Booking fees are part and parcel of the ticket purchasing process – and also one of the things our customers get in touch about most often.

It’s important to us that visitors to Ents24 understand what they’re paying for and why – so we wanted to explain what booking fees are actually for, and why they exist, in the hope of exposing some common myths around them.

What are booking fees?

The booking fee is a charge that is added to the face value of each ticket. The charge is agreed in advance with the concert promoter or event organiser. It covers the costs of providing Ents24’s service to you.

Surely you make enough from the ticket itself?

Ents24 doesn’t receive any of the face value of the ticket itself – that money goes to the promoter that puts on the show, the artist or performers, the venue that hosts the show and the crew that ensures the show is an experience to remember.

What are booking fees for?

The booking fee is shared between Ents24 and our partners who arrange allocations of tickets with the concert promoter. Sometimes a portion of the booking fee goes to the concert promoter, too.

The majority of our share of the booking fee is spent on staff wages.

Isn’t all the work done by computers?

As well as the people who speak to customers directly (our customer service team works 7 days a week) we have lots of people working hard behind the scenes.

Our content team add details of thousands of events to the website every week. They aim to add every single show that’s taking place around the UK to the website, regardless of who is selling tickets, to give you a complete picture of what’s happening.

And there are lots of other people keeping the website up to date and easy to use, from our marketing and promotions team to our engineering team.

Okay. I understand booking fees, but why is there often a transaction fee on top?

The transaction fee covers the cost of printing, packing and posting the tickets, as well as any credit card fees involved in taking payment for the tickets. Some tickets can’t be replaced if lost and these have to be sent by courier, which is more expensive than standard post.

If the venue accepts print-at-home tickets, we usually don’t need to charge a transaction fee.

How can I tell what is ticket price, and what is a booking fee?

We do list the total combined cost of ticket and booking fee on our site when you first see the tickets on the website, but we also break it down so you can see how the cost is split before you purchase. The face value (without booking fees added) is often printed on the tickets.

If you have further questions about booking fees, drop us a note at blog@ents24.com and we’ll do our best to answer them. Please be aware by emailing you consent to us using your name/question/text in a future blog post, so that it can help others too.