You've been asked to sort out a work do, a birthday, a fundraiser, or you're standing at the start of your own event business and none of the pricing guides written for other industries quite fit. If you're stuck on how to price an event, the honest answer is that there's no single number to memorise. There's a method you can run through every time, and it gets easier the second time you use it.
This post walks through that method, using a hosted event like a murder mystery night as the example, because it's the kind of event where the venue, the food, and the entertainment all get folded into one guest-facing price rather than sold as separate line items.
How to price an event when you don't have a budget yet
Start from the cost side, not the ticket price you'd like to see. List every cost that happens regardless of headcount: venue hire, staffing, any licence or materials fee, insurance. Then list the costs that scale with guest numbers: food, drink, favours, per-head fees if you have them.
Add those together, then decide what margin you actually need - not what sounds reasonable in the abstract, but what covers the hours you'll put in and leaves something behind once the night is over. Divide by your expected headcount and you have a starting per-head price. Everything after that is adjustment, not guesswork.
What should be included in the price?
Guests don't want a base price with six add-ons revealed at checkout. Decide upfront what sits inside the headline number: the event itself, food if you're providing it, a drink on arrival if that's part of your model. If parking, VAT, or a service charge sit outside that number, say so clearly rather than let people find out at the till.
For private bookings, this is where looking at what an established operator already charges is useful. The private event pricing and availability page shows what a fully hosted night, run at your own venue with the game, hosting and materials bundled in, typically costs - a helpful benchmark even if you're pricing something different from us.
How much do people typically pay for a night out like this?
For a public ticketed event - selling seats to people you don't already know, rather than booking for a private party - the real comparison isn't other similar events. It's dinner out, a cinema trip, an escape room. Guests are weighing your ticket against an evening they could spend some other way, so the price needs to feel fair against that, not just against your own cost sheet.
Browsing public events by city gives you a sense of what tickets look like in different markets, which is a far more honest starting point than picking a number that feels right sitting alone with a spreadsheet.
Should you price per person or charge a flat fee?
Flat fees work when the group size is fixed and known in advance - a private party booking one room for one night, with a guest list you control. Per-person pricing works when numbers are uncertain or the event is open to the public, because it scales cleanly whether fifteen people show up or forty.
If you're not sure which applies to you, ask yourself who controls the guest list. If you do, a flat fee is simpler for everyone involved. If tickets are going out to whoever wants one, price per head and set a minimum number to make the night viable before you commit to a venue.
What happens if you get the price wrong?
Too low, and you find out the hard way once costs are covered and you've worked the whole night for less than it was worth. Too high, and the event doesn't sell, which does more damage to your confidence than to your cash - a table with three no-shows tells you something a spreadsheet never will.
The fix isn't to guess again straight away. Go back to the cost list, check what you missed the first time, and adjust once. Repricing every few weeks erodes trust with repeat guests, and they notice more than you'd think.
Where does a licence change the maths?
Pricing gets a lot less speculative once you're not building the product from scratch. A licensee running one of our games isn't inventing a number with nothing to check it against - the games, the training and the booking system all come priced with an existing market already in mind, and the licensee keeps the large majority of every ticket sold.
That doesn't remove pricing decisions entirely. Local market, venue, and audience still matter, and you'll still make calls on flat fee versus per head. But it removes the part where you're staring at a blank page trying to justify a number from nothing.
If any of this raises questions specific to your situation, the frequently asked questions page covers most of what comes up, and the contact us page is there if you'd rather ask directly.
If you're working through all of this because you're thinking about running events regularly rather than pricing the one night in front of you, it's worth looking at what the licensee program actually includes before you spend more time pricing something from a blank page. When it looks like a fit, the licensee application is the next step.