As this year comes to an end we want to share a few insights into fan behavior before releasing our full year in review in January. The 2021 Year in Review will highlight details into some of the interesting data points from this year and what we can anticipate for 2022.
The most popular question asked of us this year has been:
“How has $/head changed from 2019? Why?”
So we are here to break that down and help shed some light into 2021 merch sales and what that might mean for $/head overall and for some of the top genres from 2019.
We saw concerts return in June so all data in this post is from June onwards. The data below is derived from:
Now... to the data! Overall, we have seen $/head in 2021 increase by 27% compared to 2019:
We compared the top five $/head genres of 2019 to 2021 based on similar size venues. Below are the results.
Across all five genres we see $/head increases ranging from 20% (Pop) to 40% (Rock). The most popular follow-up question we get after sharing how $/head has grown over the last 2 years is:
“Is $/head in 2021 up because artists are raising the price of their merch?”
A part of it, yes. The average band tee price has gone up 9% compared to 2019, but the overall $/head increase is 27%. So even though we saw the average price of a tour tee increase from $32 to $35 that isn’t the only driver for the rise in $/head.
When looking into what else is contributing to the average $/head in 2021 being higher than 2019, we started to look at:
“Are more people buying merchandise at concerts?”
By taking a look at the number of unique transactions per show and attendance, we are able to estimate the percentage of people that purchased merchandise for that concert.
When comparing the average % of attendance who purchased merchandise from 2019 to this year we see a noticeable change in purchasing behavior.
The jump from 2019 to 2021 is the equivalent of 1 in 10 people purchased merch in 2019 to 1 in 5 in 2021.
We then broke it down by genre to see if this is across the board or if different genres are showing more fan interest in merchandise than others. We saw an increase across the board.
This is just one insight from our 2021 Yearn in Review that will be released in January. Much more to come so stay tuned!
Cheers!
The atVenu team
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