We’ve partnered with Highland Events Hub, a Highlands-focused ticketing platform, and the arrangement is open to any levy payer running a ticketed event in Fort William. This piece sets out what the platform does and where the commercial benefit actually sits, so you can judge whether it’s worth moving.
The Hub charges 4.5% to 5% plus 30p per ticket, and you decide whether to absorb that or pass it to the buyer at checkout. Free and community events are free to list.
On a 200-ticket run at £15 a head, that’s somewhere around £195 in fees on £3,000 of sales. Run the same calculation against whatever you’re currently paying and you’ll know within a minute whether this is worth your time. For some events the difference will be marginal. For others, particularly higher-volume or lower-margin ones, it won’t be.
Ticket revenue goes directly into your own UK bank account via Stripe as sales happen. The Hub never holds your funds.
This is the detail we’d draw attention to, because it’s the one that doesn’t show up in a fee comparison. Several of the larger platforms hold ticket income until after the event has taken place. If you’re paying a venue deposit in September for an event in November, that means financing the gap yourself while your own customers’ money sits elsewhere. For a small operator, that cashflow position can be the difference between an event happening and not happening.
Getting paid as you sell removes that problem entirely.
Listing an event takes a few minutes through a standard form covering dates, venue, ticket tiers and capacity. There’s no approval or probation period before you can sell. Bank setup through Stripe takes a couple of minutes more.
At the door, you scan QR codes using your phone’s camera — no app to download, and no hardware to hire. You can print a backup check-in list with attendee names and codes, which is worth doing regardless, because signal at some Lochaber venues is what it is.
The Hub covers the Scottish Highlands only. That’s a limitation in one sense and the entire point in another. A local gig listed on a national platform competes for visibility against arena tours in Glasgow and Edinburgh. On a Highlands-only platform, an audience actively looking for something to do in Lochaber finds you without having to already know your name.
That discovery benefit compounds. Every event listed makes the platform more useful to local audiences, which makes it more useful to the next organiser.
Full details and sign-up: https://highlandeventshub.co.uk/sell-tickets/
If you’d like to talk it through first, or you’re weighing it against what you currently use, get in touch at manager@bidfortwilliam.co.uk. We’re happy to discuss it honestly, including the cases where staying put is the better call.
