Putting Event Tickets on Sale? Start With the Basics
EVENT PLANNING GUIDE
Putting Event Tickets on Sale? Start With the Basics
Updated on September 29, 2026 | Written by Rachella Thomas
Putting tickets on sale is one of those moments when an event suddenly becomes very real. It feels exciting and a little terrifying.
Until then, most of the work has happened behind the scenes.
You've been working through budgets, sites, suppliers, programming and all the other pieces that go into getting an event off the ground. You've adapted and changed as you discovered things and made decisions. The finer details of the event have probably shifted a thousand times along the way.
Then you put tickets on sale, and the event suddenly becomes very public.
Your attendance numbers will start becoming real rather than hypothetical, and for the first time, you've got actual audience behaviour feeding information back into your planning.
From that point on, many of your planning decisions aren't internally-driven anymore; they will be influenced by public sentiment and reaction.
That’s why a few things are worth clarifying before you put tickets on sale.
What Experience Has Taught Me
I've mentored event planners for years, and I see the same thing happen with ticketing again and again. There’s so much focus on getting tickets on sale that it’s easy to race ahead without stopping to think through what those ticket sales actually mean for the event.
How many can you realistically sell? What do you need to charge? What exactly are people buying? And once tickets are on sale, what are the numbers telling you?
So, if you're getting ready to put tickets on sale, these are the things I'd want you to think about:
Your capacity needs to come from the event you're planning, not the number of tickets you'd like to sell.
Work out how many people your venue or site and event infrastructure can actually accommodate. And remember that ticket holders don't make up your total onsite numbers. Artists, crew, suppliers, volunteers, stallholders, sponsors and guests may all need to be accounted for too.
How many people you can accommodate and how many tickets you can realistically sell are two different things.
A venue that can hold 5,000 people doesn't automatically mean you'll have an audience of 5,000. Particularly with a new event, be realistic about the demand you’re likely to have.
A sold-out event can still lose money, so work backwards when calculating the ticket price.
What does the event cost to produce? What other income do you expect? How many tickets do you realistically expect to sell? What does that mean you need to make from each ticket? And will your target audience actually pay that amount?
Keep the ticket structure as simple as you can.
If you have General Admission, Early Bird, VIP, Weekend, Saturday, Sunday, Family, Child and Concession tickets, make sure each category has a genuine reason to exist. Don't overcomplicate your ticketing structure just to make the event look bigger or more sophisticated. Every option you add is another decision you're asking your customer to make and another thing your team has to administer.
Once you've sorted those fundamentals, use a reputable ticketing platform to handle the technical side.
I've partnered with Eventbrite many times as an event organiser, and now we also work together to help event planners access useful knowledge and resources. Their platform gives you a straightforward way to list your event, sell tickets and manage registrations without building that infrastructure yourself.
Don't get bogged down in ticketing.
Lock in the fundamentals, choose a platform that doesn't require constant troubleshooting and get back to planning the event.
Once your tickets go on sale, pay attention to what the numbers are telling you.
Ticket sales aren't just revenue. They're one of your first real indicators of whether the audience is responding to the event, and that information can help shape your marketing, staffing, infrastructure and other planning decisions as the event gets closer.
Want More Event Ticketing Advice?
I've worked with Eventbrite many times as an event organiser, and when it comes to the finer details of selling and marketing tickets online, I'm happy to take their advice. They've put together some genuinely useful free resources, including this guide to getting more registrations from your event advertising.
Read Eventbrite’s How to Advertise an Event
→ If you found this Event Kit Guide useful, feel free to share it with a fellow event planner or your event network. They’ll appreciate you passing it on.
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Meet Your Mentor
Rachella Thomas is an award-winning event producer with more than 26 years of experience delivering major events. Her work includes the Australian Open, Commonwealth Games Queen’s Baton Relay, Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, and other renowned large-scale events and festivals.
Rachella founded Event Kit, where she turns decades of professional event know-how into practical tools for event planners worldwide.
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