Music venue owners are faced with the constant challenge of selling out shows. For many, when a show is selling slowly there’s a temptation to unload inventory through third-party ticket discounters. Can these companies help you sell a few more tickets? Sure, but it comes at a price—and it’s not just the price of taking a haircut by selling those tickets at a steep discount. There’s a hidden cost that many venue owners don’t consider. It’s the cost of giving up your fan data.

“But data isn’t the same thing as money or butts in seats,” you might say. Maybe this was true 20 years ago, but in today’s world, data is money. And those third-party ticket vendors know this better than anyone. In fact, their entire business model is built on collecting data from your fans. Whenever someone buys a ticket from them instead of you, they capture their names, how to contact them, what kind of music they like, how many tickets they bought and how much they’re willing to spend on a show. And guess what? As soon as they have that data, the first thing they do is to start marketing your competitors shows to them. If you’re giving away your fan data to a third party, you might as well just send your entire mailing list to every other club in town. Because that’s exactly what these third-party “partners” are doing for you already.

Even if you’re not working with third-party discounters, you still need to stay on top of collecting that fan data. Otherwise, you’re leaving money on the table. Simply put, it’s cheaper and easier to market to fans when you know who they are and what they’re into. The biggest opportunity data presents is that it helps venue owners identify what we call “Superfans.” These music lovers spend 180% more going to shows than the casual fan does over the course of a year. If you own and manage your data, it’s easy to identify and market to these folks. If you don’t, it’s practically impossible.

We put together a little graphic to give you an idea of what kind of revenue you might be missing out on if you’re not hip to your Superfans. If you’d like to learn more about how you can actually use fan data to promote your shows, we invite you to join us on April 18th, 2017, for our free webinar, Data: Your Secret Weapon for Selling out Shows.

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Mark Meyerson is Vendini’s VP and General Manager of Live Music. In his 30+ year career, he’s been an executive at industry heavyweights including TicketMaster and AEG Live. As Director of CRM, Ticketing and Membership at House of Blues , Mark pioneered the use of fan data to grow HOB into an internationally recognized franchise.