Your break-even ticket price

Break-even is the most useful number in event budgeting and the least often computed. It's four inputs and one division — and booking fees move it more than most organisers expect.

The formula

Fixed costs: venue, production, artists, insurance, marketing. Variable rate: everything that scales per ticket, expressed as a fraction of the ticket price.

Worked example

A 150-cap comedy night: £600 room and tech, £400 acts, £100 marketing = £1,100 fixed. You expect to sell 120 tickets. You absorb platform fees of 6.95% + 59p and processing is bundled.

1. Naive break-even: £1,100 ÷ 120 = £9.17.
2. At a £12 ticket, fees are £1.42 (11.9%) — your net is £10.58 per ticket.
3. Real break-even: you need £1,100 ÷ 120 = £9.17 net, so face value must be ~£10.55 on that fee structure.
4. On a zero-fee platform, break-even face value stays £9.17 — the £1.38 gap is pure fee load.

That gap is the difference between pricing at £10 (loss on fees) and pricing at £12 (comfortable) — on the same night, same costs.

Using break-even properly

• Compute it at pessimistic attendance (60–70% of realistic), not capacity.
• Recompute per tier — early-bird tickets below break-even are a marketing spend; know their size.
• Track the live number: tickets sold × net price − fixed costs. The night it crosses zero, everything after is margin.