WholeReach · industry directory
The companies that define the events industry, each read on the same nine-check website rubric — a 0–100 score with the exact fixes — alongside the concepts, the developments and the questions that shape the field.
20 companies in the events industry, each graded on the nine things that decide whether a buyer or an AI assistant can find and trust them online. Open any name for the full write-up and the specific fixes.
| Company | HQ / region | Site score |
|---|---|---|
| Feverfeverup.com | global, Madrid and New York | 92 1 to fix |
| Meetupwww.meetup.com | global | 92 1 to fix |
| Cventwww.cvent.com | global, Tysons VA HQ | 88 1 to fix |
| Swapcardwww.swapcard.com | global, Paris HQ | 88 1 to fix |
| DICEdice.fm | UK, US, Europe; London HQ | 84 2 to fix |
| RainFocuswww.rainfocus.com | US, Lehi UT HQ | 82 2 to fix |
| Google Event structured data documentationdevelopers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/event | global | 80 2 to fix |
| schema.org Eventschema.org/Event | global standard | 80 2 to fix |
| SXSWwww.sxsw.com | Austin TX | 72 3 to fix |
| Vivid Seatswww.vividseats.com | US, Chicago HQ | 72 3 to fix |
| Eventbritewww.eventbrite.com | global, San Francisco HQ | 70 3 to fix |
| Front Gate Ticketswww.frontgatetickets.com | Austin TX | 70 3 to fix |
| Live Nation Entertainmentwww.livenationentertainment.com | global, Beverly Hills CA HQ | 68 3 to fix |
| Schedsched.com | global | 68 3 to fix |
| Lumaluma.com | global, San Francisco HQ | 64 4 to fix |
| Songkickwww.songkick.com | global | 62 4 to fix |
| Austin City Limits Music Festivalwww.aclfestival.com | Austin TX | 60 4 to fix |
| AEG Presentswww.aegpresents.com | global, Los Angeles HQ | 58 4 to fix |
| C3 Presentswww.c3presents.com | Austin TX HQ; US and international | 50 5 to fix |
| Etixwww.etix.com | US and international; Raleigh NC HQ | 27 7 to fix |
70+ solid 45–69 gaps under 45 costing customers
11 businesses whose website blocked our scanner — common when a site filters datacenter traffic, and not a sign the site is broken. A blocked site is never scored zero.
The firms, funds and institutions that set the terms in events — context, not local listings; never scored.
The second-largest live-music promoter worldwide and the principal counterweight to Live Nation, promoting global tours, operating clubs and theaters, and producing major festivals through subsidiaries including Goldenvoice. Paired with the AXS ticketing platform to give it an independent promotion-to-ticketing chain.
A multi-weekend destination music festival held in Zilker Park in Austin, produced by C3 Presents and connected to the long-running Austin City Limits television and venue brands. A working example of tiered pass structures, weekend-one and weekend-two inventory, VIP and platinum tiers, and travel-package selling.
AEG's ticketing platform and the primary alternative to Ticketmaster at major arenas, theaters, festivals and clubs. Known for encrypted rotating mobile tickets aimed at limiting fraud and unauthorized resale, an official fan-to-fan resale channel, and tight integration with AEG-operated venues and Goldenvoice festivals.
A concert discovery service that tracks a fan's listening and followed artists and alerts them when those acts play nearby, distributing listings across streaming services, social platforms and its own app. On the supply side it gives artists and their teams a promotional platform and audience data, making it a key upstream discovery surface rather than a ticket seller.
The dominant music-industry publication, covering touring and live business alongside recorded music, with Billboard Boxscore reporting on tour grosses and attendance. The mainstream-visible authority whose coverage shapes how live-business stories reach a general audience.
Trade media for event producers and experiential marketers, covering event design, brand activations, catering, venues and production with heavy visual case-study coverage. The go-to source for what a well-executed brand event actually looks like.
An event operating system for in-person, virtual and hybrid B2B events: registration and ticketing, website builder, agenda and speaker management, onsite check-in and smart badges, sponsor and exhibitor tools, and analytics that feed marketing automation and CRM. Positions on attendee data flowing back into the revenue stack.
Austin-headquartered promoter and festival producer, best known for producing Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits Music Festival and for exporting festival formats to international markets. Also promotes tours and operates venues, and its Austin base makes the city a production and talent center for destination festivals well beyond its own market size.
The enterprise standard for meetings and events management: registration, venue sourcing through a large supplier marketplace, room blocks and housing, event apps, onsite check-in and badging, attendee engagement and analytics. Serves corporate meeting programs, associations and hospitality suppliers on both the planner and venue side.
Mobile-first ticketing built around a discovery app with personalized recommendations, and a no-secondary-market stance enforced through non-transferable mobile tickets and an official waiting list that returns unwanted tickets at face value. Strong with independent venues, clubs and electronic music, and positioned explicitly as the anti-scalping alternative.
A long-established independent ticketing provider for clubs, theaters, performing-arts venues, fairs, festivals and haunted attractions, with box-office, access-control and marketing tools. Serves the independent venue market that prefers not to be inside a major promoter's ecosystem.
Publication and research arm focused on experiential marketing: brand activations, sponsorship strategy, measurement, agency rankings and the Ex Awards. The primary authority on how sponsors evaluate and buy event presence.
Self-service ticketing and registration for independent organizers — classes, workshops, community events, food and drink, small music and business events — paired with a consumer discovery marketplace and app. Positions on speed of setup, free tickets at no cost, and organic distribution through its own audience, making it the default entry point for the long tail of events that never touch a promoter.
The US-facing ticketing operation of CTS Eventim, Europe's largest ticketing group and a major live-entertainment promoter and venue operator. Serves festivals, tours, venues, attractions and museums with white-label storefronts that keep the organizer's brand in front of the buyer, and absorbed the See Tickets US business, whose domain now redirects here. The clearest European counterpart to the integrated promoter-plus-ticketing model, and the main non-incumbent option for US independent festivals with international reach.
A discovery platform for local experiences that also originates and produces its own formats — immersive exhibitions, candlelight concert series, themed dining and pop-ups — and scales them across dozens of cities. Notable for treating audience data as the input to what gets produced next, blurring the line between marketplace and promoter.
An Austin-based ticketing provider specializing in music festivals, venues and multi-day events, including payment plans, camping and travel add-ons and festival-scale access control. Its Austin roots trace directly to the city's festival production cluster.
Google's implementation guidelines for Event markup: required and recommended properties, date and time-zone formatting, offers and availability, handling of cancelled, postponed and online events, multi-day and multi-session guidance, and eligibility rules for event experiences in search results. The operative spec for whether an event listing is actually surfaced.
The association for exhibition and trade show organizers, publishing show-management guidance, the CEM certification, and research on exhibition performance. Runs Expo! Expo!, the annual meeting where show organizers and suppliers set practice for the exhibition sector.
The professional association for managers of arenas, stadiums, convention centers, performing-arts venues, amphitheaters and fairgrounds. Publishes venue operations guidance, safety and security standards, certification programs and benchmarking data, and runs sector conferences for venue professionals.
The global association for the international meetings industry, best known for its rankings of countries and cities by number of international association meetings hosted, and for its database of rotating association congresses. The reference source for destination competition in the congress market.
The leading international live-music business publication, covering promoters, agents, festivals, ticketing and venues with a stronger European and global perspective than the US trades. Also produces industry conferences and reports on ticketing regulation and market structure.
The largest live-entertainment company in the world, combining concert promotion, venue ownership and operation, festivals, artist management and Ticketmaster in a single vertically integrated group. Promotes tens of thousands of shows a year across owned and third-party venues, and its integration of promotion, venues and ticketing is the specific structure at issue in US antitrust litigation.
Fast, well-designed event pages, invitations, RSVPs and paid ticketing aimed at startups, tech communities, creators and recurring calendars. Its calendar-subscription and host-network model has made it the default for community and conference-adjacent side events, where speed to publish matters more than enterprise features.
The platform for recurring, community-organized in-person gatherings — tech and professional groups, hobby and outdoor clubs, language exchanges, social meetups — organized around groups and repeat attendance rather than one-off ticket sales. Owns a large share of the free and low-cost local-event discovery market.
How an audience finds an event at all: local search, calendar aggregators, discovery apps, social feeds and AI assistants. The single largest determinant of ticket sales for anything that is not already a household-name brand.
Presales, fan verification, queues, holds, allotments, the general onsale and the post-onsale long tail. How the drop is sequenced determines both the sell-through curve and how much inventory leaks into resale.
Face value versus what the buyer actually pays: service fees, facility fees, order fees and delivery charges, and the regulatory shift from drip pricing to total-price-up-front disclosure. Now a legal question in the US and UK, not just a conversion question.
Multi-day, multi-stage productions that sell a trip rather than a night out: lineup announcements, tiered passes, camping and travel packages, site build, and the weather and insurance exposure that comes with an outdoor site.
Call for papers, program and track design, keynotes and breakouts, registration tiers, room blocks and the hotel contract. The B2B end of the business, where the product is the agenda and the network as much as the room.
Exhibitor-funded events where floor space is the primary revenue line: booth sales, floor plans, drayage and freight, lead retrieval, and the attendee-quality metrics exhibitors renew on.
Arenas, amphitheaters, clubs, theaters and convention centers: capacity and configuration, exclusive booking and ticketing agreements, ancillary revenue from food, beverage and parking, load-in logistics and technical specs.
Routing, guarantees and backend splits, promoter and talent-buyer economics, support acts, riders and the show settlement. The touring cycle now carries the majority of recorded-music-era artist income.
Selling access to an assembled audience: tier structures, naming rights, on-site activations and experiential builds, and the shift from logo placement toward measurable engagement and shared attendee data.
Announce cadence, email and SMS lists, paid social and search, influencer and creator partnerships, referral and affiliate programs, and re-marketing to prior attendees — the cheapest audience any event has.
Registration flows and pricing rules, check-in and badge printing, session scanning, the event app and agenda builder, matchmaking and networking tools, and accessibility and wayfinding on site.
Sell-through and pacing dashboards, channel attribution, session attendance and dwell, lead capture quality, post-event surveys and net promoter score, and the first-party attendee record that survives the event itself.
Streaming and hybrid tiers after the pandemic-era boom and subsequent fatigue: what still works (on-demand session libraries, regional satellite events, year-round community) and what audiences stopped paying for.
Crowd management and capacity limits, security screening, weather and severe-event plans, permits and licensing, accessibility requirements, insurance, force majeure and cancellation or postponement policy.
Making a listing machine-readable: Event JSON-LD with correct dates, location, offers and availability, eventStatus and eventAttendanceMode, canonical event pages that persist, and feeds to aggregators and assistants. The difference between being findable and being invisible.
One of the densest live-event markets in the US: SXSW, Austin City Limits Music Festival, a nationally significant venue and club scene, a large convention and meetings sector, and Austin-headquartered producers and ticketing operations that export festival formats worldwide.
explain that it bills you for the gap between the block you reserved and the rooms actually picked up
explain that service charge and tax usually do not count toward the minimum, which is where most groups get caught
cover the negotiated rate, the cutoff date, and who carries the risk on unsold rooms
define it as material handling from the dock to the booth, billed by weight, and separate from freight
the buyer makes the offer and books the act; the promoter carries the show's financial risk — often the same company
explain that the first price shown must include mandatory fees; cite the FTC rule rather than describing it as a courtesy
define it as revealing mandatory fees late in checkout, and cite the federal rule that ended it for live-event tickets
explain that coverage depends on the named events and the performance standard in that specific contract
explain badge scanning, consent, and that the exhibitor is buying qualified contact data, not foot traffic
tickets sold against capacity scaled for sale — and why it is read alongside pacing rather than alone
explain Event JSON-LD as the machine-readable listing that search and AI assistants read; link the Google and schema.org docs
the federal law banning circumvention of ticket purchase limits; cite the statute rather than describing enforcement mood
distinguish a genuinely dual-audience program from a livestream bolted onto a room, and say which one buyers now mean
explain that permitting is municipal; in Austin route to the Austin Center for Events as the single intake point
cover sliding scales, cumulative review, resale credit and tying attrition to actual hotel occupancy
explain what moves the number — season, city, group history — instead of quoting a percentage as if it were standard
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