The National Data section in Audience Finder shows a region-by-region breakdown of the data in Audience Finder. Each region’s page displays the aggregated data of bookings (i.e. ticketing data) and survey responses from all organisations in the Audience Finder database, where audience members have given a postcode that belongs to that region.
National Data also presents data on the whole population of a region, not just those who engage with the arts, which allows you to analyse engagement with the arts at a regional level.
Ultimately, National Data gives you insight into the cultural preferences and booking behaviour of audiences members from a particular region, regardless of where the attendance took place.
Imagine a couple who live in York, and they decide to take a trip to the seaside on the south coast. They buy tickets for a performance at a venue in Brighton. The data generated from the money that they spend on tickets and the post-event survey response that they fill in will be recorded and included in the National Data of Audience Finder as the behaviour of audiences from Yorkshire and the Humber, NOT the South East. Although the attendance took place in the South East, the audience member who made the purchase and responded to the survey came from Yorkshire and the Humber. And because “National Data” is primarily looking at habits of the audiences from a particular region, all ticket purchases and survey responses for a given audience member will be recorded in their “home region”, regardless of where the actual attendance took place.
Conversely, the Regional Comparators in the Tickets section of Audience Finder allow a ticketed organisation – in this case, a venue in Brighton – to compare themselves with other data contributing organisations in the South East (i.e. the same region as them) allowing them to analyse the behaviour of audiences to the South East, regardless of where audience members live. Taking that same person from York visiting Brighton, their ticketing purchase would be included in the organisation-based ticketing comparator for the South East, because that is where the money was received and the attendance took place.
From an economic point of view, think about it as audience expenditure and organisational income:
- Audience Expenditure:
National Data will tell you how much money audiences from a particular region spent on the arts, regardless of the location of the arts organisation they attended. - Organisational Income:
Regional Comparators enable ticketed organisations to compare their income against the total income for all organisations in that region, whether the audiences who purchased the tickets live in that region or not.