Audience development

Live entertainment marketing platform Activity Stream has acquired mobile ticketing specialists crowdEngage and event and venue management firm Yesplan.

Activity Stream said the move will strengthen its offerings to the live entertainment and experience sector, creating the first company to offer solutions across the life-cycle of an event, from event planning, marketing, communications, sales management and customer engagement through to event delivery.

The new company now has a client base of more than 450 organisations around the world in 20 countries.

Einar Saevarsson, founder and Chief Executive of Activity Stream, said: “Our mission when we founded Activity Stream was to accelerate the digital transformation of the live entertainment industry by offering intelligent tools that any experience brand could master, afford and greatly benefit from.” 

“Our clients want to build stronger, deeper and longer term relationships with each and every one of their visitors. We allow any experience brand to easily join up their many data sets and customer touch points, to produce meaningful, personalised and relevant communications, that drives revenue and loyalty.”

“The addition of Yesplan and crowdEngage places Activity Stream solutions at the very heart of some of the world’s greatest events and experiences.”

Advance booking patterns for performing arts shows last year were “very similar” to before the pandemic, according to analysis from TRG Arts and Purple Seven.

The organisations' ‘Two Years On’ survey found more than half of bookers last year were first time patrons. 

TRG Chief Executive Jill Robinson said the result is "heartening news" but is "not new behaviour in the post-Covid world".

Analysis of 288 UK theatres found the average age of ticket bookers has fallen to 56.4 from 57.4 years old.

Fewer bookings are coming from those born between the mid-1940s and 1960s (down 3%). The greatest increase has come from those born between 1965 and 1980.

The research found the pace of Covid recovery varies across the country, with the South West of England and Northern Ireland performing stronger than Wales, Yorkshire and the North East of England.

Arts Council England is offering £1.6m for a new system for National Portfolio Organisations to submit audience data.

A contract out for tender since late February says the software must enable organisations and Creative People and Places projects to share their audience numbers and the postcodes and demographics of a "fully representative sample", as well as allowing them to draw insights from the data.

The insights function should be able analyse box office transactions, provide anonymised data reports, and support benchmarking against population statistics, the tender says.

The arts council is open to a single contractor or a consortia of companies so long as they are the "most economically advantageous" provider.

The system is due to launch by April 1 next year.