You see one price on the listing and a different total at checkout, and the gap is rarely small. Everything in that gap is a fee, and most receipts do a poor job of saying who each one goes to. This guide names every line you are likely to meet on a UK ticket, says where the money ends up, and works the arithmetic on a £30 ticket so you can see what "no booking fees" is actually worth.
The lines on a UK ticket receipt
| Line | Who it goes to | Real cost or margin? |
|---|---|---|
| Face value | The organiser | The price of the event |
| Booking fee | The ticketing platform | Mostly margin |
| Service charge | Platform, sometimes venue | Margin under another name |
| Delivery or fulfilment fee | The platform | Margin on an e-ticket |
| Payment processing | The card processor | A real cost |
| VAT | HMRC | Tax, not a fee |
Face value
Face value is the price the organiser set. It is the only number on the receipt that reaches the people putting the event on, and on a fair receipt it is the number you commit to when you decide to go.
Booking fee
The booking fee is usually the largest add-on and it is the platform's revenue. It pays for their software, staff, marketing and margin. Some of it covers a genuine cost; a good deal of it does not. It is set as a percentage, a flat amount, or a mix, and it is charged per ticket, so a family of four pays it four times.
Service charge
"Service charge" is the least consistent line in ticketing. On one site it is a slice of the booking fee shown separately; on another it is the venue's cut; on a third it is the platform's margin under a different name. If a receipt shows both a booking fee and a service charge, the total of the two is the number that matters. Splitting a fee in half does not make it smaller.
Delivery or fulfilment fee
This began as the cost of posting paper tickets. Almost every ticket is now an e-ticket, delivered by email or into a phone wallet, where the cost of delivery is close to nothing. A delivery, fulfilment or "ticket processing" fee on a digital ticket is margin, and it is one of the easiest lines to recognise for what it is.
Payment processing
When you pay by card, the card networks and the payment processor take a cut. This one is a real cost, and it is the same kind of cost your local shop pays when you tap a card. On tickts, card payments run through Stripe and the processing fee on a UK card is 1.5% plus 20p per transaction. What varies between platforms is not whether the cost exists but whether it is shown honestly as its own line, hidden inside the booking fee, or quietly built into the ticket price.
VAT
VAT is tax, not a platform fee. Where it applies to a ticket it goes to HMRC, and on a clear receipt it appears as its own line rather than being folded into something called a service charge.
A £30 ticket, worked through
The table uses a common shape for a fee-charging platform rather than any one company's rate card: a 12% booking fee, a £1.50 delivery fee, and card processing built into the booking fee. The tickts column uses the real figures.
| Line | Typical fee-charging platform | tickts |
|---|---|---|
| Face value | £30.00 | £30.00 |
| Booking fee (12%) | £3.60 | £0.00 |
| Delivery fee | £1.50 | £0.00 |
| Buyer pays | £35.10 | £30.00 |
| Organiser receives | £30.00 or less | £29.35 |
On tickts the buyer pays the face value and nothing else. The organiser pays only the card processing cost, which on a £30 ticket is 65p (1.5% of £30 is 45p, plus 20p), and receives £29.35. There is no commission on top. An organiser who would rather receive the full £30 can switch the event to pass the processing fee on, in which case the buyer sees £30.66 before paying, with the 66p shown for what it is. It is a penny more than the absorbed fee because the 1.5% is taken of the £30.66 the buyer actually pays.
Compare the checkout total, never the face value. Two sites can list the same event at £30 and charge £30 and £35.10 for it.
Which fees are negotiable
For a buyer, none of them. Fees are set by the platform and the organiser and are baked into the buying flow.
For an organiser choosing a platform, most of them are. Headline rate cards are the starting point; contracted rates come with volume. The question to ask any platform is the all-in cost per ticket at your expected volume, including whatever they charge the buyer, because a fee charged to your audience is still a cost of selling your tickets. It shows up as fewer sales and in the emails you get after the event.
How tickts handles fees
- No booking fee for buyers and no commission from tickts. The face value is what the buyer pays.
- Card processing is the only cost on a paid ticket. 1.5% plus 20p per transaction on a UK card through Stripe, or 2.9% plus 30p if the organiser takes payment through PayPal. The organiser chooses whether to absorb it or pass it on, and a passed-on fee is shown to the buyer before they pay.
- Pay by Bank costs roughly a third of a card fee and carries no chargebacks. An organiser switches it on in their own Stripe account and it then appears alongside card at checkout.
- Free tickets are free. Nothing is charged to anyone.
- Reserve and pay has no processing fee at all. An organiser can let buyers reserve online and pay them directly, by bank transfer or cash on the door, and the ticket is issued when the organiser marks it paid.
The full account of what tickts charges and how it makes money is on the how we make money page, with the same worked example computed live from the real rates.
Reading any receipt in thirty seconds
- Find the face value. That is the organiser's money.
- Add up every line between face value and total. That is what you are paying to buy the ticket rather than for the event.
- A delivery fee on an e-ticket, or a service charge next to a booking fee, is margin, whatever it is called.
- Card processing is real, but it is a small percentage plus pence, not pounds per ticket.
- Judge the site on the total, and judge the organiser on the face value.
