The man tasked with ticketing this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool has revealed some of the milestones achieved during the continent’s biggest annual televised live music show.
Billy Partridge was appointed by the BBC to the role of production coordinator, Eurovision Song Contest 2023 on a nine-week freelance contract that lasted from March to May 2023. Partridge had previously held positions such as head of ticketing for Coventry City of Culture Trust from 2020 to 2022 and, for more than a decade, ticketing manager for Factory International for the Manchester International Festival.
In a LinkedIn post, Partridge noted that 100% of available tickets issued for the 11,000-capacity M&S Bank Arena were sold, with 64,000 tickets issued for nine shows in one week and tickets booked from more than 35 countries worldwide. Some 10% of all tickets were issued to stakeholder guests with 73 stakeholder group relationships managed while 2,700 tickets were offered through the displaced Ukrainians ticket scheme.
All available public tickets were sold within 80 minutes during onsales, with 252,000 unique customers attempting purchase across two public onsale moments. The system was also robust enough that more than 230 scans of the QR code were displayed at the on-site ticket office for last-minute in-person sales.
Partridge added: “Something I am particularly proud of is the work I did on preparing for the second public ticket onsale. Recognising that a suggested process was both unwieldy and likely to result in failure, I proposed an alternative option, learned to use new ticketing software in an hour, completed the work by myself without errors and to schedule.”
“Working with the best in the industry I am immensely grateful for the opportunity to have fulfilled what is arguably one of the biggest jobs in ticketing and to proudly say ‘I worked for the BBC on the Eurovision Song Contest 2023’.”
Partridge is currently working as ticketing lead for Lumiere Festival in Durham and marketing coordinator for Birmingham Festival 23.