You take the risk. You book the acts. You pay the staff. You keep the lights on. And then, somewhere between the poster and the door, a platform quietly clips more off every ticket than you do.
We think that's backwards. So we flipped it.
None of these are secrets. They're just so normalised that most operators have stopped asking why.
A 10% platform fee on a £15 ticket is £1.50. A card fee on top. Then a “service fee”. Then a “buyer fee”. Somewhere between the poster and the front door, someone else is quietly earning more per ticket than the venue that booked the act, paid the sound guy, and turned the lights on.
Most platforms hold your revenue until after the event — sometimes weeks after. So the venue that took the risk, paid the deposit, and printed the flyers is the one lending money to the ticketing company. That's not a platform. That's a payday lender in a hoodie.
Every ticket sold is a first-party relationship — and most platforms take it for themselves. Suddenly your regulars are getting emails about the venue across town. You built the community. They monetise it. Then they sell you ads to reach it.
The moment a buyer hits “Buy Tickets”, your brand disappears. Cross-sells for other venues. Prompts to “download the app”. Confirmation emails from a stranger. It's the digital equivalent of a bouncer swapping your wristband for theirs.
Add it up and it's the same story: someone else is getting rich off your room.
Affra is a flat-fee SaaS, not a percentage-of-your-life SaaS. If your ticket sales double, our bill to you stays exactly the same.
You take the booking risk. You pay the rent, the staff, the licences. A ticketing platform is a piece of software — and it should never charge you for the privilege of running your own events. That's why we don't.
Every penny of face value lands in your Stripe. Buyers pay a small booking fee at checkout — 5% of the ticket price with a £1.25 minimum. That's how we get paid. You keep 100% of your list price on every ticket you sell — no card fees, no monthly bill, no ticket price cap.
We never touch your money. It goes straight from the buyer to your Stripe account, on Stripe's normal payout schedule. No “event hold”. No “risk review”. No excuses.
Every buyer's email, name and order history belongs to the venue that sold them the ticket. We don't remarket to your fans. We don't sell them events across town. We don't build a lookalike audience off your back.
Your logo, your colours, your domain, your emails. Buyers should never see our name — and by default, they don't. If we did our job right, they think you built the whole thing yourself.
Same event. Same tickets. Very different bank balance at the end of the month.
Illustrative comparison based on public industry rates and per-ticket pricing. Actual amounts depend on your ticket price, payment mix and country. Our fee is 5% of face value per ticket (£1.25 minimum) — that is the entire cost of running your ticketing on Affra.
Buyers pay a small booking fee at checkout — 5% of face value with a £1.25 minimum. That's how we get paid. Out of that fee, we cover Stripe's card processing costs on your behalf on every ticket you sell. You keep 100% of the face value on every ticket, forever.
No card fees deducted. Nothing to reconcile. Just your ticket price, straight into your Stripe balance.
Full plain-English detail is in our Terms of Service under “How Our Fees Work”.
We're not building a middleman. We're building the pipes.
The best venues in the country are run by people who care obsessively about the room — the sound, the lineup, the door, the vibe. They shouldn't also have to be experts in ticketing arbitrage.
The moment a platform starts making more per ticket than the venue does, something has gone wrong. Not just commercially — morally. Someone with a Slack workspace and a Stripe key is out-earning the people who booked the act, paid the rent and stayed until 3am to lock up.
So we drew a line. No monthly fees. No per-ticket cost to venues. Ever. The buyer pays a small booking fee at checkout — that's how we get paid, and only when you sell tickets. No percentage. No “growth pricing”. No “enterprise tier” that magically appears when you get successful. Your ticket revenue is yours. Your customers are yours. Your brand is yours.
We'll make our money the boring way: a small fee on each buyer's ticket, nothing on you. If we ever stop being useful, you walk. That's the deal.
Your Venue. Your Customers. Your Money. Your Call.
No monthly fee. No per-ticket cost. No revenue share. If you 10x, we don't send a bigger invoice — because we never sent one.
Payments go direct to your Stripe. We can't freeze funds — because we never have them.
Fully white-label. Your buyers should never see our name — and by default, they don't.
No monthly fees. No per-ticket cost. No lock-in. Live in ten minutes.