music fans who want to discover as much new music as possible.

“The hope is someone who invests in this pass is going to want to go to shows all the time,” Orth says. “Maybe they wouldn’t go to see an emerging artist inside at Mohawk because they don’t want to spend $10 to see a band, who might be cool or not. Now, they don’t have to think about it and can go to a live show anytime they want.”

On top of building a strong relationship with dedicated fans who have the ability to make a $500 purchase, the program has the potential to soak up some of the slack on midweek nights, which are tougher for ticket and drink sales. With the recent unveiling, Resound hopes to boost attendance during January and February, traditionally some of the slowest months for the local bar and concert business.

Caitlin Cano, Resound’s marketing director, said removing the individual ticket cost for the roughly 100 or so expected buyers of the Sorted Pass makes them more likely to take a chance on seeing an emerging act.

“With this pass, you stop having the question of ‘What am I going to do tonight?’” Cano says. “It’s a way to discover all these new artists or opening, small acts who you wouldn’t have without spending $15, because now you don’t even have to think about that cost.”

Elsewhere in Austin, tech company festivalPass’ subscription model gives customers a set amount of credits to purchase tickets acquired from promoters without service fees (as explored by the Chronicle earlier this year).

Ed Vincent, founder and CEO of festivalPass, says his research of small and midsize concert venues showed the average event only sells 65 percent of its tickets, meaning there’s plenty of excess inventory. The benefits of loyalty programs are the same no matter the structure, Vincent says, with promoters bringing engaged live music customers into their network for an extended period of time, and thus reducing the cost of advertising and selling individual tickets. He compares the model to the effect Amazon Prime had on standard e-commerce.

“You get to a place where every time you want to buy something online, you’re probably going to check Amazon first, because even if the price is similar, you’re getting free shipping and it’s super easy. That creates a continuity, that means you don’t have to keep advertising to [the customer] every time,” says Vincent.

“For the venues, you almost think of them as a restaurant, because at the end of the day, they’re selling drinks and possibly some food. So, any time they can get one more body in the venue, that improves the margin where they make money. Any slack that gets filled with additional bodies in the door buying drinks is a positive.”

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KEYWORDS FOR THIS POST

Resound, Resound Presents, festivalPass, Live Nation, Mohawk

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