Refunds can hurt. When you’ve invested big in an event and aren’t eligible for refunds yourself, offering them to ticket holders has a sting to it.

But while refund policies are necessary, there is a great alternative that is often overlooked: ticket resale. When events offer a secure way for people to sell spare tickets, attendees can get their money back without needing to ask for a refund. It gives people a flexible alternative without creating more work for your team or hitting your bottom line.

Recently we have seen many successful events run with no-refund policies in place. Even with the threat of ticket holders getting ill or not complying with new vaccination requirements, these events didn’t need to resort to refunds, simply by being upfront about their policy and offering a secure and fair resale option with Tixel.

What is secure and fair resale?

It’s inevitable that not every ticket holder will be able to make your event on the day. They could ask for a refund or you could provide the alternative of resale. Ticket resale (sometimes referred to as fan exchange) lets people get spare tickets into the hands of someone who can use them. This used to take place on third-party sites beyond your control such as auction sites or social media. But Tixel offers a brighter future. By working with ticketing platforms and using anti-fraud tech and capped pricing, Tixel provides a fair place for fans to onsell tickets safely. Although Tixel cannot guarantee entry to the event, there is a money back guarantee and Tixel takes all the reasonable steps to ensure that tickets are valid. When a ticket is sold on Tixel, it’s replaced with a unique barcode — with minimised risk of fraud or duplication.

How the UK’s biggest sports and music festival uses resale to reduce refund enquiries

When event restrictions eased in the UK, the world’s biggest sports and music festival, Bournemouth 7s, relaunched their festival with a no-refunds policy, by partnering with Tixel to handle resale tickets. By offering a safe place for fans to trade tickets if they were unwell, had a change of plans, or didn’t meet COVID-19 safety requirements in time for the event, Bournemouth 7s kept their attendance numbers up without creating extra work for their team.

Bournemouth 7s Commercial Manager, Callie Worth, explains. “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 Worth.

Bournemouth 7s also used Tixel’s dynamic waitlist feature to allow fans to register and even pre-authorise a ticket sale the moment they became available. Over 1,000 tickets were traded for the 2021 event, keeping attendance up and fans happy.

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

Fellow sporting event, Arnold Sports Festival used the same strategy for their 2021 event and saw over 1500 tickets safely traded, diverting refunds and workload away from their team.

Tips for promoting resale over refunds

Ticket resale is most effective for events when you have control over how tickets are sold. To prevent fans from looking to unauthorised sites or social media for tickets, here are some quick tips for effectively promoting resale over refunds:

Get started with Tixel for free to launch your on-sale with dynamic waitlists and resale built-in
Communicate to attendees and fans that Tixel is the only verified resale option for your event
Include resale information in your FAQs and refund policy so that attendees understand the alternatives

Postpone events without the pain

One of the best things you can do to protect your event during these times is be prepared for anything. Launch your event with Tixel waitlists in place to reduce no-shows, stay flexible and sell out sooner. Learn more or sign up for free now at tixel.com/organisers