Update on Efforts to Support our Global Community During COVID-19

Our mission at Eventbrite is to bring the world together through live experiences. In more than a decade of business, never before has that mission been so tested. The global pandemic caused by COVID-19 and its direct impact on the live events industry is unprecedented. We are dedicated to supporting the live events community and understand the severe impact the virus has taken on small business owners, independent artists, entrepreneurs and venues who devote themselves to building a thriving experience economy. 

As people around the world follow guidance to practice social distancing, both sides of our marketplace are impacted: the event creators who deliver countless memorable live experiences and the people who purchased tickets and would be attending their events under different circumstances. We’re actively listening to feedback from both our creators and attendees and doing our best to support them and their needs during this unsteady time. Here is what that looks like: 

Flexing our refund policy

While we are strongly encouraging that attendees donate their ticket funds directly to creators to help provide aid and support during this challenging time, we have also made some temporary changes to our refund policy to offer event creators some alternative refund methods for cancelled events. Creators now have the option to compensate ticket buyers by honouring a ticket purchase as a credit for a future event using access or discount codes, or allocating ticket buyer funds to a gift card via our integration with Gift Up!. We are also streamlining our refund request process and will honour refunds to any ticket buyer who purchased a ticket before March 15 to an event that was scheduled to take place March 15 – May 15. For creators who have chosen to postpone their event, we have also updated our guidelines to allow extended timelines for rescheduling future events. More details can be found here. 

Helping the live events industry access financial relief 

Eventbrite is committed to the continued strength and vitality of our event creators during this extremely challenging time for live events. We have reached out to local policymakers to urge them to consider economic recovery proposals that can help the experience economy, small businesses, venues, and their employees, meet the enormous challenge facing our industry. We have also created a landing page with information for our event creator communities about the Australian Government’s Cash-Flow Boost for Employers, as well as links to State-by-State Stimulus Packages which have been released over the past weeks. We believe access to this information could make an impact in helping local creators access capital that will allow them to sustain themselves and their employees in this uncertain time. 

Fuelling human connection through online events and community

In the absence of our ability to bring people together for live experiences, we are helping creators on our platform lean into and facilitate online events. By leveraging Eventbrite to ticket and promote their online events and a video/streaming platform like Zoom or Vimeo, we’re seeing creators contribute to a rise in virtual events that aim to help “flatten the curve.” From online art exhibitions, to vocal bootcamps, cooking classes, and soulmate speed-dating, we are inspired by our community who are embracing this new virtual reality to keep connection, creativity and experiences alive and thriving. We also want to provide a place for creators to connect and support each other. That’s why we created EventTribe, a safe and open community forum for event professionals to engage with each other to share ideas, resources and connections. 

We’re working around the clock to continue developing tools and initiatives to further support our global community. The most up-to-date resources and information can be found on our COVID-19 resource centres for creators and attendees. 

Through collective efforts, compassion and genuine connection — from a safe distance — Eventbrite is confident that our community will bounce back and live events will return stronger than ever when this global pandemic recedes.