Demo Aurora Live: venue and ticketing day

Demo Aurora Live operates a 12,000-seat arena in Dubai and produces concerts, conferences, and family shows. It sells tickets in AED and USD through web, box office, and partners; pays promoters and artists; operates concessions; and manages refunds, service fees, attendance, and settlement. OSERP connects event, venue, seat inventory, order, payment, gate scan, concession sale, promoter statement, and financial close.

1. Create the event and seating inventory

Create event AUR-2026-0918, venue, promoter, artist, doors time, event time, currency, tax, refund policy, age rule, capacity, and status. Seat inventory records section, row, seat, ticket type, price tier, hold reason, channel, and status.

Field	Demo value	Impact
Event	AUR-2026-0918	Sales and settlement key
Venue	Aurora Arena Dubai	Capacity and location
Capacity	12,000	Inventory control
Price tier	Gold AED 450	Revenue and availability
Promoter	Meridian Events	Payable and statement
Channel	Web / box office / partner	Commission and KPI
Service fee	AED 25	Separate revenue
Currency	AED / USD	Settlement and FX
Gate	G3	Scan and attendance
Refund deadline	48 hours before show	Policy validation

An event version is required when price, date, or seating changes after sales begin. A held seat is not sold; it needs owner, expiry, and reason.

2. Publish inventory and sell tickets

The ticket order header records customer, event, channel, currency, contact, payment method, promo code, refund policy acknowledgement, and external order ID. Detail records seat or general-admission type, price tier, quantity, service fee, tax, discount, barcode, and commission.

A web order for two Gold tickets is AED 900 plus AED 50 service fee before tax. The seat allocation reserves exact seats for a short hold, then confirms only after payment success. A timeout releases the hold after expiry and cannot leave phantom availability.

Partner sales record partner, allocation, commission, settlement period, and ticket IDs. A 10% commission on AED 9,000 partner gross is AED 900 payable or deducted according to contract. The partner statement links every ticket.

3. Payments, refunds, and chargebacks

Payment fields include gateway, transaction ID, currency, amount, fees, value date, payer, authorisation, and status. Duplicate gateway events are deduplicated by transaction ID. A failed payment does not confirm a seat.

Refund fields include order, ticket, reason, policy check, amount, currency, approver, bank/gateway, and status. A cancellation within 48 hours is valid; a late request requires manager decision. Chargebacks reference original payment and create an exception, not a deleted sale.

4. Gate operations and attendance

Gate scans record ticket ID, barcode, gate, scan time, device, seat, entry result, duplicate flag, and offline-sync status. A duplicate scan blocks entry and shows prior gate/time. Offline devices queue events with sequence and reconcile after connectivity.

Attendance reports show sold, refunded, scanned, no-show, complimentary, partner, and capacity. A complimentary ticket is an approved zero-price allocation, not an unrecorded cancellation.

5. Concessions and merchandise

Concession items have SKU, UoM, price, tax, inventory account, COGS, warehouse, batch/expiry, and event. A POS sale of AED 1,200 posts revenue, tax, and COGS; stock issues link to terminal and event. Spoilage or complimentary consumption requires reason and approval.

Merchandise returns reference sale, item, quantity, condition, and refund. Event-level margin includes ticket, service fee, concession, merchandise, promoter share, commissions, venue cost, and labour.

6. Promoter settlement and artist costs

The promoter contract stores guarantee, revenue share, ticket basis, taxes, deductions, settlement date, currency, and approval. Artist and production costs record supplier, contract, milestone, advance, currency, tax, and evidence.

At close, gross ticket revenue AED 4,500,000 less promoter share 70% and partner commissions is calculated from sold/paid/refunded tickets. A statement shows gross, refunds, fees, taxes, comps, commissions, promoter share, advances, and net payable. It must reconcile to orders and gateway receipts.

7. Multi-currency and close

USD partner sales and artist payments store transaction rate, bank rate, value date, fees, and realised FX. Open USD balances are revalued at month end. Tax and service-fee accounts remain separate from ticket revenue.

Close reconciles seat inventory to orders, payments to gateways, scans to attendance, concessions to stock, refunds/chargebacks, promoter statements, artist advances, tax, bank, FX, and venue costs. An event cannot close while ticket, payment, or settlement exceptions remain unresolved.

KPI	Baseline	After OSERP discipline	Improvement
Seat inventory accuracy	97.2%	99.9%	+2.7 points
Payment-to-ticket mismatch	2.8%	0.3%	89% lower
Gate duplicate detection	82%	99.8%	+17.8 points
Promoter settlement cycle	18 days	5 days	72% faster
Refund processing	9 days	2 days	78% faster
Concession stock variance	6.1%	1.8%	70% lower

Practice challenge

Create an event, publish seat tiers, hold and sell web/box-office/partner tickets, process a gateway retry, scan a duplicate barcode, sell concessions, refund a valid ticket, settle promoter share in USD, and close the event. Explain every field, seat status, payment, commission, tax, inventory movement, FX, permission, API ID, and audit drill-down.

Related: POS operations, Payment Receipt field guide, Pricing field guide, Inventory field guide, and API cookbook.