How to Set a Ticket Price From Your Cost Sheet Instead of Guessing

Most first time organisers pick a ticket price by looking at what the last similar event charged. Then they find out on the night that the hall, the sound and the tea cost more than the gate brought in.

There is a better order of operations. Set a ticket price from your cost sheet by splitting every cost into two piles: costs that stay the same whether ten people come or two hundred, and costs that go up with each extra head. Add the two piles together at a realistic attendance number, add the margin you want, and divide by that same attendance number. The answer is your floor. Everything after that is judgement.

Step one: separate fixed from per head

Fixed costs do not care how many people show up. Per head costs do.

Fixed usually includes:

• Venue hire and the security deposit you might not get back
• Sound, lighting and stage setup
• Artist or speaker fees agreed as a flat amount
• Printing, banners and any paid promotion
• Permissions, licences and any local fees that apply to your kind of event
• Generator or backup power hire

Per head usually includes:

• Food, tea and water
• Chairs beyond what the venue includes
• Kits, badges, handouts or prints
• Payment gateway charges on each ticket, which vary by provider
• Any per person insurance or entry fee the venue passes on

Two costs sit awkwardly between the piles. Volunteers are usually free until they are not, because at some crowd size you need paid help. Cleaning is often fixed in the contract and per head in reality. Put them in fixed and note the crowd size at which they change.

Step two: pick the attendance number you will bet on

This is where guessing does the damage. Do not use the capacity of the hall. Use the number you would be embarrassed but not ruined by.

A practical way to choose it:

• Start with how many people you can personally reach through lists, groups and direct invitation
• Assume a portion of interested people will not turn up, since no shows run heaviest when entry is free
• Ignore anyone who has only said "sounds nice"

If your venue holds two hundred and your honest reachable number is one hundred and forty, build the price on one hundred and forty. Anything above that is upside, and upside pays for the things you forgot.

Step three: the arithmetic

Write it in this shape, with your own quotes filled in.

• F = total of all fixed costs
• V = per head cost for one attendee
• N = the attendance number you chose
• M = the margin you want to keep, as an amount, not a feeling

Price = (F + M) divided by N, then add V.

For a two hundred seat cultural evening where you have decided to bet on one hundred and forty, the F line is your hall, sound, artist and printing quotes added up. The V line is tea plus handout plus gateway charge for one person. M is what you want left over, whether that is a reserve for the next event or a donation you promised.

The number that falls out is not the price you charge. It is the price below which you lose money at your chosen attendance. What you charge above it can be split into early bird, standard and door prices.

Step four: sanity check before you publish

Take the floor price and ask four questions.

• Is it close to what your audience already pays for a comparable evening in your town? If it is far above, either the value is not visible or your costs are too high for this audience.
• What happens at half your attendance number? Work out the loss and decide now whether you can absorb it.
• What happens at full capacity? If a full hall barely breaks even, the model is wrong, not the marketing.
• Which single cost is the biggest? That is the one to negotiate, not the tea.

What to do when the floor price is too high

You have four levers and only four.

• Cut a fixed cost. A cheaper hall or a shorter sound rental moves the whole line.
• Cut a per head cost. Water instead of tea, digital handout instead of print.
• Raise the attendance number, which means more promotion, which is itself a fixed cost. Be honest about that.
• Find money that is not ticket money: a sponsor, a stall fee, a donation box.

Lowering the price is not on that list, because lowering the price without changing a cost only moves the loss. That holds hardest when your audience is used to free entry and the first price is already small.

Keep the sheet after the event

Write down what you actually spent next to what you quoted, and what actually came through the gate next to what you planned for. Two events of that record and you stop guessing, because you have your own numbers instead of somebody else's.

That record is also the thing that makes a sponsor conversation short and a venue negotiation easier. Nobody argues with a person who arrives holding last year's real figures.