Supanova expands Leap partnership to boost ticketing

Supanova has expanded its partnership with Leap Event Technology, bringing ticketing, marketing, audience engagement and onsite systems together across the pop culture event organiser's operations.

The broader agreement follows earlier work on ticketing and marketing and comes as Supanova looks to develop new consumer and business-to-business revenue streams. The organiser said the partnership had delivered a 50x return on ad spend and a 32% year-on-year increase in revenue.

Supanova, which runs comic con and gaming events in Australia, has built a first-party audience database over nearly 25 years. It uses Audience Republic to analyse ticket-buying behaviour, identify higher-value customers and segment communications, while Leap manages ticketing and the sale of tokens for celebrity autographs and photographs.

Stephen Stavroulakis, General Manager at Supanova, said the organiser could fill much of its events from its existing database alone. "If all we did was market to our existing audience, we'd probably sell about 75% of the shows because we've built such a powerful and extensive database and our audience is very passionate and engaged. We recently sent an EDM and achieved a massive 70% open rate," he said.

Campaigns are tailored by customer behaviour, geography and age. Stavroulakis said VIP customers are repeat buyers who spend far more than general admission attendees, making segmentation central to the company's email marketing.

Ticket timing

Sales patterns also shape campaign planning. Supanova aims to announce a core group of celebrity guests before tickets go on sale, then releases more names in stages as contracts are completed.

Stavroulakis said about 70% of ticket sales come in the final week before an event, as fans wait to assess the full line-up and weigh the risk of guest cancellations. Paid campaigns run across Google, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn, with targeting built around specific actors, franchises and audience interests.

On the release strategy, he said: "We aim to have a strong group of guests confirmed before tickets go on sale, then continue releasing guests in waves as they lock in. We've trained our audience to expect multiple releases of guests. We start with a couple of good ones, move to some bigger ones and then, by the end, go to our big 'whammo' to get people across the line."

New channels

Supanova has also added SMS marketing and expanded its use of video content from events. The organiser said both channels had improved response and engagement, particularly on YouTube and TikTok.

"We've just introduced text marketing and SMS outreach. When I first came on board about two and a half years ago, I asked, 'Why aren't we doing text marketing?' We eventually implemented it this year, and the results have been phenomenal," Stavroulakis said.

He added: "We had incredible video assets we weren't leveraging fully. Now we've started taking video content, cutting it up and promoting it on YouTube and TikTok, generating huge engagement with about a 10-to-1 return. Between text marketing, TikTok, YouTube and our EDMs, our outreach is significantly turbocharged, delivering powerful growth."

Technology review

The expanded partnership grew out of a review of Supanova's ticketing arrangements as an existing contract neared renewal. Stavroulakis said the company considered several suppliers before choosing Ticketbooth, which has since rebranded as Leap, over rivals including Tixr.

One factor was operational support in Australia, as Supanova requires staff for ticket scanning, point-of-sale and event operations. Pricing on token sales was another.

"The reason I ultimately chose Leap was because, for us to run our events in Australia, we need boots on the ground. Our ticketing partner has to provide ticket scanning staff, point-of-sale staff and operational support," he said.

He said treating autograph and photograph tokens as ticket-equivalent transactions materially reduced costs. "Leap's ticket percentage is already lower than competitors, but the key question for us was how will they treat our tokens? Leap's answer was simple: they are treated like tickets. Which enables us to pay the same percentage on token sales as ticket sales. That one change alone saved us an enormous amount of money and was one of the major reasons we made the jump to Leap," he said.

B2B shift

Supanova is now extending its focus beyond consumer ticket sales through Level Up, a Friday event format linking students and educators with businesses, universities, TAFEs and technology groups. The initiative has expanded from Brisbane into other Australian markets and increased the company's focus on sponsors and corporate partnerships.

That is changing the marketing mix. Supanova said exhibitor demand for its core shows is already established, but sponsorship and partnership sales require more direct business marketing, including LinkedIn advertising, email outreach and LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Stavroulakis said the company had also benefited from connecting data across previously separate systems. "Centralising our data has made a massive impact for us. Bringing it together unlocks massive efficiency gains and richer analytics," he said.