Eventbrite · Strategy · Senior · 45 to 60 minutes

Raise take rate without hurting event volume

Eventbrite is a platform that helps event organizers create, market, and sell tickets to live events. Answer this product management case and get it graded line by line against a weighted rubric.

Monetization strategy
Marketplace thinking
Experiment design
Prioritization
Executive communication

The situation

You are the senior PM responsible for organizer monetization at Eventbrite. Leadership believes the company captures too little value from the transactions flowing through the platform, and finance wants a plan to improve monetization over the next year. But Eventbrite is a marketplace, so changes that raise fees could reduce organizer acquisition, event creation, attendee conversion, or longer term loyalty. The problem is harder because the billing system is rigid, which makes it slow and expensive to launch nuanced pricing tests, custom packages, or cohort based rollouts. Why now, annual planning is coming up, and engineering will only fund limited billing work unless there is a strong strategic case. Assume Eventbrite can either push pricing changes on top of the current billing system in the near term, or invest first in billing flexibility and sequence monetization changes later. Your job is to recommend how Eventbrite should pursue a higher take rate while protecting marketplace volume and organizer trust.

What to produce

Write a 2 page strategy memo.

Your answer must

Diagnose the problem as a marketplace tradeoff, not just a pricing problem, and state the key assumptions you are making.
Recommend one primary monetization strategy, and compare it against at least two credible alternatives.
Identify which organizer or event segments you would target first, and explain why they are the right starting point.
Lay out a 12 month sequence that addresses the billing system limitation, including what you would do now versus after infrastructure work.
Define success metrics and guardrails that include both monetization and network health, such as organizer retention, event supply, or ticket sales.

Constraints

Do not assume Eventbrite launches a new product line or signs a major new partnership.
The current billing architecture makes pricing and packaging experiments slow, limited, and costly.
Engineering capacity is constrained, so your plan must make explicit tradeoffs about infrastructure versus direct monetization work.
Any pricing change must avoid surprising organizers with opaque or confusing fees.

Format

Use sections for diagnosis, options, recommendation, sequencing, metrics, and risks.

How Eventbrite actually played it

Recounts Eventbrite's low take rate and pricing changes, how a rigid billing system limited experiments, and the effect on network volume. A first-hand look at monetization trade-offs in a marketplace.

Pricing changes can slow network growth
Billing flexibility matters for testing monetization

Built from The Monetization Playbook We Used at Eventbrite by Casey Winters.