Why Your Ticket Buyers Would Spend More — If You Just Asked at the Right Moment

A buyer lands on your event page, picks their ticket type, and pays. Done. Somewhere between “select ticket” and “confirm payment,” you had their full attention and their card details already in hand — and for most organisers, that’s the exact window where nothing else gets offered. No parking, no merch, no VIP upgrade, no drink package. Just a ticket.

Then, a week before the event, an email goes out promoting the merch table or the upgrade option separately — to someone who’s already mentally moved on from buying anything. Most people never open it.

Why this keeps happening

It’s rarely a lack of things to sell. Most organisers already have merch, parking, food and drink packages, or a VIP upgrade available somewhere — a separate page, a table at the venue, a follow-up email. The problem is that these live apart from the ticket purchase itself, as a second decision the buyer has to go out of their way to make. And people rarely go out of their way for a “maybe.”

Platforms built specifically around event ticket add-ons report that when an add-on is offered directly on the ticket purchase page, roughly 15–20% of buyers include at least one — a conversion rate that only exists because the offer showed up while the buyer was already committed to paying, not because they went looking for it afterward. Move that same offer to a follow-up email or a table at the door, and most of that revenue simply doesn’t materialise, because the moment of “yes, I’m buying this” has already passed.

What it actually costs you

Every ticket sold without an add-on attached is revenue left on the table — not because buyers wouldn’t have said yes, but because they were never asked at the moment they were most likely to. Multiply a missed handful of euros per buyer across an event with a few hundred or a few thousand attendees, and it adds up to a meaningful chunk of revenue that a slightly different checkout flow would have captured, without changing your pricing or running a single extra promotion.

The fix isn’t better marketing — it’s better timing

You don’t need more emails, more signage, or a harder sales pitch. You need the add-on to appear as part of the same transaction the buyer is already completing, right when they’re paying attention and already reaching for their card — not as a separate ask before or after.

How Fliko makes it easy

Fliko builds this directly into the ticket purchase flow instead of treating it as a separate step. When someone buys a ticket, they move through a dedicated add-on step before payment — a swipeable carousel of suggested products under a heading you control, shown at exactly the point they’re already checking out. You decide which products appear there and how the section is labelled; nothing about it requires the buyer to leave checkout or visit a different page.

Beyond individual add-ons, you can also build bundles — a ticket packaged together with a drink, a programme, or merch as one item at one price — so buyers choosing the bundle option get everything in a single decision instead of three separate ones.

Because Fliko runs one shared product catalogue and one shared checkout engine across the website, the box office and a self-service kiosk, the same add-ons and bundles show up wherever someone is buying — a walk-up customer at the door sees the same upsell options as someone who bought online three weeks earlier. You’re not building and maintaining a separate offer for each sales channel; you configure it once, and it works everywhere tickets are sold.

Ready to stop leaving add-on revenue on the table?

If your merch, parking or VIP upgrades are currently sold somewhere separate from your ticket checkout, that gap is very likely costing you sales you’d otherwise get without doing anything extra. Fliko puts add-ons and bundles directly inside the same purchase flow buyers already complete, on every channel you sell through. Get in touch with the Fliko team to see how the checkout add-on step and bundles work for your next event.

Frequently asked questions

What’s the best way to sell add-ons for an event, like merch or parking?
The most effective approach is offering the add-on directly inside the same checkout flow the buyer is already completing for their ticket — not through a separate page or a follow-up email sent after the sale. Add-ons offered at the point of ticket purchase convert far better because the buyer is already committed and already paying.

How much extra revenue can event ticket upsells actually generate?
Platforms that track this report roughly 15–20% of ticket buyers add at least one extra item when it’s offered directly on the ticket purchase page. The exact amount depends on what you’re offering and its price, but it’s revenue that mostly doesn’t appear if the same offer is only made after the ticket is already bought.

Should I bundle add-ons with the ticket or sell them separately?
Both work, but they solve slightly different problems. A bundle (ticket + drink + programme as one priced package) simplifies the decision into a single yes/no. Standalone add-ons in a checkout carousel let buyers pick and choose. Offering both — a bundle for convenience, individual add-ons for buyers who want to customise — usually captures more of the market than either alone.

Can I offer the same add-ons at the door as I do online?
Yes, as long as your ticketing platform uses the same product catalogue and checkout logic across channels. With Fliko, the same add-ons and bundles configured for the website are automatically available at the box office and on a self-service kiosk, so walk-up buyers get the same offer as online buyers.

Do add-on upsells work for free or low-cost events, not just paid ticketing?
Yes — an add-on step doesn’t depend on the ticket itself having a high price. Even a free RSVP event can offer paid extras like merch, parking or a food package at the point someone completes their registration; the same principle of asking at the moment of commitment applies regardless of the base ticket price.

What kinds of add-ons perform best at event checkout?
Convenience items (parking, fast entry), food and drink packages, and merchandise are the most commonly offered categories, because they’re easy to understand and priced low enough to be an easy “yes” alongside a ticket purchase that’s already been decided.

Will adding an upsell step slow down or complicate my checkout?
It shouldn’t, if it’s built as a single extra step rather than a separate purchase flow. Fliko’s add-on step sits inline in the same checkout sequence buyers are already moving through, so it adds one screen, not a second transaction.