If you're weighing up whether to run A Murder Mystery Dinner games in your own area, the question that actually decides it is money: what's the licensee revenue share, and what does it look like once tickets are sold and the night is over? This post walks through the split, what it covers, and when the money lands in your account.
The short version: a licensee keeps the large majority of every ticket sold. The company doesn't take a cut of your venue deals, your merchandise, or anything else you build around the game. What you're sharing is the ticket price for the game itself, because that's what the licence fee is paying for.
What is the licensee revenue share?
The licensee revenue share is the split between what a licensee keeps from ticket sales and what goes back to the company for the licence. You bring the venue and the audience; the company supplies the games, the training, the brand, and the booking system that takes payment. The share reflects that division of work — you're doing the local selling and the event delivery, so you keep most of what comes in.
This isn't a franchise fee model where you pay a flat monthly amount regardless of how much you sell. It's tied to actual tickets sold, so a quiet month costs you less than a licence fee you'd owe either way.
Why isn't it a flat licence fee?
A flat fee rewards the company whether or not your events sell. A revenue share ties the company's income to yours, which means the incentive is for both sides to help your events sell out — better scripts, better support, better booking tools — rather than just collecting a fee and walking away.
What does the split actually pay for?
The portion that goes back to the company covers a specific set of things, not a vague brand tax:
- The game scripts and materials, written and tested, ready to run
- Training on how to host and run an event properly
- The booking and payment system your customers use to buy tickets
- Ongoing access to new games as they're released
- The Alibi Entertainment Group brand and marketing materials
None of that is a one-off cost you pay upfront and then forget. It's an ongoing relationship, which is why the split is ongoing too, rather than a single licence purchase.
How much does a licensee actually keep?
Licensees keep the large majority of every ticket sold. The exact figures are covered when you apply, because they can vary slightly depending on the games and package involved, but the structure is consistent: you're not splitting close to fifty-fifty, and you're not handing over a slice that eats into whether the event is worth running.
If you want to see how private event pricing compares to what a licensee charges locally, the private event pricing and availability page shows what customers pay when they book directly, which is a useful reference point for what a local ticket price might reasonably be in your own market.
Does the split change for private bookings versus public tickets?
The mechanics are the same either way — it's still a share of the ticket revenue — but private bookings and public ticketed nights behave differently in practice. A private event at a customer's venue is usually one transaction for a fixed number of guests. A public ticketed night, the kind you can browse by area on public events by city, is a string of individual ticket sales building up to an event date. Licensees typically run both, and the revenue share applies to each ticket regardless of which route it came through.
When do licensees actually get paid?
Payment runs through the booking system, so tickets are collected as customers buy them rather than settled entirely after the fact. The licence share is reconciled on a regular schedule rather than per ticket, which means you're not waiting on a single transaction to clear before you see any money — you're looking at a periodic payout net of the licence share, with the underlying detail available so you can check it against your own bookings.
This matters more than it sounds, because cash flow is the actual test of whether a licence works for you, not just the headline split. Knowing you'll be paid on a set schedule, rather than chasing individual settlements, is part of what the booking system is for.
What costs come out before you see the money?
The licence share comes off the ticket price before it reaches you, so what you see land in your account is already net of that. What isn't included, and what you're responsible for separately, are your own local costs: the venue arrangement, any food or drink you're providing, printing, local marketing, and your own time running the event. The revenue share is specifically for the game and the systems behind it, not for your operating costs on the ground.
Is the licensee revenue share worth it compared to running something independently?
That depends on what you'd be replacing it with. Writing, testing, and maintaining a rotating slate of murder mystery games is a significant ongoing job on its own, before you've sold a single ticket or trained a host. The revenue share buys you out of that work entirely, plus the booking infrastructure and the brand recognition that comes with an established name. Whether that trade is worth it comes down to how many events you realistically expect to run and how much of your own time you'd rather spend selling and hosting rather than writing.
If the numbers matter to you in detail, they're worth asking about directly rather than estimating, since they can shift slightly by package.
If you've read this far because you're actually weighing it up, the next reasonable step is to look at the licensee program itself, see what's included, and if it fits, the licensee application is where the specific figures for your area get discussed.