Ask any organiser what a ticket platform costs per ticket and you'll usually get a quick answer. Ask when and via whose account the money arrives, and it often goes quiet. Yet that second part matters just as much. It determines whether your revenue — money that's already yours — is actually available to you, or sits on someone else's balance sheet waiting for a third party to release it.
At MijnEvent we made a deliberate choice here: we don't hold your ticket money. It comes straight to you. In this article we explain how that works and — more importantly — why the hold model that many other parties use carries bigger risks than organisers realise.
Two models, a world of difference
There are roughly two ways ticket money flows.
Model 1 — the platform holds everything. The visitor pays, and the money lands on the ticket platform's account. There it stays. Only after the event — sometimes a week later, sometimes a month, sometimes longer — does the platform transfer your share, after deducting their costs. In the meantime your entire revenue sits on their account.
Model 2 — the money comes straight to you. The visitor pays directly into your own account. The platform only collects a fee per ticket that's known in advance, and leaves the rest alone. From the very first sale the money is on your account.
MijnEvent works according to model 2, via Mollie Connect. You connect your own Mollie account, and every ticket payment comes straight to you. We automatically take a fixed fee per ticket — that's it. The rest is and stays yours, from second one. How that connection works is covered in Connect your Mollie account.
The benefits of direct payouts
At first glance the difference looks administrative. It isn't. It touches the core of how you finance your event.
Your money is available immediately
Running an event costs money before the doors open. Production, venue hire, artists, marketing, advances to suppliers — those bills arrive in the run-up, exactly when ticket sales are already going. If your revenue is only released after the event, you have to pre-finance those run-up costs out of your own pocket or with a loan, while the money is already sitting right around the corner. With direct payouts, today's revenue is on your account today. For your cashflow that's not a luxury but a foundation.
You keep it in your own hands
Because the money comes into your own Mollie account, you set the rules. In your own Mollie dashboard you decide which bank account you're paid out to and how often. MijnEvent doesn't sit in between — we can't delay, pause or withhold your payout, simply because the money is never with us.
Safely held at Mollie
Mollie is a licensed payment institution regulated by the Dutch central bank (De Nederlandsche Bank). Your money is held there safely and separately administered, exactly as it would be for any serious webshop. No intermediary shuffling your revenue around, just a regulated payment service with one job: getting the money to the right party.
Independent of the platform
And perhaps most important: you're not dependent on the health, the schedule or the goodwill of the ticket platform to access your own money. That sounds obvious — until you realise that under the hold model it's precisely not the case.
And now the downsides of the hold model — read this carefully
This is where it gets serious. Because the hold model sounds innocent ("you'll get your money after the event anyway, right?"), but it carries risks that organisers consistently underestimate. You need to know three of them before you choose a platform.
1. Your cashflow is held hostage by someone else
Say you sell €80,000 worth of tickets over three months. Under the hold model that entire amount sits on the platform's account until after your event. For three months you have a receivable, not money. You can't pay your suppliers with it, can't scale up marketing, can't absorb a setback. Your revenue exists, but you can't reach it.
For an ongoing organisation with multiple events that stacks up: there's permanently a substantial sum of yours parked with someone else. Money that's yours, but that your day-to-day operations get nothing out of as long as it sits there.
2. Often no segregated client-funds account — your revenue is on their balance sheet
This is the part almost nobody checks. When a party holds money belonging to customers and organisers, that money should really be held separately — apart from the company's own assets, for example via a client-funds foundation (stichting derdengelden) or a regulated safeguarding arrangement. That way it can never get mixed up with the platform's own business funds.
In practice, many ticket parties have not arranged that separation properly. Your revenue then simply sits on the platform's ordinary business account — part of their balance sheet, exposed to their debts. If the platform goes bankrupt while your money is still there, you're no longer the owner of that money but a creditor in an insolvency. At the back of the queue, with a real chance of losing part — or all — of it. Money that was unmistakably yours, but that you never see again because it was on the wrong account.
3. In a dispute they can use your revenue as leverage
And then the scenario nobody wants to think about, but which is real. As long as someone else holds your money, that party has a lever in hand. If a dispute arises — over costs, over terms, over a chargeback, over anything — the platform can simply suspend the payout. "We're not paying out for now."
At that moment your own revenue has suddenly become a bargaining chip in someone else's hand. Your back is against the wall: your suppliers are waiting to be paid, your visitors have already had a great event, and your money is stuck with a party that only releases it once you give ground. In the worst case they hold your entire revenue hostage, with all the consequences for your liquidity and your continuity. You're no longer the owner of your own success — you've become dependent.
Why MijnEvent removes this risk at the source
All of these risks share one cause: someone else holds your money. Remove that cause, and the risks disappear with it.
At MijnEvent your ticket money never lands on our account. It flows straight to your own Mollie account. We can't hold your revenue, delay it or use it as leverage — not because we promise not to, but because it simply never passes through our hands, technically or legally. We only collect our transparent fee per ticket, and otherwise we stay out of your money.
Concretely that means:
- No waiting time. Your revenue is on your own account immediately, not only after the event.
- No bankruptcy risk on our side. Your money is with Mollie and with you, not on MijnEvent's balance sheet.
- No hostage situation in a dispute. We can't suspend your payout, because we don't have your money.
- Full independence. You don't depend on our schedule or goodwill to reach your own money.
That's not an accidental feature. It's a deliberate choice about power: your money belongs with you, not with us.
The question to ask every platform
Before you place your ticket sales anywhere, ask these three questions — and don't accept a vague answer:
- Where does the money from my ticket sales arrive — with me or with you?
- When is my revenue actually on my account — immediately or only after the event?
- If you hold the money: is it on a segregated client-funds account, or on your own business account?
At MijnEvent the answer to question one is "with you", to question two "immediately", and question three doesn't even apply — because we don't hold the money. A ticket platform should facilitate your success, not manage your revenue.
Want to build your ticket sales on a model where your own money actually stays yours? Register your organisation or first take a calm look at the pricing — a fixed, transparent fee per ticket, and your revenue straight into your own account.