The rise of the $0.99 event

There's a great post on the excellent Reve News site discussing the implications of Facebook's deal with Eventbrite, to sell tickets for events.

Taken in conjunction with Facebook's recent deal with Paypal to sell credits to use on Facebook ('Facebook money', in effect) Reve News provides this interesting and insightful vision of the future of Facebook events:

"The idea is simple, just as the App Store allowed for the mass proliferation of $0.99 apps, the Eventbrite ticketing on Facebook with PayPal micropayments could usher in a new era of $0.99 events. Think about that for a moment. If an event was slightly worth it, would you pay $0.99 to go? Of course, most events will still be free, but suddenly the ability to charge $0.99 for an event changes the event scheduling and ticketing game.

Events could clean up their attendee lists since only paid attendees would be coming. Companies could offer incentives to paid attendees (every attendee gets a $5 coupon for some service, etc). Marketers could be developing a higher quality of list based on those who committed enough to pay $0.99. As with regularly ticketed events, the event organizers would earn their fees as well, and possibly provide a way to cover event costs and possibly more. As with any EventBrite event, you could charge more, but I’m using $0.99 to make my point."

& then:

"To put this into perspective, the reason that this could be a really big deal is according to Facebook, more than 3.5 million events are created each month. Are all of those events monetizeable? No, but for the sake of argument, let’s say that 1 percent are. That would be 35,000 events that could be generating revenue for Facebook, PayPal, Eventbrite, and the event organizer. Take a guess on how much money could be made for each event, multiply, and bam, you have a serious revenue stream."

I can see this happening. Pay $0.99, or £0.99 or whatever, and get a goodie bag or enter a raffle.