I’m writing a new post about using ticketing platforms, as it’s interesting to see the changes in the last five years. For reference, I curate and host live music events in Hong Kong for audiences ranging from 50 people to 600 people, with a few larger events up to 3,000. I run The Underground, an independent live music showcase platform, which I co-founded in 2004 to support original bands and artists in Hong Kong.
I’m very much a hands-on promoter. I like to get the event listed and start selling tickets immediately, so I prefer DIY solutions. I get frustrated when ticketing companies take more than a day to set up an event.
Zicket
In my last (ticketing) blog post (Feb 2020), I raved about Zicket. They were good, but then they switched to using Eventbrite, and I had to deal with the hassle of paying Zicket after Eventbrite paid me. This was annoying for me—even though their commission was only 4.6%. They also didn’t seem to have that many live music events on their upcoming events page. So, in 2023, I started to look for other ticketing options.
Tickcats.com
In my previous blog post, I had mentioned Tickcats had refused me (in 2019!); I guess business got better post-Covid! So I started using them mid-2024. Tickcats.com charge 3.4% + HK$6 per ticket—the ticketing is not DIY, but you get nice customer service, and your event is usually set up within a day or so.
They very recently upgraded their site and, along with that, there have been some minor problems. Previously, their scanning app was super easy to use, but right now their updated app is not available, so at our most recent event they lent us a ticket scanner.
On the plus side, they now have a dashboard to check ticket sales (previously, I used to just look at the app to see how many tickets were sold and wait for their email reports), and it’s easy to download reports for each event.
Tickcats have a pretty strong Instagram account (their other event hosts target a similar demographics as us) and Tickcats reposts and includes our events on their IG. (IG followers: 4639)
We used them this year for our 21st Anniversary Festival (2 day event in June 2025), and the service was excellent. They were prudent enough to remind me about a couple of things and even initiated discussions on the best ways to handle the two-day scanning process.
After an event has taken place, they send a payment summary (within 24 hours), we then issue them an invoice, and the money is in our account within a day or two.
Eventbrite
In 2023, I was curious about Eventbrite (an International self-service platform), their online FAQ isn’t great—I couldn’t find answers to basic questions like how quickly hosts get paid.
But… Eventbrite turned out to be the quickest and easiest DIY option. The scanning app is super easy to use—both for checking how many tickets you’ve sold for each event and for scanning QR codes when people arrive. By default, the ticket buyer pays all the credit card processing fees (In Hong Kong it’s 3.99% per sold ticket.) You actually have to change the settings when setting up your event if you, as the host, want to cover the processing fee instead.
Last December, I had to cancel an event and was delighted to find that refunds were just a few clicks, with no penalty for me. What a relief!
Eventbrite’s biggest drawback? Their FAQ doesn’t answer the important questions, and their customer support is impossible to reach – the AI chat bot gives you the same answer over and over (even if you phrase your questions differently.) The only way I could figure out how things really worked—payouts and refunds—was by actually using their ticketing system for an event and waiting for things to play out. Hahaha! (By the way, I always got paid within one week of my event happening.)
Another small downside is that they’ve called their scanning app “Organizer” instead of “Eventbrite,” which I find slightly annoying (partly because I have more than one ticket scanning app on my phone, partly because I don’t use American English, and—strangely enough—I still don’t recognise their orange squiggle logo).
I do think it’s worth listing events on Eventbrite as it’s a free way to advertise about your events, and/or your organisation.
Moongate
In January 2024, the Moongate guys found me through my LinkedIn and pitched their ticketing system. Apparently, they worked with Wonderfruit and use blockchain to create unique tickets that have extra benefits (tokens, NFTs, etc.), and you can use crypto to make payments. They told me their platform fee is the payment processing fee + 1% (though I’m not actually sure what their processing fee is).
I set up a test ticketing page with them, but the fact that their website is only in English is a huge drawback for our mostly Hong Kong Chinese customers. On reviewing their website before writing this post, it seems they still don’t have a list of upcoming events (which they promised me back in June 2024.)
ZAIKO
Earlier this year, I met some of the people behind ZAIKO, a Japanese ticketing platform that looks poised to enter the Hong Kong market. Their hook is livestreams—they can produce them and help you monetise in that way. They seem to be angling for the ticketing business at big venues and arenas, so I’m not sure what support they’ll offer indie promoters like me in the future. I DID tell them what I was looking for, so fingers crossed! Just before publishing this blog, I checked and they have setup a Hong Kong page but currently no tickets are being sold.
KLOOK
In February this year, I spoke to KLOOK about The Underground’s 21st Anniversary Festival, as I thought the festival would appeal to people in other parts of Asia planning a trip to Hong Kong (you get to see 24 bands over two nights!).
I sent six emails over seven days before someone at KLOOK responded and suggested a Zoom call. After the call, they sent me a 29-page document pitching their platform, with the last page quoting HK$35,000 to sell tickets (including the 3% payment gateway fee). I was a bit shocked—hahaha! I know they include marketing and are an International platform, but at that point, I felt their platform might be a bit too global for our more local, grassroots music crowd. For sure, live music festivals are interesting to people in other parts of Asia, but overall, it seemed a bit mad to do all that work just to cover their cost.
Ticketflap
Back in 2024, I used Ticketflap for The Underground’s 20th Anniversary Festival. I only chose them because they promised to include our festival in their social media (AGAIN, this was the only reason.) They take a few days to setup an event; first you have to fill in a form and then wait for them to send you a preview page.
After the ticketing for my festival was launched, I kept asking when the festival would be posted on Ticketflap’s IG feed. They eventually told me—after the festival was over—that their social media had technical problems… They seem to be sharing more events now on social media, so you may get a different experience.
They have a very limited dashboard/backend (which is really only useful for viewing tickets sold as you are unable to edit anything through the dashboard.) Their scanning app is extremely hard to navigate and only available for Android users (that was a shocker to my door team, who use iPhones – we had to borrow Android devices for the festival!)
I had confirmed in advance that people with two-day tickets would need to rescan on the second day, but on the day itself, I still had to call Ticketflap to get them to enable it—they needed a reminder!
Their ticketing fee is 5.5%. After the event, they sent me a payment summary but had accidentally charged me for the 10 test tickets. They fixed it once I pointed it out. Payment was made 13 days after the event had taken place.
Art-Mate.net
As some people had mentioned this ticketing platform to me, I emailed them earlier this month and they seemed excited that I had contacted them as they immediately offered to waive the annual membership fee for one year. Normally, it costs HK$1,000 (about USD128) per year. They also offered a free IG/FB post for first-time event hosts, so I thought how can I resist? (IG followers: 11.7K)
After completing an online membership form, I had to fill in an Excel sheet with my event details. When I got to the section asking for cheque payee details (!), I realised I hadn’t even asked how payments would be settled after the show. Luckily, they have WhatsApp and replied to me quickly. But… I was surprised to learn that for our show on 8th November, we wouldn’t get paid until on or before 9th December – they send the cheque about a month after the event—ouch!
Still, I’m going ahead with it… all for the sake of research!
They’ve setup the event, so that, we don’t pay any ticketing fees, only the ticket buyer pays a fee and the fee ranges between 1.6% (for buyers using PayMe) OR 4%+$2.5 (for other forms of payment). They told me that PayMe users count for 50%-80% in art-mate, which makes sense!
Overall the experience was pretty good. Their backend is a bit confusing and I had to ask for help however they were fast with their email and WhatsApp responses and were very willing to help. You can update the images and text for your event, which is great, as we added a sponsor last minute to our event and didn’t have to wait for them to update the event page.
Oh you know how I said, they would do an IG post? Well it turns out, our event is bundled with 4 other events within 1 post.
Btw art-mate will list your events (for free) on their website if you complete a form.
Pop-ticket
I contacted these guys (in late August 2025) and had an initial phone call. They seemed excited that I had contacted them and offered to waive the initial handling fee for each ticket – so the only fee we would be charged, would be the 3% on each ticket (rounded up to the next dollar.) They told me that they have 480,000 young and affluent event lovers who are their members and that over 52% of them are female and most importantly their members support local culture and entertainment.
Their email has that dreaded “auto responder” which says their working hours are Monday to Friday, 10am to 6pm. We touched on this in the phone conversation—I said, “What if I’m having problems with your ticketing app at my event on a Saturday night?” and they said, “Oh, that sort of thing we respond to and don’t charge extra.” Er, ok…
However, once I said I would definitely use them for an upcoming event, they then set up a dedicated WhatsApp group (with three other people) where I could ask any questions.
The event set-up requires completing a Word Document. They told me it would take FIVE working days to set up the event. Payments are made within FOURTEEN working days after the event has taken place.
I’ve yet to find out what their scanning app is like as I’m still in the process of setting up an event with them. Normally, their events are cultural or classical music events, so I’m hoping that our show “Death’s Embrace” a death metal show will ignite some deep, unexplored yearning for their current members.
Luma
I noticed another music promoter using Luma, so I checked it out—it’s seriously simple on the DIY front. It’s literally begging you to set up an event and it’s all free!
For paid events, there’s a 5% platform fee AND you’ll need to connect with Stripe to receive payments. Personally, I’m not a fan of Stripe, but I get that the instant payouts might appeal to some. Unfortunately, you then have to add on Stripe fees—which for Hong Kong users are 3.4% + HK$2.35.
Luma also offers both Android and iPhone scanning apps, which were super easy to use. The platform has an overall “web3” vibe, so if you’re into that, it could be worth a look.
My take on it, is that it’s a bit too easy to make an event, so do double check that the event organiser is legit.
Tessera
They emailed us at Musicians Foundation in January this year, claiming they are the “most competitive platform” on the market, offering a full DIY ticketing platform. Their pricing is 4.6% + $0.99 per ticket. There were a lot of “hard sell” emails, and when I initially responded, they didn’t answer my questions—they just pushed the hard sell even more.
I was interested at first as it did seem smooth and easy to use; however, once I found out we would need to connect with Stripe, I lost interest.
Indie Ticketing: Going Beyond the Platforms
We’ve had some attendees ask if they can pay by FPS or bank transfer—the reason they gave was that they preferred not to use their credit card.
I’ve seen other event organisers simply ask people to fill in a Google Form, transfer the money to their bank account via ATM or FPS or PAYME, and then show a receipt as proof of payment.
These methods are okay if you’re only dealing with a small number of people (e.g. less than 10), but I don’t think it’s practical when you’re handling a lot of attendees.
How Hong Kong Audiences Discover Live Music Events
I did some casual research: I asked over 100 of my Hong Kong friends how they find out about upcoming live music gigs and shows. Three people said they browsed Ticketflap, Eventbrite, and/or art-mate. However, the majority rely on IG or FB—either by following bands, musicians, venues, or event hosts like The Underground, by seeing what their friends post or reshare about events, or simply by having an ad pop up on their feed.
Isn’t that interesting?
Some people mentioned to me that they would never go searching for a ticket online (google etc.)—they would only buy tickets from sources directly advertised by the artist, band, or official event organiser. They believe the possibility of fake/scam tickets is high.
Looking Forward
I’ll be attending TheTicketingBusiness Asia 2025 this October, so I’ll be keeping an eye out for new ticketing solutions that further support independent live music promoters in Hong Kong.