1. The market is narrower, but the winners are stronger
The number that matters most is the shift from around 15 full balls in 2024 to roughly 7 in the 2026 landscape. That sounds like decline until you look more closely. Demand has not disappeared. It has concentrated into the events buyers still perceive as clearly worth the money.
2. Ticketing economics matter more every year
A ball selling 1,500 tickets at an average price of £200 is looking at roughly £300,000 in ticket revenue. On a 2.9% + 20p platform-fee model, that can translate into about £9,000 in ticketing cost alone. In a more forgiving market, that is annoying. In the current market, it can be the difference between a better act, a better caterer, or simply not pushing ticket prices even higher.
3. Platform scale is now part of the pitch
MayBall.com has processed more than 20,000 tickets and over £3 million in revenue since 2018. Those are not just vanity metrics. They show that the product has already handled the scale, complexity, and release-day pressure that define this market.
4. The real moat is the cross-ball view
A single-event platform can tell a committee how that one event performed. MayBall.com can see something more valuable: how buyers move across the ecosystem. Which waitlists overflow into which other events. Which categories of event are becoming stronger substitutes. Which kinds of scarcity create secondary-market activity.
5. What this page becomes after June 2026
Because this is a pre-season snapshot, some of the most interesting numbers are still ahead of us. After May Week 2026, this should evolve into a fuller annual report: waitlist behaviour, resale patterns, cross-ball pairings, revenue concentration, and demand migration between marquee and second-ball events.