How Are You Selling Your Recital Tickets? (There's a Better Way)

Physical tickets counted out by hand. A spreadsheet with every family's name, ticked off one by one. Raffle-style tear-off strips.

If any of that sounds familiar, you're not alone. We've spoken to dance studio owners across the country and heard just about every version of the "how we sell recital tickets" story, and almost none of them involve enjoying the process.

That's exactly why Stage Stubs exists. We've written before about what selling tickets online for dance shows actually looks like in practice, but here's the short version.

The old way costs you hours you don't have

Recital season is already the busiest time of year. Costumes, choreography, rehearsals, parent questions- the last thing you need on top of that is:

• A queue of parents at the front desk waiting to buy tickets in person
• A seating plan you've had to draw up yourself, and then redraw when someone asks for an aisle seat
• No easy way to see who's paid, who hasn't, and which children still have unsold tickets
• Cash and cheques to track, count, and bank

None of it is impossible. It's just slow, and it eats into time you could be spending on the show itself.

What Stage Stubs does instead

Stage Stubs is a free ticketing platform built specifically for dance and performing arts events. You can set up an event in about ten minutes, and from there, everything else is handled for you.

Schedule your on-sale date. Set exactly when tickets go live, and let parents buy whenever suits them, not just when the studio doors happen to be open.

Let parents pick their own seats. Every event comes with a free seating plan built for you, so families choose their spot online instead of queuing up to ask for one.

Set your own pricing. Want a VIP section at the front for a higher price? Done. Need to block off a row for lighting and tech? Sorted in a couple of clicks. You can read more about the benefits of tiered seating plans if you haven't tried this approach before.

Track everything automatically. No more spreadsheets. You can see at a glance who's paid, who hasn't, and where you stand on sales, in real time.

On the night itself, tickets live on parents' phones and get scanned at the door using our ticket scanner app, which makes managing the crowd at doors-open a whole lot easier too.

Free tools to plan the whole thing

Beyond ticketing, Stage Stubs has put together a range of free tools to help with the bits that come before you even open sales, including a venue capacity calculator and a tiered ticket pricing calculator, so you know how many shows to put on to give every family a chance to see their dancer and still come out ahead. If you're weighing up one performance against several, our post on whether to run one show or three walks through how to decide.

If you're after some inspiration for the show itself, take a look at our dance recital show theme ideas.

Turn your tickets into extra revenue

Ticketing doesn't have to be a cost centre. With Stage Stubs, studios can add merchandise sales alongside their tickets, and even sell ad space on the tickets themselves. Think about who's actually holding that ticket: local parents heading to a local show. It's prime space for local businesses to get in front of exactly the audience they want.

We go into more detail on how studios are doing this in our post on making additional revenue with Stage Stubs event tickets.

Frequently asked questions

Is Stage Stubs really free for studios? Yes. There's no monthly subscription and no cost to you to set up and run your event. A small processing fee is added to the ticket price your customers pay, and you're in control of exactly how that's split. You can work out your own pricing on our pricing page, and our fee is currently one of the lowest in the market. We break down exactly what these fees cover in Ticket Booking Fees Explained, if you'd like the full picture.

How do payouts work? Studios receive regular payouts as ticket sales come in, so you're not waiting until after the show to see the money land.

Is it difficult to set up? Not at all. Most studios have their event live within about ten minutes, seating plan and all.

Can I get help if I get stuck? Yes, real support is available if you need a hand at any point, not just a help centre article.

Other common questions about recital ticket selling

Even outside of Stage Stubs, these are questions that come up again and again in dance studio groups and forums when the topic of recital tickets is raised.

How many tickets should each family get? This depends entirely on your venue size and how many shows you're running. Working out your venue capacity against your total number of dance families is the best starting point, and running more than one show is often the simplest fix if everyone can't be seated in a single performance.

Should tickets be assigned seating or general admission? Assigned seating tends to reduce stress on the day, since families know exactly where they're sitting and there's no rush for good spots when doors open. It also makes it far easier to manage capacity accurately.

What's the best way to handle unsold or returned tickets? Having a real-time view of what's sold and what isn't makes this much easier to manage, so you can open up any spare seats or adjust pricing before the show rather than after.

Should studios charge for recital tickets at all? Most studios do, largely to help cover venue hire, costumes, and production costs. How much you charge usually comes down to your venue costs divided across your expected audience, with some studios adding a small margin on top to support the season ahead.

How far in advance should tickets go on sale? Giving families a few weeks' notice generally works well, enough time for people to plan without tickets sitting unsold for so long that people forget.

If your studio is still doing any of this by hand, it might be worth seeing how much time you could get back. You can set up your first event with Stage Stubs in a matter of minutes.

create your next show event in Stage Stubs in minutes. Your dancers, your teachers, and your audience are waiting. Time to make it happen.

Then all you need to worry about is how to run it... And we have a bunch of resources available to help you:

• Should You Run One Show or Three? Here's How to Decide
• How to fill your dance show with smart ticketing
• How to turn your dance recital into a marketing superpower
• Make additional revenue with Stage Stubs event tickets
• You’ve done the hard work, let Stage Stubs do the rest 
• Benefits of offering a tiered seating plan for your events

Create your

create your next show event in Stage Stubs in minutes. Your dancers, your teachers, and your audience are waiting. Time to make it happen.

Then all you need to worry about is how to run it... And we have a bunch of resources available to help you:

• Should You Run One Show or Three? Here's How to Decide
• How to fill your dance show with smart ticketing
• How to turn your dance recital into a marketing superpower
• Make additional revenue with Stage Stubs event tickets
• You’ve done the hard work, let Stage Stubs do the rest 
• Benefits of offering a tiered seating plan for your events

Create your event and start selling your tickets in minutes. (Interested? See how Stage Stubs compares to TicketSource, or Eventbrite, and Trybooking.)

event and start selling your tickets in minutes. (Interested? See how Stage Stubs compares to TicketSource, or Eventbrite, and Trybooking.)