Selling Tickets for School Sports: 6 Tips For Increasing Ticket Sales

Hosting successful high school sporting events requires more than just a high-scoring team. In order to drum up buzz and attention when it comes to sporting events, you may need to get a bit creative. Selling tickets for school sports events does not have to feel stressful or confusing with the right digital ticketing platform in place.

Here’s a list of our top tips to make selling tickets to your sporting events seamless and effective.

1. Create an Online Registration for Selling Tickets

One of the easiest ways to get started with selling tickets for school sports (regardless of the sport), is to launch an online registration for selling tickets. An online registration platform provides students, faculty, parents, and anyone who wishes to attend a school-centric event the ability to do so with ease.

Some of the most notable benefits of creating an online registration platform to sell tickets for high school sporting events include:

• Accessibility: An online ticket registration platform is much more accessible than restricting ticket sales to in-person locations only. With an online ticket registration system in place, event-goers have the option of reserving seats and purchasing tickets with any compatible device (including computers, tablets, and smartphones).
  
  
• Reach: With the ability to purchase tickets from virtually anywhere, maximize your reach and ability to generate as many ticket sales as possible with an online registration platform.
  
  
• Tracking and Analytics: If you want to monitor the influx of ticket sales, the performance of individual events, or even the revenue generated for specific hosted sporting events, you can do so much easier with an integrated online registration platform. Keep track of in-depth analytics to learn more about your attendees and which types of events are most likely to garner the most traction, reach, and ultimately, ticket sales.

Benefits of having an online platform specific to sporting events:

• Ability to offer different ticket types and student discounts
• Creates a more professional environment for games
• Tools for management and tracking sales
• Tools for administration, invoicing, and payroll
• Ability to accept payments online and not just cash
• Easy for students, staff, and athletes to share ticket links

 2. Designate Different Ticket Types

Whenever you are selling tickets for school sports (online or off), designating different ticket types is highly recommended. Different ticket types can include ticket tiers, and different pricing, and can be beneficial for monitoring and tracking purposes.

When planning high school sporting events, a few ticket types to consider offering might include:

• Student Discounts: Offering student discounts (with proof of a student ID) for a discounted price is a great way to incentivize more students to attend your school's sporting events. If proof of ID is needed you can use file upload tools to upload an image of their ID or check at the door.
• General Admission: General admission tickets are ideal for friends and parents of students.
• Military/Veteran Discounts: Offering military and/or veteran discounts can also show that you care when it comes to supporting our armed forces.
• Senior Citizen Discounts: Provide discounts for senior citizens to encourage seniors in the community as well as seniors who are related to students of the school itself to attend sporting events you host.

3. Collect Payments Online (Minimizing Crowds and Lines at the Event)

One way to better manage high school sporting events with an online registration platform is to collect payments online. Accepting and collecting payments online is not only much easier in terms of tracking and gauging sales of individual events, but it also provides the following advantages:

• Shortened Event Lines: If you are concerned about the length of the lines your event may have, an online registration platform can help. By offering event-goers the ability to reserve seats/and or purchase tickets ahead of time, there is no need for them to wait in line at the time of your event.
  
  
• Minimize Crowds: Minimizing crowds is also much easier with an online registration platform in place for purchasing tickets. With a no-touch check-in system, event-goers can purchase tickets online and seamlessly enter any sporting event without waiting in line or causing crowds to form.

4. Offer Print-At-Home or Mobile Ticket Solutions

Another solution to consider when selling tickets for school sports events is to offer print-at-home and mobile ticketing solutions. Allowing attendees to purchase and print their event tickets directly at home saves time at the ticketing center at the actual event itself.

PROS AND CONS OF PRINT-AT-HOME

Pros

• You don’t have to pay for supplies
• Easy to set up and utilize at-home printing systems
• Can be extremely convenient for customers
• Works as both a ticket and confirmation page
• You can include event details on the print-at-home ticket page
  
  

Cons

• You have to invest in security elements
• Customers won’t have a permanent, glossy ticket to take home and keep
• They have to have a printer and ink at home unless they are able to bring it up on their smartphone

5. Embed Tickets on Your School's Website

To promote any high school sporting event, you can do so by embedding tickets to an upcoming event directly on your school's official website. Embedding tickets and event information, details, and more on your school's website will keep the student body, staff, and parents of students informed of upcoming events at all times.

Embedding the ticketing platform directly onto your school's official website is also beneficial as it streamlines the process of promoting and/or selling tickets directly online.

You can also track and monitor any sales generated on your website, and monitor traffic and links generated via ticket widgets.

6. Create and Offer Season Passes

When it comes to sporting events, offering a season pass is highly recommended. Whether you are managing high school sporting events or collegiate events, create and offer season passes using your online registration platform. Offering season passes can be extremely helpful for parents of students who are part of numerous teams year-round. Additionally, seasonal sports passes are optimal for students who enjoy being a part of all school activities but are unsure of which events they can attend ahead of time.

At Purplepass, we also offer the ability to create flex passes for customers. 

Planning the registration process for high school sporting events does not have to feel complicated, especially with a registration and ticketing solution such as Purplepass in place. With the right online registration setup in place, you can begin selling tickets for school sports events year-round and without a hassle, regardless of the size of the school you represent.