ArtsQuest, Eventbrite Partner

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ArtsQuest, the Bethlehem, Pa., nonprofit that puts on the Musikfest and other festivals, and San Francisco-based ticket giant Eventbrite have formed a partnership to support the diverse ticketing needs for ArtsQuest.

ArtsQuest’s programming reaches more than 1.5 million people annually. Each year the company sells more than 225,000 tickets to 2,400 events, ranging from concerts to visual art classes.

ArtsQuest Chief Operating Officer Curt Mosel said that implementing a ticketing solution that fit ArtsQuest’s many objectives was its primary goal in selecting a new ticketing partner and that Eventbrite was the perfect fit. ArtsQuest’s former ticketer was TopTix (which was acquired by Seat Geek in 2017).

Musikfest, the month-long event that has kicked off on the first Friday of August since 1984 in Bethlehem, is the biggest ArtsQuest event.

“We did a formal RFP and Eventbrite offered the technology we were after,” he said. “The Eventbrite platform is super easy to use. Our previous system required people to go from one website to another website and sometimes they would have to click eight to nine times before the transaction was complete. With Eventbrite, it’s just two clicks.”

Mosel is also impressed with the Eventbrite platform’s ability to understand data. “Before, all we knew was where a consumer was, not if they eventually bought a ticket.”

ArtsQuest has more than 2,000 volunteers, and switching to Eventbrite has made transactions easier to do and quicker.

“Our lines can be quite long. It used to take 30 to 40 minutes to get into our Christmas market, and we’ve cut that down to five minutes,” Mosel said. 

Another plus is ArtsQuest’s ability to “automatically plug our shows into all of the big tech platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Spotify. These kinds of integrations really move the needle on ticket sales, make it easy for fans to find shows and help streamline our marketing operations,” Mosel said.

The partnership, which will officially be announced Tuesday, began in November and will run till 2022. Eventbrite gets a cut of every ticket sold.

“While we’ve just scratched the surface as far as the marketing tools and technologies available to us, we’ve already seen a significant bump in new sales since launching the Eventbrite platform,” Mosel said.

Ali McCloud, Eventbrite director of sales, said in a statement: “We’re simply delighted to be working with them and recognize that as a nonprofit organization they have a critical need for efficiency, in addition to the raw truth that every single ticket sold helps fuel the free programming they provide for the community.”

The two organizations will share a stage at this week’s INTIX conference in Grapevine, Texas, during a panel also featuring representatives from Facebook and Workato.