Mythbusting Dynamic Pricing: It’s Complicated and Time Consuming for Organizers and Ticket Buyers.

October 24, 2024
Arts organizations are working under very difficult circumstances. The Centre for Cultural Value’s Culture in Crisis report illustrates how the UK’s cultural sector is “facing imminent burnout alongside significant skills and workforce gaps.” These gaps are leaving a workforce that is not representative of our society, and also exhausted teams who are not equipped for everything being thrown at them. There is simply not enough human resource to execute everything and so teams need smarter tools and processes that can help them. It’s absolutely natural to have a knee-jerk reaction to implementing anything new when you’re burned out and simply battling to put out fires every day. But taking a moment to implement time and cost-saving tools can help to fight those fires at their source so that there are fewer to deal with each day.

“I’m too busy to implement a complex new pricing tool”

With modern software and data analytics tools, dynamic pricing is accessible to any team, however busy, thanks to automation. DynamO developed a very straightforward and easy-to-use interface and provides free support and assistance. Setting up the dynamic pricing parameters for a typical theatre performance (3-5 different ticket categories) takes 2-5 minutes for our clients. Even very small theatres and music groups with only 1 person managing ticketing are achieving great results using DynamO.

We have lots of one-night shows and we don’t have autonomy on price-setting (we have to set prices in line with promoters / producers), so dynamic pricing can’t work for us”

Dynamic pricing can be applied to a wide range of events, including one-time performances, festivals, sports events, and more. Predicting the success of a one-time event can be very tricky as success depends on multiple variables: big names, promotion partners etc. However, dynamic pricing actually helps to mitigate the risk associated with one-off shows or short runs. Over time it becomes a highly effective tool to support performance lifecycle evaluation and decision-making.

When first implementing dynamic pricing you can talk to your partners about whether they want to do it or not, and if not you don’t have to dynamically price their shows. Once you have dynamically priced a few shows you can show them the data to evidence the potential ROI they are missing out on and they will likely choose to participate, as we’ve seen with numerous clients in this position.

“If the prices are always changing how can I forecast accurately?”

Forecasting is always an educated guess about the future. With dynamic pricing, forecasting is actually more reliable than with fixed / static pricing, because it reacts to market fluctuations and generates additional yield on popular shows while boosting audiences at less popular performances / events. Ticketing managers can predict based on their past experience as they usually would. The only change they need to make is that they should expect better results both in revenue and tickets sold than ever before. A typical DynamO client generates 14-17% average revenue growth while reducing unsold inventory by over 20%.

“We often have to paper / discount heavily at the last minute to fill a show, dynamic pricing will only exacerbate this late booking behavior - we want to encourage early bookers!”

Dynamic pricing can help encourage early booking and aid in avoiding last minute discounts to fill an event. In many cases prices increase as the event date approaches and availability decreases. There are many logics that can be applied in dynamic pricing and it’s never guaranteed that tickets will be cheapest at the beginning of the sales period, or at the end of it, or anytime in between! While it can provide a kind of gamification opportunity to ticket buyers, there is not a simple and consistent rule that they can follow. With dynamic pricing they can’t just wait and be guaranteed a cheap ticket.

“As a not-for-profit organization, I don’t think it’s a good fit - dynamic pricing is designed for profit-making companies.”

All kinds of cultural institutions can benefit from dynamic pricing. Optimizing ticket sales allows you to break down cost barriers across your programming and reach a wider audience, while ensuring financial sustainability. Dynamic pricing strengthens any mission-focused organization’s pricing strategy. It can result in wider availability of cheaper tickets and longer periods of availability for high-demand performances. Organizations such as the Hungarian State Opera, Operetta Theatre, and Palace of Arts have demonstrated how beneficial this approach can be. With the additional revenue generated, these institutions can further improve service quality and invest more in their artists, creating a positive social impact.


“Ticket buyers don’t want another layer confusing them - it’ll stop them from completing their purchase”

  • While dynamic pricing does introduce a variable, it doesn't need to complicate the process or slow down purchasing. Some people check the prices more than once before deciding on whether to buy the ticket or not, but the process itself is the same.
  • At DynamO re-pricing frequency can be set by the ticket inventory holder (organizer’s / venue’s ticketing team) and can vary between approximately 15 minutes up to days. More frequent price updates result in smaller changes in prices which means that most individual customers don’t notice, or the difference for them is negligible. Tickets that are already in the cart don’t change price even if there is a price update in the meantime for the rest of the tickets. Until the checkout process has finished (either  through a completed purchase or cart abandonment) the price of tickets in the basket will remain the same.
  • Dynamic pricing is a useful tool as part of your wider pricing strategy to attract and retain audiences, it can complement your existing membership programs, discounts / offers, and multiple ticket categories.
  • Dynamic pricing makes it easier for your audiences to get the best tickets, at the best price by purchasing directly with you. Dynamic pricing disincentivizes scalping and bots by lowering the second-hand sellers’ profit. If they buy a lot of tickets with an automated bot, they pump up the price for themselves as usually there is a limitation of how many tickets can be purchased at the same time.
  • Implementing dynamic pricing is a great opportunity to communicate with your audiences and help them understand why this is beneficial to them. You can help them understand how it will work and how they can get the best prices and availability according to the models that you have set up. This may be about booking early, or letting them know that they will no longer have to rush to get seats at the blockbuster show. DynamO can provide guidance and support on this.
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DynamO Pricing and Edinburgh International Festival win at TheTicketingBusiness Awards 2026
May 25, 2026

DynamO Pricing has been named Disruptor of the Year at the 2026 Ticketing Business Awards.

In the same evening, Leon Gray, Head of Ticketing and Audience Experience at Edinburgh International Festival, received the Movers and Shakers Award.

The awards recognise leadership and innovation across the global ticketing industry. Taken together, the two wins reflect a shared approach: using pricing not only to drive revenue, but to support access, inclusion and audience development.

DynamO Pricing: Disruptor Award

DynamO was built around a specific challenge in ticketing: the assumption that revenue growth and affordability are inherently at odds.

That assumption is the reframing at the core of DynamO’s approach. Pricing strategies have historically forced organisations into compromise. Increasing yield has often meant excluding price-sensitive audiences, while prioritising access has required absorbing financial risk.

Under CEO Bence Marosi’s leadership, DynamO was designed from day one to dismantle that trade-off, using dynamic pricing to support affordability, inclusion and audience growth alongside stronger financial performance.

DynamO’s results in 2025 were achieved with no up-front platform costs to clients and through an onboarding process measured in days, not months.

By removing the heavy up-front fees and long implementation timelines that have traditionally defined the category, DynamO has opened up sophisticated dynamic pricing to organisations that previously couldn’t access it, supporting long-term financial sustainability.

Edinburgh International Festival: Movers and Shakers Award

With a pioneering ticketing approach and dynamic pricing powered by DynamO, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 achieved its highest ticket sales percentage in over a decade, with more than 88% of all tickets sold, while deepening its commitment to inclusivity and accessibility.

The programme featured its first (sold-out) dementia-friendly concert, and the festival offered its highest-ever number of discounted tickets to D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent audience members. Half of all tickets were priced at £30 or less.

The 2025 Festival demonstrates the tangible impact a strategically implemented ticketing transformation can have, driving commercial performance while meaningfully broadening access.

This success was led by Leon Gray, Head of Ticketing and Audience Experience, whose approach positioned ticketing as a strategic tool for audience development rather than a purely transactional function. Inclusion and affordability were embedded into planning from the outset, shaping income and attendance targets and integrating concession pricing directly into revenue and capacity projections. Access was treated not as an add-on, but as a core consideration within the Festival’s financial and operational decision-making.

A central part of the transformation was the move to a new dynamic pricing platform with DynamO. As a non-profit, Edinburgh International Festival depends heavily on ticket income, but Leon was clear that price could not become a barrier for price-sensitive audiences, a balance DynamO is committed to with clients across live entertainment sectors globally.

“Ticketing is one of the most direct levers we have for opening the Festival up to new audiences, and we wanted a pricing approach that reflected that. Working with DynamO, we were able to respond to demand and protect our financial position without compromising on access. The result is the strongest sales performance in more than a decade, achieved alongside our most ambitious year yet for inclusive and affordable ticketing.” — Leon Gray, Head of Ticketing and Audience Experience, Edinburgh International Festival

DynamO enabled the Festival to respond intelligently to demand while protecting affordability, achieving its strongest ticket sales performance in over ten years.

A shared approach

The partnership between DynamO and Edinburgh International Festival reflects a shared view: pricing is part of a wider system that connects revenue, access and audience development, not a trade-off between them.

We’re grateful to The Ticketing Business Awards for recognising this work.

“Recognition like this matters because of what it points to. Pricing has too often been framed as a choice between revenue and audience. Our work with partners like Edinburgh International Festival shows that the choice is a false one, and we’re grateful to share this moment with a team that has demonstrated exactly that.” — Bence Marosi, CEO, DynamO Pricing

Find out more

Whether you are a festival, theatre, concert hall, arts centre, museum or cultural venue, DynamO supports smarter ticket pricing for the culture sector through data-led, transparent and adaptable dynamic pricing.

If you’re interested in discovering how DynamO Pricing could help your organisation increase revenue and fill empty seats, get in touch using our contact form or email info@dynamopricing.com. We’d love to hear from you.

How does DynamO Pricing work? Pál Danyi PhD and the data behind DynamO’s algorithm
April 21, 2026

Pál Danyi, Chief Research and Development (R&D) Officer at DynamO, has spent more than three decades at the intersection of artificial intelligence and pricing strategy. His career spans telecom, tourism, consulting and academia, with a PhD in artificial intelligence and tenure with leading global organisations including Ernst & Young and Magyar Telekom. This experience now forms the backbone of DynamO’s pricing engine.

He has also co-authored two books, Modern Pricing (2021) and Pricing For Strategic Managers (2025), both reflecting the central idea behind DynamO: pricing in the 21st century must be data-driven, audience-focused and ethical. 

For arts organisations, theatres, festivals and live entertainment venues across the UK, this approach supports smarter ticket pricing, stronger attendance and more sustainable revenue growth.

The data behind the prices

DynamO’s pricing algorithm is a demand-based system designed for cultural events, live entertainment and venues of all sizes.

Pál explains, “Based on sales figures and 30+ other parameters, we predict the demand for events and recommend prices accordingly.”

These parameters include: 

  • Venue capacity and configuration
  • Event type and genre
  • Day of the week and seasonality
  • Matinee vs. evening performance
  • Audience composition (children vs. adult mix)
  • Star power and media impact
  • Sales velocity patterns
  • Sales period length

This makes DynamO a powerful dynamic pricing solution for theatres, performing arts venues, museums, festivals and cultural organisations looking to improve their ticketing performance.

“We have different algorithms for small venues under 100 seats, for medium-sized venues of 300 or 500 seats, and for large arenas and festivals,” Pál says. “Genre is also very important. The purchasing behavior of theatrical audiences is completely different to that of comedy, concert and sports audiences, for instance.”

Sports events often sell 40-50% of tickets in the final days before the event, while a West End production with a famous name attached will typically generate most sales earlier on in the sales cycle.

Seasonal effects, such as Christmas, as well as audience composition, are also factored into recommendations. The sales curve for a pantomime, for example, which goes on sale far in advance, will be very different to that of a non-seasonal production with tickets on sale much closer to the event itself.

“Our algorithm adapts to these different sales curves and can provide accurate predictions for different types of genres and different days,” he adds

As such, DynamO’s algorithm isn’t universally applied. It recognises structural differences in demand curves and adjusts recommendations accordingly. This differentiation is what separates DynamO from generic dynamic pricing tools. 

“It is not a one-size-fits-all engine: it is a context-aware pricing system,” Pál summarises.

For organisations searching for dynamic pricing software for arts and culture, this context-led approach is especially valuable in sectors where organisational mission, audience development and affordability all matter.

Adaptive goal management

In the early stages of DynamO’s development, most clients defined a single primary goal - usually revenue maximisation. Over time, this evolved.

Today, the algorithm supports changing and layered objectives, such as:

  • Maximising attendance during early sales phases
  • Switching to revenue optimisation as demand strengthens
  • Balancing bums-on-seats and profit for longer sales cycles
  • Managing risk in short campaigns versus 6-month sales periods

“The two major goals are filling seats and maximising revenue,” Pál says. “But these goals may change over time, and our algorithm can follow these changes.”

The system dynamically adjusts pricing logic as priorities shift. This is especially important for:

  • New productions with uncertain demand
  • Emerging artists
  • Experimental programming

For new shows with low sales figures, “Of course we can drop prices, but it’s important that they don’t fall too dramatically - because the majority of the audience may come later.”

Different pricing strategies also apply depending on how quickly a venue wants to react to demand signals, and the length of a sales period.

“We have different pricing strategies depending on how fast the client wants to react,” he says. “A one-year sales period has completely different characteristics than a 30-day sales period. Our algorithm can adapt to each.”

“This goal-sensitivity allows clients to treat pricing as a strategic instrument, rather than a reactive tactic.”

Transparency by design

We believe that pricing should strengthen audience trust - not undermine it.

An important pillar of DynamO’s system is transparency and control.

“Sometimes there are scandals in the news that certain shows have skyrocketed prices,” Pál notes, alluding to Oasis-gate. “Control is an important pillar of our approach, and we have designed various features to avoid such surges.”

For DynamO, the 'best' price prioritises both audiences and organisers, with prices both decreasing and increasing. A balanced approach is crucial to protecting this relationship.

“We help clients in their communication with audiences and customers, to help them understand how and why the prices change each day,” he adds.

With minimum and maximum price caps, and alignment with industry best practice, at DynamO ethical dynamic pricing isn’t a marketing slogan - it’s a structural commitment.

In fact, when dynamic pricing is embedded into a ticketing strategy from the outset, it can be an invaluable tool to support organisational mission. 

For example, after switching to DynamO from another provider, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 achieved its highest ticket sales percentage in over a decade, with over 88% of all tickets sold - while also doubling down on its commitment to inclusivity and accessibility. 

Not only did the programme feature its first (sold out) dementia-friendly concert, the festival also offered its highest ever number of discounted tickets to D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent audience members, with half of all tickets priced at £30 or less – proving that commercial viability and organisational purpose can and should work hand-in-hand. 

Scaling with confidence

One of the clearest demonstrations of DynamO’s robustness is its ability to aid event scaling. The algorithm supports:

  • Demand pacing management
  • Revenue optimisation across expanding capacity
  • Controlled risk when moving into larger venues

“In many cases, DynamO has enabled clients to scale up a show,” Pál shares. “If a production has been successful in a 300 or 400 seat venue, we can scale it up to 2,000 seats.”

In one standout example, a stand-up comedy show expanded from a 300-seat venue to an 18,000-seat arena.

“Scaling up is something producers are typically afraid of because they consider it risky,” he says. “But using our dynamic pricing solution, it’s not a risk anymore.”

For organisers, this transforms pricing from a constraint into an enabler of growth.

This demonstrates how dynamic ticket pricing for arts organisations can support both revenue generation and cultural access - a key priority for many UK venues, events and institutions.

Intelligent, ethical pricing

DynamO’s pricing engine is the product of:

  • 30+ years of AI research and academic study
  • Tried and tested pricing strategies and implementation across global industries
  • Continuous refinement based on real-world event data

“Our primary goal is always understanding our clients and fully meeting their needs,” Pál says.

“At its heart is a simple conviction: pricing should reflect demand intelligently, serve clearly defined goals, and maintain audience trust.”

That is the philosophy guiding DynamO - and the reason its algorithm continues to scale alongside its clients across culture, sports and live events.

Find out more

Whether you are a theatre, festival, concert hall, arts centre, museum or cultural venue, DynamO supports smarter ticket pricing for the UK arts sector through data-led, transparent and adaptable dynamic pricing.

If you’re interested in discovering how DynamO Pricing could help your organisation increase revenue and fill empty seats, get in touch using our contact form or email info@dynamopricing.com. We’d love to hear from you.

In conversation: Inside the Nuweb x DynamO partnership
April 21, 2026

Through our partnership with Nuweb, DynamO is helping ticketing platforms and organisations move from insight to action faster, combining real-time pricing intelligence with the infrastructure needed to deliver updates when they matter most.

In this interview, Anthony Escott-Lawrence, Head of Product at Nuweb, talks about making dynamic pricing practical, scalable and effective for modern ticketing platforms.

Powering dynamic pricing in practice

Nuweb describes itself as “the engine behind ticketing platforms”, providing the infrastructure that powers ticketing businesses behind the scenes. From inventory and pricing to payments and integrations, its platform is built to help partners scale under their own brand.

That makes Nuweb a natural partner for DynamO. As Anthony explains, “DynamO Pricing fits into this through the ecosystem we’ve built around our platform. As a systems integrator, we enable ticketing platforms to select the tools that best meet their needs and connect seamlessly with us.”

DynamO provides the insight, and actioning it at scale is made quick and easy with Nuweb, helping platforms respond to demand in real time.

Why infrastructure matters

Anthony’s view is that pricing strategy is only valuable if systems allow teams to execute it seamlessly.

“Pricing intelligence is only as good as its execution,” he says. “You can have the smartest algorithms in the world, but if your ticketing system can’t actually apply those decisions, it doesn’t really matter.”

That is where the Nuweb x DynamO partnership becomes really powerful. DynamO delivers demand signals, market benchmarks and pricing recommendations, while the integration with  Nuweb ensures platforms can apply those decisions at scale and without friction.

For Anthony, this is where many older systems fall short. “A lot of legacy systems weren’t built for this,” he says. Modern ticketing infrastructure, by contrast, needs to support pricing that moves responsively with demand, without waiting for human intervention, as part of the live sales process.

Making dynamic pricing accessible

Anthony is clear that dynamic pricing is already familiar to consumers. “You see it in airlines, hotels, ride-sharing - pricing moves with demand,” he says. “Live events aren’t really any different, but a lot of platforms just haven’t had the tools to respond in real time.”

That gap between ambition and capability is exactly what the partnership is designed to close.

Historically, one of the biggest barriers to dynamic pricing has been the cost and complexity of implementation. Anthony sees the Nuweb x DynamO partnership as a way of lowering that barrier for ticketing platforms that want to modernise without high upfront payment.

“There’s no heavy upfront investment with DynamO,” he says, “and when you combine that with our infrastructure, it opens things up to platforms that might not have been able to justify it before.”

Dynamic pricing shouldn’t be limited to just the largest operators with extensive in-house resources. With the right infrastructure in place, more platforms can access the tools they need to respond to demand more intelligently.

What better pricing looks like

“If someone has to log in and change prices by hand, you’re already behind the demand curve,” Anthony explains.

The future, in his view, is automation supported by real-time data. That means systems that can respond as demand changes, learn continuously and support better decisions over time.

For organisations looking to future-proof pricing, Anthony’s advice is simple: focus on clean real-time data, choose open infrastructure and start experimenting.

“Ultimately, the organisations that do this well are the ones treating pricing as something they continuously develop - not just something you set once and forget.”

That is what the Nuweb x DynamO partnership is helping to deliver: a more connected approach to ticketing, where pricing intelligence is not just available, but actionable.

Interested in exploring dynamic pricing?

If you’re interested in finding out how a partnership with DynamO could help your organisation increase revenue and fill empty seats, get in touch using our contact form or email info@dynamopricing.com. We’d love to hear from you.

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