Name:
Lauren Rose Kocher
WHAT IS IT?: Zaiko is a white-label service that allows event organizers or artists to sell tickets directly to the consumer.
How and when did Zaiko start?:
Zaiko began as a white-label ticketing startup in January of 2019. Our original mission was offering event organizers in Asia (mostly Japan) tools to build their own ticketing platform, keep user data, access our media promotion network, and sell to fans in various languages (Japanese, Chinese, Korean, English) in various currencies (Japanese yen, Taiwanese dollars, Singapore dollars, USD).
How has COVID impacted Zaiko as a ticketing platform?:
We’ve started selling ticketed live streams, and have returned over 12 million USD back to artists and organizers since April 2020. We made this change after our first year, which saw 20% month on month growth and a diversity of clients such as Sneaker Con Osaka and Fuji Rock. However, once COVID hit, like everyone else we lost all revenue to refunds and saw our clients in big trouble - so we adjusted our system to embed video in the ticket and started offering the ability to sell ticketed livestreams to our clients, with tipping and chat functionality, as well as all our other functionality (white label i.e. sell under your brand, data analytics, CRM tools, multilingual and multi-currency). We saw it as an experiment but our first ticketed livestream show grossed over $60,000 USD and we realized that this was very much something to take seriously.
Have you been able to sell tickets to international audiences?:
When there was much more travel and tourism to Japan, we had a higher percent of non-Japanese ticket purchasers. But even with streaming events, there is a significant number of international purchasers. Through our partnership with QQ Music, we have streamed several shows to mainland China while simultaneously streaming to Japan / globally. Most of our clients are Japanese artists, management and venues - so most of our users are Japanese fans. But there is no reason why Taiwanese or Korean, or even US artists couldn’t start using Zaiko immediately to ticket their live streams to their own local market as well as Asia.
Any big success stories local and international to share?:
I am very proud of the creativity and variety we have begun to see in ticketed livestreams. Most content is music, but we see venues hosting talk events with political commentators, book publishers streaming author events, as well as independent comedians building weekly shows, or interesting independent theater - all planned specifically to be streamed and sold directly to fans. The highest quality music livestreams are often pre-recorded with AR elements or full skits and behind-the-scenes interludes. Our chat functions and so on encourage social viewing and even a not-live, “pre-recorded” show, streamed four times to four different time zones across 12 hours, can become quite the event and our tools empower artists to plan and action this type of event.
What tips or strategies would you suggest to artists who are looking towards doing more livestreams?:
The absolute best thing about monetizing through tickets is that you have a production budget before the stream or video shoot. Spending $5,000 on production for a stream that has already generated $12,000 in ticket sales in the first week (which happens quite often) is an easy decision. If you rely on tips or advertising I can’t imagine how you budget something special for fans.
Any future plans for the company?:
We’ve led the market in Japan and learned what works or doesn’t during four months of trial-and-error, so now we are itching to work with artists in other Asian territories. As difficult as everything is right now, especially for our venue and promoter clients, the ability to have a Korean artist sell a ticket directly to fans in Japan, or a Japanese rock band directly to fans in Taiwan, and those international fans can together with the fans in Japan or around the world through a highly accessible system - it’s an exciting opportunity.
Zaiko has begun DIY subscriptions and paid memberships, which clients are using to create fan clubs and theater passes, plus member-only ticketed streams. Ticketing and fan clubs are so interlinked and it’s a fantastic model to secure recurring revenue.
Finally, as a technology company, the dev team is always working out new functions for the streaming platform itself but I’m not allowed to talk about those yet!
GENRES OF MUSIC:
All
LANGUAGES:
Japanese, English, Chinese (traditional & simplified) & Korean
WHO’S USING IT:
Musicians, Venues, Promoters, Comedians, Theater groups, Sports, fans of all types
FEATURES:
Music
Festival
Live Streaming
Meet and Greet
E-sports
Club
Experience
Conference
Theatre
Sports
Movie
Arts
Education
Others
Upcoming events
Ticket Transfer
Automatic Seating Numbers
Fan Club & API Integration
Free Tickets
Merchandise Upsell
Secret, Member-only Tickets
Group Discounts
Lottery Tickets
Multilingual Purchase & Support
INDUSTRY FEATURES:
Zaiko Live Streaming - ticketed live streams
Zaiko for Influencer feature which enables influencers to make money off ticket sales
Zaiko for Artists feature which allows artists to sell directly to their fans, helping them build their brand.
Zaiko Memberships - make your own monthly subscription plans to sell to fans and integrate seamlessly with tickets
Started Jan 2019 - pivoted to sell tickets for live stream in March of 2020
2000 ticketed live streams in 4 months - paid back artists and organisers over 12 million dollars
TikTok - Big Kilt in America
Sell tickets in Singapore, Taiwanese, US, and Japan (want to add Korea and Indonesia).
Animation Artists - sell to Europe and Canada
Japanese artist - who would normally sell 800 tickets in a venue, could sell 3000 tickets globally
Interesting filming techniques