The FTWeekend’s Festival — Pricing

Or how people will pay more than you think for a virtual event

In this second part of my review of the FTWeekend Festival 2023, I will look at its pricing which suggests to me that many event organisers overestimate the amount of money participants are willing to pay for the in-person experience.

The FTWeekend Festival is a hybrid event with 10 live stages. If you are an FT subscriber, you pay £129 (all prices excluding VAT) to attend the in-person events. The price is £139 if you are not an FT subscriber. Seen in isolation, this is a steal given the calibre of the speakers and sessions.

But when you factor in the costs of driving to Kenwood House in North London and the travel time, then the costs of attending the event in-person increase considerably. And the fact that this is a Saturday, the opportunity cost of attending the event instead of spending time with family and friends is surely considerable. Sure, if you treat this like attending a music festival then it is still a good deal but this is the sort of calculations when attendees now have to consider for attending in-person trade shows or conferences.

In those cases, the additional costs of in-person attendance could include flights, airport transfers, hotel accommodation, subsistence, and, for some people who are vulnerable or care for vulnerable dependents, the lingering uncertainty of catching Covid. These costs add up.

Seen in this light, the pricing for the digital pass for the FTFestival becomes much more interesting. It is £85 per pass. That gives you access to livestreams from all the stages and access to the recordings on demand. Sure, the in-person passes also give you the same digital access but you can see that the FT is valuing the in-person element at £45. The digital experience is worth twice that of the in-person component.

The temptation amongst event organisers is to price the digital access much lower, thinking that it is a subpar experience and people would not be willing to pay much for that. That’s only partly true. Yes, people are not willing to pay for subpar experiences, and that applies both to in-person as well as digital events. If anything, people are only willing to pay for in-person events if they are truly special. Think about the amounts people are paying for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. So if your in-person event is the Taylor Swift equivalent in your industry, go ahead and charge top dollar for the in-person experience. I am betting that most of us are not in that category and it is better for us to think of how to make the digital experience better, so we can reach a much larger paying audience.