How many tickets does the event need before break-even is more than a coin toss?
A venue at 20,000, tickets bringing 60 each, 25 a head for catering. The sheet says 700 tickets breaks even with 500 to spare. Across 20,000 futures 700 breaks even in 45 in 100 runs, and 90% odds takes 800.
Words on this sheet
- Venue: The place an event is held. A venue line is what hiring it costs, usually a fixed amount whatever the turnout.
Marketing Starter Monte Carlo Pro engine
After you install, this is the model to open.
How many tickets to sell for 90% odds of breaking even?
- In your spreadsheet, click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge. No strip? Click the arrow at the bottom-right to open it. You can also use Extensions, then Sortia, then Open Sortia.
- Click Start from a template and put that name in the search box.
- Pick the card with that name and click Load this template. It arrives on a new tab with real numbers already in it.
This one runs on a Pro engine, and every free install includes five full-quality runs on your own numbers, shared across all five Pro engines rather than five for each. After that, Pro is $199/year.
What it does
An event with a venue at 20,000, tickets bringing in 60 each on average once discounts and comps are counted, catering and staffing at 25 a head, and 4,000 of other costs. As typed 700 tickets brings 42,000 against 41,500 of cost and makes 500, 750 makes 2,250 and 800 makes 4,000, so 700 is the number most organizers would call break-even and stop worrying at.
Click Run with the average paid, the cost per head and the other costs as three-point estimates, 55, 60 and 64 for the ticket, 22, 25 and 31 for the head and 2,500, 4,000 and 7,500 for the rest. The seed is set to 7 and the trials to 20,000 so your first run reproduces these figures exactly. Profit at 700 tickets comes back with a mean of -288.1 and a median of -247.8, and 700 breaks even in 45 in 100 runs.
The 500 on the sheet is a loss more often than not. 750 breaks even in 76 in 100 with a median profit of 1,468.5. 800 breaks even in 93 in 100 runs with a median of 3,185.4 and a tenth percentile of 388.1, so 800 is the ticket count with at least 90% odds of breaking even. The three candidates share one draw of the ticket price, the cost per head and the other costs in every trial, so the difference between their readings is the count alone.
The tornado on the 800 reading is a near tie between the two per-ticket numbers: the average paid leads at 0.63 with 41% of the spread, the cost per head is at -0.62 with 40%, and the other costs trail at -0.42. Second run: if the caterer will fix the price at 25 a head, change that draw in the Risk Analysis panel to a single value of 25 and rerun.
The odds at 750 rise and the odds at 800 rise further, and how far they move is what a fixed-price catering contract is worth in tickets. What the model cannot tell you: every ticket sold is a head to feed, so no-shows, which cut catering and not revenue, are not in the range; the average paid is one draw for the whole event rather than a mix of early-bird, full-price and free; the venue is a fixed cost here, when a room for 800 may cost more than the one for 700; and breaking even is not the goal of every event.
To make it yours, put in your own venue, the average your last event actually took per ticket, the caterer's quote and the other costs from the last invoice pile, and set the same three ranges on the draws in the Risk Analysis panel.
The model
It arrives on a tab called Template: Tickets With 90% Odds, carrying these columns:
- Venue hire ($)
- 20000
Once it is in your sheet
- The model arrives with real numbers in it and runs as it stands, so you can press the button first and understand it second.
- Change the numbers to yours. The sheet marks which cells are inputs and which hold formulas, and most labels carry a note explaining the row.
- Press the run button at the bottom of the panel. It is labeled for the tool you are in, and the result lands on its own tab, with a written reading of it beside the figures.
Never used Google Sheets? Start here goes the whole way, in seven steps, and assumes nothing.
Next question
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- Is that market study worth paying for?Is That Market Study Worth It?
Every model like this one, and the method behind them: Monte Carlo simulation.