“We need a radical intervention”: Ticketmaster adds Music Venue Trust donation option
The feature will launch on 17 October, coinciding with Music Venues Day. It will run for one month and is set to take place annually.
Credit: Getty / Manuel Breva Colmeiro
Ticketing platform Ticketmaster is set to add a new charity upsell feature to its site that will let users donate directly to Music Venue Trust (MVT), a charity set up in 2014 to preserve grassroots venues in the UK.
The feature, which will appear on customer checkout pages before purchasing tickets to gigs, will start on Music Venues Day 2023 on 17 October, an event sponsored by Ticketmaster since 2016.
This initiative will be implemented for one month, with Ticketmaster planning to run it again year on year. All donations received will go to charity, and Ticketmaster will match all donations.
Speaking to IQ Mag, the CEO of MVT, Mark Davyd, says: “This upsell provides a practical method for fans to support grassroots music venues, and we are incredibly grateful to the Ticketmaster team for putting it in place.
“Ticketmaster matching all fan donations is a powerful message for the whole industry about the support our sector needs and the will of the music community to provide it.”
BREAKING NEWS: Under the month-long initiative, anyone buying a ticket on @TicketmasterUK will be given the option to donate directly to the Music Venue Trust.
You can read more here: https://t.co/2iwqYnNBIC – @IQ_Mag pic.twitter.com/7q9inISGsB
— Music Venue Trust (@musicvenuetrust) October 10, 2023
The move follows Ticketmaster’s introduction of a booking fee rebate in 2021, which means venues receive a 50 percent rebate on all booking fees.
“Ticketmaster has been a long-term and committed partner of MVT,” says Davyd, “and their core support has been vital in developing us as the authentic voice of grassroots venues, artists, and fans.
“We believe that live music fans understand exactly how vital these venues are to the future of our whole music ecosystem and how much financial difficulty they are currently facing,” he adds.
“127 grassroots music venues have closed in the last 12 months – more than one is permanently closing every week. We need a radical intervention by everyone: the government, the music industry, artists and fans, to stop these closures and turn this around.”
This positive move by Ticketmaster in many ways echoes Bandcamp’s Bandcamp Fridays initiative, launched in March 2020. This scheme was started to help artists during the COVID-19 pandemic, and for the first Friday of every month, the platform takes a zero per cent cut from music or merch sales, letting artists take 93 per cent of the revenue.
The annual Venues Day event hosted by MVT is set to take place at The Fireworks Factory in London on 17 October 2023. Grassroots venue owners from across the UK will be in attendance.
Find out more about the Venues Day 2023 event at musicvenuetrust.com.
