After launching as a Rugby festival in 2008 to a crowd of 8,000, Bournemouth 7s has quickly grown into the world’s largest sport and music festival. Showcasing everything from Netball and Hockey to Dodgeball and CrossFit, along with a music festival across 12 incredible themed arenas; this event has a hugely broad appeal and is now attended by 30,000 fans including 4,000 campers and glampers, 2,000 VIPS and 400 sports teams.
In 2021, the Bournemouth 7s team partnered with Tixel to deliver their first event with COVID-19 restrictions in play. With just 42 days notice to relaunch their epic sell-out festival event, the Tixel partnership allowed the team to:
- Successfully operate a no-refunds policy by offering a safe place for fans to trade tickets if they were unwell, had a change of plans, or didn’t meet to COVID-19 safety requirements in time for the event
- Reduce the workload of event staff by redirecting all refund and resale ticketing enquiries to Tixel
- Harness fresh audience data from a dynamic waitlist to run targeted ticket sales campaigns for the 2022 event
“We would definitely recommend Tixel as a resale platform. Their amazing team was easy to contact and any issues were dealt with immediately which was hugely appreciated. The biggest benefit for us was the ease of re-directing people to Tixel for resale enquiries, taking away the workload from processing refunds. We are very much looking forward to working with Tixel again for the 2022 festival!”
Callie Worth, Bournemouth 7s Commercial Manager
Running a COVID-Safe festival without relying on refunds
With the UK coming out of lengthy lockdowns and restrictions on events, the Bournemouth 7s 2021 event required all attendees to show proof of their COVID-19 status — either vaccinated, a negative test, or natural immunity.
It’s a requirement to run a safe festival now, but these measures can also increase the rate of no-shows and refund requests if a person can no longer attend in the lead up to the event. Thankfully for Bournemouth 7s, this wasn’t the case. Commercial Manager, Callie Worth, explains, “If individuals unfortunately caught COVID-19 or simply couldn’t attend the new dates, they were directed towards Tixel. This was a great way for fans to essentially get their money back — while replacing the attendee with a new customer who could attend our event.”
“Our fans successfully traded over 1,000 tickets which is incredible and something we were very impressed with. By reselling these tickets it definitely saved us a number of no-shows and kept our festival atmosphere alive with restrictions in place. The site felt busy, particularly on the Saturday, which was really helped by the resale tickets.”
Callie Worth, Bournemouth 7s Commercial Manager
Handballing refund and resale ticketing enquiries
With UK’s ‘Freedom Day’ taking place only a month prior, the Bournemouth 7s team took on an astonishing feat — putting together a 30,000 capacity sports and music festival (with camping!) in just 42 days. With their work cut out for them, the last thing the team needed was a heavy workload for refund requests and resale enquiries.
“Our Tixel partnership definitely helped with our workload. It was really easy for us to redirect customers to the Tixel website and encourage them to resell their ticket rather than offering a refund, as we operate a no refunds policy,” says Callie.
“Tixel was incredibly helpful and customers found it easy to use which helped us hugely. It was also great for us to redirect individuals to Tixel to try and resell their ticket, so that we knew we weren’t completely losing out on a customer if it was being resold.”
Callie Worth, Bournemouth 7s Commercial Manager
Capturing fresh audience data from a dynamic waitlist
With COVID-19 restrictions in place, waitlists have become more important than ever to sell-out festivals and events. By having a dynamic waitlist in place with Tixel, Bournemouth 7s fans could see the moment a ticket was listed for sale and secure it without having to wait for new release announcements or risk being caught out overpaying ticket touts on unregulated marketplaces or Facebook event pages.
Not only that, the data collected by the Bournemouth 7s waitlist means that their marketing team can now target the customers they didn’t know they had. By targeting people who missed out on tickets to the 2021 event, they have an audience of eager fans ready to buy in 2022 — minimising the spend they would have needed to reach these fans.
“…it’s great for us to be able to target with some fresh data we didn’t previously have access to”.
Callie Worth, Bournemouth 7s Commercial Manager
Power up your ticketing play in the UK
Tixel’s promoter tools allow you to take control of your ticket after-market, alongside primary ticketing. Anti-fraud tech and capped pricing provides a fair place for fans to transfer tickets — while giving you tools to improve sales and sell out sooner.
To join festivals in the UK like Bournemouth 7s in our lineup of great events using Tixel, sign up for a free account here.
