The latest MINGO Tickets update is not a vision document made real. It is eighteen months of organiser feedback turned into features. Four specific requests came up repeatedly: fans needed a way to discover events, organisers wanted control over resale, revenue per transaction was leaving money on the table, and data collection was happening too late or not at all.

Here is how we built the features organisers actually asked for.

The Marketplace

Before the marketplace, every MINGO event lived at a direct link. Organisers shared that link through their own channels. Social media, email lists, website embeds, SMS campaigns. The system worked, but it only worked if the organiser had an audience to begin with.

Smaller promoters and first-time organisers kept asking the same question: how do people find my event if they are not already following me? The answer was that they mostly did not. Discovery was entirely on the organiser. If you did not have a mailing list or a social media following, you were starting from zero every time.

The marketplace solves this by making events discoverable. Fans can browse by category, location, and date. They can see what is happening near them this weekend or search for specific event types across the platform. For organisers, this means visibility beyond their own audience. A comedy night in Manchester can be found by someone browsing local events, not just by people who already follow the venue.

The marketplace is not trying to replace direct marketing. Organisers still control their event page. They still own their audience data. The marketplace just adds another discovery channel that did not exist before.

Controlled Resale

Resale was the most requested feature, and the most contentious. Some organisers wanted to ban it entirely. Others wanted to allow it but cap the price. A few wanted full control over terms, pricing, and commissions. No one wanted the current system where resale happens off-platform with no visibility, no price limits, and no revenue back to the organiser.

The feature we built lets organisers set their own rules. They choose whether resale is allowed. If it is, they set the maximum resale price as a percentage of the original price. They decide what commission they earn on secondary sales. The platform enforces those rules automatically. If a ticket holder tries to list above the cap, the transaction is blocked. If someone buys a resold ticket, the organiser's commission is deducted and settled through their Stripe account just like a primary sale.

This does a few things at once. It stops scalpers who rely on uncapped resale markets. It turns the secondary market into a revenue stream for the organiser instead of a loss. It keeps resale on-platform where the organiser can see what is happening. And it gives fans a way to resell tickets they cannot use without resorting to unofficial channels where fraud is common.

Controlled resale is not perfect, but it is better than the alternative. Uncontrolled resale does not go away just because you ban it. It moves to platforms where the organiser has no visibility and no control. At least this way, the organiser sets the terms.

Checkout Add-Ons

Revenue per transaction matters more than most organisers realize until you run the numbers. If your average ticket is £25 and you are selling 500 tickets, that is £12,500 in gross revenue before fees and costs. If you could increase the average transaction value by £5 through add-ons, that is an extra £2,500 with no additional marketing spend and no extra venue capacity.

Organisers were already trying to sell merchandise, VIP upgrades, and food packages. They were just doing it through separate systems. A merch store on Shopify. A separate VIP booking form. An email asking about dietary requirements after tickets were already sold. Every additional system added friction, reduced conversion, and made fulfillment more complicated.

Checkout add-ons consolidate all of that into the ticket purchase flow. Fans see available add-ons at checkout. They add them to the same cart as their ticket. One transaction, one confirmation, one delivery. The organiser gets everything in their dashboard with the rest of their ticket sales. No separate systems to reconcile.

The feature is flexible enough to handle different use cases. A music venue might offer a £10 drink voucher. A conference might bundle access to a workshop. A food festival might sell a tasting pack at checkout. The organiser sets the add-on options, prices them, and tracks inventory if needed. Everything else is handled automatically.

Custom Questionnaires

Organisers need data. Dietary requirements for catered events. T-shirt sizes for included merchandise. How the buyer heard about the event. Accessibility needs. Emergency contact information. The list varies by event type, but the problem is the same. Most platforms either do not let you collect this data at checkout, or they make you use a separate survey tool after the fact.

Collecting data after purchase is inefficient. Response rates are lower. Organisers have to chase people down. Fans who already bought tickets do not want to fill out another form. By the time the survey results come in, it is often too late to act on them. If someone needs wheelchair access and you do not find out until the day before the event, your options are limited.

Custom questionnaires let organisers ask whatever they need to know at checkout. The questions are part of the ticket purchase flow. Fans answer them before completing the transaction. The organiser gets the answers immediately, attached to the ticket sale in their dashboard. No follow-up. No separate survey. The data is there when they need it.

The system is built to handle required and optional questions, multiple choice and free text responses, and conditional logic that shows or hides questions based on previous answers. If you are selling multiple ticket tiers and only VIP buyers get a free t-shirt, the size question only shows for VIP tickets. This keeps the checkout flow short for general admission while still collecting the data you need from specific buyers.

The Redesigned Interface

The visual redesign was not about aesthetics. It was about reducing the number of clicks and page loads needed to complete common tasks. Event creation was streamlined from twelve steps to six. Sales tracking moved to a single-page dashboard instead of tabbed views. Check-in tools became accessible from the main event view instead of buried in settings.

For fans, the changes were more subtle but equally focused on speed. The ticket purchase flow went from five pages to three. Checkout loads faster. Ticket delivery is instant. The dynamic QR code is front and centre when you open your ticket instead of hidden behind a tap. These are not dramatic changes, but they add up. Every removed click, every faster load, every clearer layout reduces friction and improves conversion.

Built From Feedback, Not Vision

These features did not come from a product roadmap decided in isolation. They came from conversations with organisers who were using the platform every week. Promoters running club nights. Venues hosting comedy shows. Festivals selling thousands of tickets. Each one had specific problems they were trying to solve, and those problems kept coming up across different event types and different markets.

We built what they asked for. Not what we thought they might want eventually. Not what looked good in a pitch deck. The features that organisers said they needed to run better events and make more money doing it.

That is the advantage of building a platform people are actually using. You do not have to guess what to build next. You just have to listen.