By Ciara Azam
In 1990 you bought a ticket at a counter and got a slip of paper with a barcode. In 2026 you get an email with a QR code. That is the whole upgrade. The fee model has not changed either: a percentage of a price the platform did not set, plus a fixed amount, plus card processing. If you run a fundraiser, a market or a neighbourhood festival, that model is the most expensive line in your event that nobody ever quotes you in dollars.
Why a percentage is the wrong shape
A percentage makes sense when someone earns a commission on a sale they made happen. Your ticketing platform did not make the sale. Nobody discovers your fundraiser by browsing a ticketing site. You booked the room, found the sponsors and wrote the emails. The platform served a page, took a card, sent a QR code and scanned it at the door. That work costs exactly the same whether the ticket is $35 or $250, so a fee that climbs with the price is charging you more for the same thing because you were able to charge more. It also means the ticketing line in your budget moves every time the price does.
The example
Take a $35 fundraising dinner. The most common Canadian marketplace rate is 3.5% plus $1.29 per ticket, plus 2.9% processing. That is $3.54 a ticket. Sell 300 and you have paid $1,062 on $10,500, just over ten percent, before the caterer is paid. On a flat model, which is what my company Eventist charges at 85 cents per ticket with bulk pricing down to 25 cents, the same ticket costs $2.17 all in and the same 300 tickets cost $651. The $411 difference is about twelve dinners you did not have to sell to cover the tool.
Now raise the price. On a $120 festival pass the percentage platform fee is $5.49 and the flat fee is still 85 cents. On a $250 gala ticket the percentage fee is $10.04, $17.29 with processing, against $8.40 flat. If you are paying $17 in fees on a $250 ticket, ask what you are getting for it. A QR code. The same QR code the $35 ticket got for $3.54.
Ticketing should do more than sell a ticket
Live events are a $1.5 trillion global market by most estimates, and the sale is a sliver of what happens at one. The volunteer schedule, the vendor map, the run of show, who is on the door at 7, which sponsor gets thanked before the auction: at most small events all of that lives in a spreadsheet and a group chat, while the ticket, the one thing every guest touches, does nothing after the scan. The market has been run by a handful of monopolies for so long that nobody expected the ticket to do more. There is room for a lot of companies to change that, and the fastest way to get them is to treat ticketing like any other supplier: ask what one unit costs, and why the expensive ticket should cost more than the cheap one.
Change is coming
It already has, at the edges. Flat fee platforms exist now, Eventist among them in Canada and others elsewhere. More platforms let you export every attendee and every order so the relationship stays yours. Regulators have started asking who owns the venue, the promotion and the ticket at the same time. And organizers are asking the only question that matters before they sign: what does it actually cost you to sell one of my tickets? Keep asking it. The answer tells you which platforms think you are the customer, and which ones think your guests are.
Ciara Azam (she/her) is the founder of Eventist, a bootstrapped, woman-founded festival and event ticketing platform based in Kitchener, Ontario, founded in 2021. She works with community organizers, nonprofits and festivals across Canada on keeping more of every ticket they sell.
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