What if ticketing fees actually did some good? Humanitix has the answer

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Earlier this year, the US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Live Nation, accusing the ticketing monolith and its subsidiary, Ticketmaster, of suffocating its competition. (Live Nation is contesting the lawsuit, describing the allegations as “baseless”.) Along with the recent furore over Oasis tickets – where “dynamic pricing” led some people to spend more than £350 – and the scramble for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, it was the latest in a string of complaints with a notable constant: ticket companies are profiting at the expense of fans.

“We were looking at this, thinking, ‘Wow, there’s such a good opportunity to disrupt,” says Joshua Ross, a former hedge-fund analyst, of a problem that dates back to the early ‘90s, when Pearl Jam boycotted any venues with Ticketmaster affiliations after a row over booking fees. 

In 2016, Ross and childhood friend Adam McCurdie founded Humanitix, a not-for-profit that provides “tickets for good, not greed”. The platform rebrands booking fees by donating profits to charities around the world, including Yalari, Code, Manaiakalani and The Life You Can Save. The provider has donated £8.5mn to charity since its inception.

As Ross says, “social enterprise works best when you’re coming into an industry where the incumbents are not behaving well”. Humanitix’s structure – no shareholders, no profits – acts as a “circuit breaker” against major ticketing companies’ “questionable business behaviour”, adds McCurdie. The extortionate additional fees, such as adding 20 per cent or more to a ticket’s face value, are just the start. Humanitix’s booking fees are “a good 20 to 40 per cent lower” than the industry’s standard fees, and even lower for non-profits, charities and schools. The not-for-profit is also working on improving accessibility at events, fixing the industry’s “notoriously terrible” customer service and tackling the ticket resale market. 

Humanitix sells around 60,000 tickets a day worldwide – it currently operates in Australia, North America and New Zealand – and has tripled its sales since 2022. Now the biggest Australian ticketing platform, it’s expanding into the UK, where it already works with men’s health charity Movember. Currently it counts the national branch of UN Women and The Grounds of Alexandria, a popular restaurant, among its Australian hosts. Vicky Keeler, general manager of the group behind Strawberry Fields, one of Australia’s most popular music festivals, describes the decision to switch from Eventbrite to Humanitix as a “no brainer”. “They work with people in mind,” she says – “whether that’s the consumer, the event organiser or the local community”. 

In the UK, the for-profit company Ticketpass already donates 50 per cent of booking-fee profits and has pledged more than £200,000 since 2022. Unlike Humanitix, hosts can choose the cause that receives donations – founder Rodrigo Bautista believes events should give back to “the charity closest to them”. The company recently partnered with the Wales Rugby League to sell tickets exclusively for the national team’s games. 

What is stopping other events from working with providers like Humanitix and Ticketpass? For Bautista and Keeler, it’s psychological: “people don’t like change”. Additional obstacles are the contracts existing ticketing companies have with many major arenas: Ticketmaster and Live Nation have exclusive deals with an estimated 75 per cent of major US venues. This alleged “monopoly” is Humanitix’s main fight: “It’s really a request for choice”, for both hosts and guests. 

Avid gig-goers themselves, the pair behind Humanitix want to change how people think about ticketing. For Ross, ticketing is like “roads for cars – critical infrastructure for the arts and entertainment”. Humanitix, McCurdie hopes, will help people see the potential in a “beautiful upside”.