Eventbrite Inc (EB) 2022 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Eventbrite First Quarter Fiscal Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions).

I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Katherine Chen, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and welcome to Eventbrite's first quarter fiscal year 2022 earnings call. Prior to this call, we released our shareholder letter announcing our financial results, which can be found on our website at investor.eventbrite.com.

Before we begin, I would like to remind you that during today's call, we will be making forward-looking statements regarding future events and financial performance. We caution that such statements reflect our best judgment as of today, April 28, based on factors that are currently known to us and that actual future events or results could differ materially due to several factors, many of which are beyond our control.

For a more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties affecting our future results, we refer you to the section titled Forward-Looking Statements in our Shareholder Letter and our filings with the SEC. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during the call to reflect events or circumstances after today or to reflect new information or the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law.

During this call, we will present adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin, non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures are not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles and have limitations as an analytical tool. You should not consider them in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of our results of operations as reported under GAAP. A reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure is available in our shareholder letter. We encourage you to read our shareholder letter as it contains important information about GAAP and non-GAAP results.

And with that, I'll now turn the call over to Julia Hartz, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Katherine, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I hope you and your families are healthy and that you've been able to get back out and enjoy the thrill of live events once again. As I look at the progress we've made in the first quarter, I'm feeling increasingly confident about our strategy, our connection to creators and the products we're building for them. Our entire team is united around a singular focus to build the best marketing and ticketing platform for frequent creators.

Our momentum towards that goal is fueling tangible success for creators on our platform, and we believe our impact will be amplified as live events continue to rebound. A few numbers from our first quarter illustrate these key takeaways. We grew the number of paid creators transacting on our platform by 60% year-to-year, thanks to the ongoing recovery of live events and the accumulating strength of our product and marketing investments. We then converted that 60% growth in paid creators into a 76% increase in paid tickets by focusing on the needs of frequent creators and helping them connect with even larger audiences.

And we leveraged 76% growth in paid tickets to achieve a 100% increase in revenue, thanks to an uptick in average ticket value and take rate improved by product advances and sustainable business model improvements. Now when you combine that revenue flywheel together with expanding gross margins, strong operating leverage and our third consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA, you can see why we're excited about our strategy and our momentum.

Going a layer deeper, we have delivered several key product wins this quarter, and this is where our product-led strategy is delivering impact above and beyond the recovery of our industry. We rolled out a brand-new and much improved creator navigation experience during the first quarter and already nearly half of the creators have adopted this upgraded user experience. Many customers are reporting their new discovery of existing features that they simply had never known about.

Meanwhile, adoption of calendar collections and more advanced reporting functionalities are increasing, and we believe these deepening usage patterns will help strengthen customer retention over time. We introduced a new paid e-mail feature within Boost at the start of the quarter, and this premium priced offering is proving to be just as highly popular among creators as we anticipated. Since January, more than 1/3 of Boost new subscribers have been drawn in by premium paid email. Our creators total e-mail campaign volume has increased by more than 50% over the same time frame.

One of our featured creators, Matt Orlove is producing some of the most sought after parties in the country right now. He has over 91,000 e-mail subscribers in Los Angeles alone. Prior to using Eventbrite's premium e-mail campaign tool, he struggled to get a strong click-through rate for his weekly e-mails. Now Orlove estimates that e-mail sent via Boost are 3x more effective than other services he's tried because his customers trust the Eventbrite brand. We also upgraded Boost social media marketing features in the quarter, adding AI-generated keyword recommendations and automated audience targeting. Both of these features save creators time and leverage Eventbrite's extensive live events data.

Creators have now marketed more than 30,000 events via Boost and the average return on ad spend among these users has been an attractive 5 to 1 return. The last set of Q1 product wins, I'll call out today center on improving the customer checkout experience. Upgrades to the ticket buyer payment experience have lifted checkout conversion rates and delivered a direct sales volume benefit to our creators. We also added Apple Pay in our largest markets in the first quarter, and this, too, shows encouraging signs for conversion rates.

When we step back and take the full measure of our product initiatives, a few key themes stand out. First, our focus on frequent creators means that our product road map addresses the needs of the largest and broadest set of creators in our market. As a result, new products we introduced are making faster, wider ripples across a large base of valuable customers. Second, our commitment to delivering a self-service product experience means we are continually redesigning for greater ease and efficiency. These are value propositions that resonate with busy creators and strengthen our user loyalty.

And third, our close connection to our creators means that we have an intimate understanding of their needs and expectations. This reduces the risk and increases the probability of success associated with our product investment decisions. While the creators we serve are often individuals or small nimble teams, our platform serves these businesses collectively at enormous scale. Over 300,000 creators chose Eventbrite to power nearly 1.4 million events during the first quarter. We transacted over 62 million tickets to these events, which translates to nearly 700,000 tickets processed every day all around the world.

We believe our ticketing volume places Eventbrite at the top of our industry, and we are committed to extending our leadership position. Our commitment is not only to help new creators join the live experience's economy, but also to build a strong creator community where all participants can benefit. For example, we're extending our industry reach beyond our product investments into the vibrant community of creators who rely on Eventbrite. In Q1, we announced the launch of 2 new programs aligned with our customers, the Creator Collective and Reconvene Accelerator. The Creator Collective is an ambassador program for established event influencers to connect with us and each other, setting the agenda for our reconvene summit and series and amplifying their work across our marketing channels.

The Reconvene Accelerator will sponsor emerging creators with grants and mentorship opportunities. These initiatives generate valuable insight for our product development team to incorporate into our road map. Looking ahead, we'll continue investing in our frequent creator tools as we also lean into a continuous release cycle for Eventbrite Boost. We're developing Boost into a comprehensive solution for both paid and free creators to manage their events, engage their communities and raise their brand awareness.

Features like organic social media, new social media integrations and promoted content are all in different stages of development, and we look forward to updating you on these in the future. Demand generation within Boost is an attractive opportunity with strong interest and appeal among our creators. We're making progress on product development here and actively assessing the best path to monetization. Eventbrite-driven tickets are already a valuable benefit for creators who host events on our platform. These tickets made up 26% of total ticket volume in the first quarter. That's equivalent to over $174 million in gross ticket sales.

That's a remarkable number that really highlights the existing sophistication of our demand generation capabilities. It's also why we're so encouraged about the impact we can drive for creators as they work to build bigger audiences. Another area of Eventbrite leadership will be our social impact program. As everyone on this call knows, our mission is to bring the world together through live experiences and an important offshoot of that mission is the impact we can have on combating the negative mental health consequences of social isolation.

We believe we're uniquely positioned to activate creators and events on our platform to help alleviate isolation, especially among young people. We'll have more details to share when the program launches next month. We're kicking off 2022 with strong financial results that reflect the recovery of live events, accentuated by the impact of our product-led strategy. Like me, our whole team is energized by the progress we've achieved and the opportunity ahead. Our product road map will accelerate throughout the year with marketing tools and demand generation shifting upwards on our priority list.

And we remain well positioned in a highly attractive market as the leading ticketing solution for independent entrepreneurial creators. These are the people who are fueling the next phase of growth for live events. And our team is laser-focused on this momentum. We're excited to share more details about our strategy and see many of you in person at our Investor Day on June 2. As we look forward to those updates, I have one more important announcement to share today. We're always looking for new perspectives and expertise to inform our strategy and strengthen decision-making.

Our Board of Directors is highly engaged in these areas, and I'm thrilled to announce that April Underwood has been nominated to join our Board later this year. April is an experienced public company Board Director and has a wealth of product knowledge gathered through her impressive career at places such as Slack, Twitter and Google. On behalf of the entire team, I want to thank our creators, our employees and our shareholders for your ongoing support and dedication.

Now let me turn the call over to Lanny.

Thank you, Julia. As you just said, our strong first quarter financial results reflect clear strategy, focused execution and the inherent strength of a product-driven business model that places the needs of our customers at its very core. It's not a coincidence that our own strong growth in the first quarter of 2022 comes at the same time that creators on our platform are attaining new heights in their businesses. Specifically, paid tickets per creator and gross ticket sales per creator, both grew at double-digit rates year-to-year in the first quarter, a clear sign of the success creators are having on our platform.

First quarter revenue of $55.9 million more than doubled last year's first quarter results and surpassed our expectations for the period. As the external environment for live events improved after early February and with our own product and marketing investments contributing to creator acquisition and volume growth, we achieved strong month-over-month growth throughout the first quarter. In fact, after a relatively slow start in January, March 2022 was the best month for gross ticket sales and for revenue that we've seen since the pandemic hit in early 2020.

The revenue growth we achieved in the first quarter can be linked right back to the key business metrics we've shared with you as these really are the gears that drive our revenue engine. Over 135,000 event creators ticketed and marketed nearly 440,000 paid events on our platform during the quarter, increases of 60% and 32%, respectively, over last year's first quarter. In March, we surpassed 100,000 monthly transacting creators for the first time since early 2020. And for the quarter, the number of paid frequent creators grew by 40% year-to-year.

With more frequent creators on our platform, the number of paid events per creator averaged 3.2 events for the quarter, up from 2.7 events in the same quarter of 2019 prior to the pandemic. Paid tickets per event improved by 34% over last year's first quarter, reflecting strong consumer demand as well as our ability to connect creators with audiences. Average ticket value grew 5% year-over-year, reaching its highest level in 2 years. And finally, our revenue take rate improved by more than 0.5 percentage point year-over-year, which helped propel revenue per ticket to $3.09 for the quarter, which is above what we saw even in the 2 years prior to COVID.

Turning to the profitability side of the equation. Gross margin was 64.3% in the first quarter, nearly 14 percentage points higher than a year ago, driven by higher revenue against the partially fixed cost of revenue structure. Total operating expenses grew 26% year-to-year, reflecting purposeful investments into our product and our team. Almost 40% of our operating expenses are now dedicated to product development. We're managing all expenses carefully amidst what has been a highly competitive talent market and in an environment where our revenue has been growing 100% plus year-to-year.

Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $2.4 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 4% compared to a loss of $8.5 million in the first quarter of 2021. Comparing that year-to-year change in adjusted EBITDA to the year-to-year increase in revenue in the first quarter, we delivered a revenue flow-through rate in the high 30% in the first quarter, which aligns with our objectives for driving adjusted EBITDA profitability and sustainable margin improvement as ticket volume and revenue grow through time. Finally, our balance sheet is also strong at the end of the first quarter. We ended the quarter with $710 million in cash and cash equivalents and net liquidity of $355 million, ample funding to support our investments and our growth objectives.

Turning to our business outlook. Based on the information and expectations we have today, we anticipate second quarter revenue to be between 60 and $63 million, representing double-digit growth at the midpoint over our first quarter results. This outlook reflects a stronger Q1 to Q2 revenue progression that we've seen historically pre-pandemic. And the primary factor behind that difference is the softness we saw at the start of the first quarter. We are prepared for the possibility that COVID-related impacts could lead to greater than normal month-to-month volatility in results.

Longer term, the product and customer momentum we've built up over the last 24 months and our higher-than-anticipated first quarter results provide real encouragement that our product-led strategy can lead to strong and sustainable revenue growth, accompanied by steady margin improvement. We look forward to taking a much deeper dive into our long-term growth strategy and our financial plans when we meet live on June 2 at our Investor Day.

And with that, I'll turn the call over to the operator for the question-and-answer portion of the call.

(Operator Instructions) Our first question goes to Ryan Sundby with William Blair.

Yes, really great to see revenue and paid ticket volumes exceed expectations despite, I guess, all the headwinds we've seen so far this year. I think in the shareholder letter, you talked about a surge in events from January to March as Omicron waned. Can you just zoom in a little bit more and talk about what that recovery looked like intra quarter because I would assume a lot of those 18 million paid tickets were -- are heavily weighted to March, which sounds like the best month since the start of the pandemic.

Ryan, you're right, March was the best month that we've seen since the start of the pandemic and particularly so in the face value of tickets and in the volume of tickets as well as transacting creators. So it's a really strong month. Now normally, the progression from December to January, February to March is kind of like a 5% increase in January and then a 5% increase in February and then the stronger kind of mid-teens increase in March. This year, we saw a big downtick between December and January. It's hard to remember now, but that's really when Omicron was sweeping across the entire United States and putting a real restriction on local gatherings.

But that abated, and we saw probably 3, 4, 5x as much month-over-month growth in February and March as we normally see in those months. And so -- but if you sort of put it all together, Ryan, I think that's where -- I think the real kind of the big takeaway comes because the month-to-month stuff is not so interesting. If we look at where we are in March relative to where we were in December, we're about 10-plus points ahead of where we'd be normally under kind of normal seasonality. So we've fully come back and then some. And I think as we said, a lot of that could be attributed to the product momentum, the marketing momentum and the leadership that we have in the category, it really seems to be helping us out in this improved environment.

That's great to hear. Nice to see it all come together. On the revenue per ticket reaching its highest quarterly levels in 2018, I think there are a couple of factors there, higher average ticket values, improved take rate, decline in ticket refund activity. Could you maybe size each of those for us? And then I guess, with the improved take rate, is that due to a change in pricing or mix? Or is that more of a reflection of some of the new tools you've added with things like Boost?

It's not really due to Boost. So let me try to break it down. The take rate has improved primarily because of focus on frequent creators. And the product market set that we have between our software, our solution, our platform and frequent creators, it's just -- it's valued by frequent creators very, very highly. They are -- there are wheelhouse and that -- there's a strong recognition of Eventbrite being the solution for them, and that certainly helps from a pricing perspective.

Secondly, we have seen a little bit of an improvement in ticket price, about 5% year-over-year. But the year-to-year increase in revenue, particularly has been kind of low teens. So you can think of it as 5 points of improvement in the price of the ticket and another, call it, 7 or 8 points in growth from the take rate. And that improvement in take rate has had, there's a little bit of a reduction in the reserve -- sorry, refund activity. But I think more than anything else that's been really kind of the focus on our core customers who value the product most highly.

And frankly, if you look back, we compared the revenue particular to where we were in 2018 and 2019. And we did that to show that we're -- we want to explain to people, hey, we're at a level that we haven't been in before. And number two, when we think -- and then any customer looks at the difference in our product today versus where it was in 2018, 2019, we've made substantial progress. And I think that's what's being reflected in the revenue per ticket.

Got it. And maybe last one for me. It sounds interesting free and paid creators take up more of these tools like calendars. On the free side, are you starting to see the adoption of the tools start to drive conversion and to pay yet? Or are we maybe too early for that?

One of the things about the free event creators that we like is that they're discovering the capability to market their events and reach a wider audience through Boost. So 20% of Boost customers today are free event creators. And Boost is a paid subscription service. So it's really the first time in Eventbrite's history where we've been able to offer something of great value to professional creators who are hosting free events, and they are paying for that value, which includes particularly the ability to market their events efficiently out in social media as well as most notably what's driven this uptick in free creator adoption of Boost has been our premium e-mail campaign.

So we're seeing about an increase of about 50% volume of our premium e-mail versus our legacy e-mail tool. And predominantly, that's speaking to these creators of large free events, where the revenue is not necessarily in the ticket price, that's why it's a free event, but the revenue is actually elsewhere within the event. So it's either lead gen or it's food and beverage or its merchandise. So we'll continue to lean into that opportunity, and that's really what we saw as some early signals here in the quarter.

In terms of conversion from free to paid, Ryan, I would say that what helps us on that is building trust with those creators such that they're bringing over their paid events. And then also giving them insight into what they could be making if they charged a ticket price for their event. But that's longer cycle. That's not something that we'll see right away usually when somebody signs up on the platform.

Our next question goes to Cameron Perrone with Morgan Stanley.

First, on gross margin, understanding that it's -- it was up year-over-year. It ticked down a little bit sequentially. So anything you guys can call out there? Or should we just expect to see a little bit of noise in that quarter-to-quarter? And then to follow up on the paid ARPU strength for the 5% contribution coming from kind of core price, call it, are there types of creators or events that you can kind of intentionally foster to drive rate? Or is it they are on the core pricing front, kind of less of a managed outcome?

So, I'll take the first one on the gross margin, Cam. The -- if you look at where we were in the fourth quarter to where we were in the first quarter, half of the change in gross margin was just due to the change in revenue level against some of the fixed costs that exist within cost of revenue. So that piece, as we recover from where we were at the very start of the year and start to scale, ticket volume and revenue higher, that piece we're reversing pretty quickly.

There also at the start of the year in that Omicron environment was a little bit higher refund activity. We anticipate a little bit higher refund activity. So there's another small portion of the gross margin comparison, first quarter versus fourth quarter that included a higher reserve rate for future refunds. That too, should sort of unwind in a more normal environment. And then the last small difference where some of the composition of where ticket sales were occurring geographically, not every part of the world has the exact same transaction processing costs, and we have a little bit more volume in some of our more expensive markets this quarter relative to the last quarter.

But I think kind of zooming out on that question from the month-to-month quarterly picture, we've said it before and we'll say it again, our cost base within -- there's a portion of the gross profit that is fixed. Most of it is -- sorry, the cost of revenue that is fixed. The variable expenses are about $0.25 on the dollar. And so as the dollars, the revenue dollars grow, we would expect that the gross margin continues to move upward kind of at a gradual and steady rate to a number in the high 60% to 70% range.

Got it. Helpful.

On your second question, I'll take first -- I'll start and then, Julia, you can add to this. The strength that we've seen so far in the revenue per ticket and in the take rate, it really does reflect a focus -- a customer focus. And that is -- it sort of stands to reason that your primary customers who value your product the most for whom it is the best solution and the tightest fit to all of their needs. Other places where you face -- we see -- we enjoy the best pricing. And we have -- there have been other parts going at the fringes of our model where we had to discount in the past that we don't have to discount today, the competitive dynamic has changed.

So really what you've seen from a pricing perspective is a focus on the healthiest customers and on the best customers in the marketplace, rather than any step function change on pricing that we've taken, we haven't done that. As Julia talked about a moment ago, Boost is an incremental fee, our premium e-mail product is an incremental fee. And those things over time will drive the take rate. That's very, very small today.

In terms of your question about different types of events that we could think about, Julia maybe you could talk about that.

Sure. So typically speaking, we see higher ticket prices in music, in business professional events as well as bigger episodic events. And so I think as the mix shift continues to play out as events start coming back as businesses start thinking about hosting more conferences, as music venues are opening up more shows. And then as bigger gatherings where you see sort of more of that 1,000 to 10,000 people gathering around a festival, start to come back, I think we'll start to see a stronger average ticket price, and we will see our revenue scale with that.

I would say that Lanny's point on delivering value to our customers and them understanding that value is a key point for us in any pricing scenario. So when I talk to creators today, they're really appreciating Eventbrite for our brand value. So their customers are opening e-mails from them when they're sending it through Eventbrite because they recognize the brand, they're trusting that event because the event is on Eventbrite. So, a lot of our customers use the word validating. And they're seeing what we're doing in marketing and they're getting really excited about it.

So it's early days for us to be pushing into marketing and demand generation, but the savvy frequent creators that we're focused on, can see what we're doing. And their -- I mean, they want this help. So the value conversation is shifting, and I think that will be a really good thing for us as we think about pricing in the future and how we deliver this great product.

Our next question goes to Lamont Williams with Stifel.

The first question is, is there anything you can discuss about April? It seems that we've seen some COVID kind of resurgence in some markets. And I'm just trying to get a feel of if the transition after a strong March has kind of ended up and continue into April? Or have you kind of seen a little bit of some dislocations with some of the COVID resurgence?

And then secondly, Lanny, in terms of kind of the investment that you're doing in product development and some higher head count costs, is there any kind of color you can give us around the progression of the investment kind of over the next couple of quarters through the balance of the year?

Sure. I think April -- we haven't made any comments about April. I can do it right now, but I would say comparing what we're seeing right now with Omicron to -- with COVID to what we saw in January and February, that's like not even a close comparison. It's hard now to remember, but if you do spend a minute and just go look at any of the graphs, the infection rates that were prevailing in late December and into January on COVID, it was a straight up line there for several weeks that really was changing the life gathering marketplace.

And we don't see that happening. And as we've said now for kind of 2 years, you can take a pretty -- there's a pretty direct inverse correlation between a surge in COVID and a decline in ticket purchases for live events as well as a lot of other things. But you're just not seeing that kind of case count right now. So it hasn't been -- so far hasn't been much of a disturbance at the end of the first quarter.

In terms of our investment in product development and head count, we're really excited. We've made over 150 hires since the start of this year. The bulk of that has been engineering and into some really key engineering roles that go from the back end and our data teams through the frequent creator kind of core product offering and particularly into some of the things that we're talking a lot about around Boost and demand generation and the consumer side of our business. So we're really excited about the progress we've been able to make there. It's been purposeful. It's been planned out for this year, and frankly, as part of kind of a 3-year strategy that we've been talking about now.

So I think you'll see a fairly steady progression there as we continue to add to the team that's bringing the product to market, that's the difference between the external environment and the growth rate of the company, which is getting clearer and clearer.

Our last question goes to Dae Lee with JPMorgan.

First one for Julia. It feels like pent-up demand and desire to connect are clearly driving strong momentum in your business. But, I guess, looking ahead, investors are increasingly concerned about macro factors, including inflation weighing on consumer demand. So as we look ahead to peak event season like how do you feel about the durability of the strong momentum that you're seeing in the business right now? And are you seeing any signs of consumer demand softening in your business?

And then secondly, for Lanny, sorry to go back to net revenue per paid ticket again. But judging by what you said so far, it feels like the drivers of the strong performance this quarter appears to be sustainable. So -- and as we look ahead, is this a good level of net revenue per basic that we can expect from your business?

So, when I look ahead at what we're all facing in terms of an impending recession and obviously, the current inflation that we're experiencing, I'm not concerned about the durability and resilience of our business, and that's twofold. One is that we've already lived through a recessionary period as a company in 2009, what we saw, obviously, on a different scale than where we are today. But what we thought happening on the platform is people getting out and gathering even more.

So there were a few different societal and secular trends that we saw going on during that time. One is that everybody who was looking for a job needed to be out and be networking to find their next job. So we saw a huge rise of networking and professional skill building conferences and workshops. And the second thing is that we tended to see more event categories around hedonism rise like music and food and beverage, interestingly enough.

So what we know about the consumer trends in our market, where there are millions of events and the average ticket price is around $40 is that these types of gatherings and these behavioral trends that we've seen in the past have a high likelihood of repeating themselves in the future. The second thing is that since March of 2020, Eventbrite is a structurally different company. And as we've really thoughtfully built back from that place of taking $100 million plus out of our OpEx, we have built back in a much more resilient manner.

I mean you can see it in the way that we're investing, where we're investing in, how we're investing and the profitability of the business. So I would say we're battle tested. We have a plan for the future that includes many different scenarios. And so that's what keeps me confident is both the longevity of Eventbrite and what we've seen in the past as well as the preparation that we've taken for the future.

And then finally, I'll just say that our event creators, the ones that are hosting these events that are happening multiple times a month and a week, they're small business owners that are very savvy and entrepreneurial. And they've been through a really tough period of time during COVID. And so the creators that are on the platform are the ones that have figured out how to operate through a tough live in environment, as you can imagine, in live experiences. So I have a lot of faith in them, and I know that those 3 factors will get us through the future.

On the take rate question, and it's not just a take rate question, it's really a unit economics of revenue per ticket. A couple of things I'd say. So let's start with the ticket price. Our ticket price this quarter, you could see was just below $40, $39.70. And if you were to go back to kind of 2018, 2019 there and look at the ticket prices are prevailing at that time, there's another 10% or 15% growth in the average ticket value to get back to where we were previously.

One thing we did see right at the start of COVID was because -- I think because of the uncertainty of would an event happen, would did not happen, there was some kind of across every category, across every market, across every format. Pricing in of some of that uncertainty that led the ticket prices kind of in every category, in every format to come down a bit, and that seems to be reversing right now. So there's that kind of, call it, 10% to 15% in ticket pricing potentially. That's one part of the drivers of our revenue equation that we don't frankly control entirely. That's really a matter of the product market fit between the creators -- the creators creation and attendee interests as well as their ability to market those events very, very well and drive demand for them.

But there's that. Over the same time frame, we've improved the take rate by probably 3/4 of a percentage point. And I talked about that earlier. That's been a focus on high-value customers and a lot of investment in improving the product so that it has a great fit. It's driving their success. We look at one of the first comments that I made in my prepared remarks was that tickets per creator and revenue per creator or ticket sales value per creator is that just it increases year-over-year.

And when we're helping enable that, it's certainly helpful to sort of celebrate our product's effect in that success for creators and that leads to pricing color for us, and that's reflected in the take rate. As we look forward on the take rate, there's a little bit of room probably to continue to move it up on the core product. But I think the biggest opportunity for us is really some of the stuff that we've been talking about and Julia talked about today around Boost and around demand generation and bringing entirely new pockets of support and service and growth to the table for creators.

And we know they have an interest in those things, they have a willingness to pay for demand generation. They have a willingness to -- they've an ability to pay for incremental ticket sales. And those would be the places where I would look -- we are looking for the most long-term upside in the take rate. So it's not really about kind of pricing on the core product. Our big opportunities are really to touch more and serve more of the creators' operating budget. And most creators spend between 20% and 40% of their budget on marketing. That's a very, very sizable addressable market, right next door to the part of the market that we're already addressing pretty profitably and with some real growth.

That concludes today's Eventbrite first quarter fiscal year 2022 earnings conference call. Thank you for your participation. You can now disconnect your line.