Chobble Tickets vs EVENTIM.Light

What is EVENTIM.Light?

EVENTIM.Light is the self-serve ticketing arm of CTS EVENTIM — the parent company behind eventim.co.uk and one of the largest ticketing operations in Europe, with 250+ million tickets sold in 2019 and operations across 23+ countries. EVENTIM.Light is aimed at independent organisers, artists, and small-to-medium promoters who want to create and sell tickets without negotiating an enterprise deal.

It's a solid platform backed by serious infrastructure. But the trade-offs — particularly around fees, data ownership, and flexibility — are worth understanding before you commit.

Pricing comparison

EVENTIM.Light charges 8% per ticket in the UK, with payment processing included in that fee. There are no fixed costs or contracts. As an organiser you can choose whether to absorb the fee or pass it on to ticket buyers.

So on a £15 ticket, that's £1.20 going to EVENTIM per sale. On a £30 ticket, it's £2.40. Those numbers climb fast at volume.

Chobble Tickets is a flat £50/year (£25 for charities and community groups) with no per-ticket fees at all. You only pay Stripe or Square processing fees (1.5% + 20p) on top. If you sell more than about 65 tickets at £15 in a year, Chobble Tickets is already cheaper.

It's worth noting that EVENTIM.Light's 8% is competitive compared to some platforms (Eventbrite charges 6.95% + 59p, Fatsoma charges 10%), but it's still a percentage that grows with every ticket sold. A flat annual fee doesn't.

One important detail: according to EVENTIM.Light's German FAQ, once you choose whether to absorb the fee or pass it to buyers, you can't change that setting after your event is published. Choose carefully.

Also be aware that if you opt into the EVENTIM network distribution (selling through eventim.co.uk), buyers may incur an additional advance booking fee on top of the 8%.

Interactive cost calculator

Drag the sliders to see how costs compare at different volumes:

Payouts

EVENTIM.Light pays out within five working days after you manually mark your event as "Finished." That means your money sits with EVENTIM until after the event is over and you change its status yourself. There's no option for advance payouts. For cancelled or postponed events, settlement only happens after all buyer refund claims are resolved — which could take considerably longer.

Chobble Tickets uses Stripe or Square directly, so payments flow straight to your own payment processor account with standard processing times (typically 2–3 business days from each sale). You control your own payout schedule through Stripe or Square — not through the ticketing platform.

Feature comparison

Both platforms share some features:

• Online ticket sales with payment processing
• QR code scanning for check-in at the door
• Email confirmations to attendees
• Capacity management to prevent overselling
• Embeddable ticket shop for your own website (iframe)
• Box office / door sales support
• Real-time sales reporting and dashboards
• Free event support (no payment setup required for free events)
• Event series / recurring events
• Custom branding on your ticket shop
• Custom checkout questions

EVENTIM.Light has features Chobble Tickets doesn't:

• EVENTIM network distribution — your events get listed on eventim.co.uk (500,000+ monthly visitors in the UK), giving you access to an existing audience of ticket buyers browsing for events
• Seating plan editor — create custom venue seating charts and offer reserved seating or best-seat booking, useful for theatres and seated venues (note: seating plans cannot be edited after the event is published)
• Facebook event integration — create and sync Facebook events directly from the platform
• Promotion codes — create individual discount and presale codes for marketing campaigns
• Ad pixel tracking — embed Google and Meta (Facebook) tracking pixels to analyse where your ticket buyers come from and build retargeting audiences
• Google Analytics integration — built-in tracking for monitoring visitor behaviour on your ticket shop pages
• EVENTIM brand recognition — backed by Europe's largest ticketing company, which may carry trust with some ticket buyers
• Multiple payment methods — PayPal, PayPal Express, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Visa, and MasterCard built in (Chobble Tickets supports Apple Pay and Google Pay via Stripe, plus Square, but not PayPal)
• Video tutorials and quick guides — step-by-step help resources built into the platform

Chobble Tickets has features EVENTIM.Light doesn't:

• End-to-end encryption — attendee data is encrypted at rest with hybrid RSA-OAEP + AES-256-GCM, not just stored in a database
• Open source — every line of code is public under AGPLv3, fully auditable, no proprietary lock-in
• Self-hosting option — run the platform on your own servers for free, with no licence fee
• Flat annual pricing — £50/year with no per-ticket fees, no matter how many you sell
• Apple & Google Wallet tickets — attendees can add tickets to their phone wallet
• ICS calendar feeds — subscribers get automatic calendar updates when you add events
• RSS feeds — syndicate your events to feed readers
• Tiered ticket types via groups — create VIP, early bird, and other tiers using event groups with a shared capacity cap
• Pay-what-you-want pricing — let attendees choose their own price
• Daily/recurring events with per-date capacity — calendar picker with holiday blackouts for classes, workshops, and regular bookings
• Custom questions — add multiple-choice questions to events and collect structured answers at checkout, with answers visible across the admin interface, CSV exports, and webhooks
• Public & admin API — RESTful JSON API for building custom integrations, plus authenticated admin API (EVENTIM.Light has no public API)
• Webhooks — outbound POST on every registration for real-time integrations
• Custom email providers — use Resend, Postmark, SendGrid, or Mailgun so emails come from your domain
• Customisable email templates — full control over confirmation emails with Liquid syntax
• Custom domain — your ticketing lives at your own web address, not eventim-light.co.uk
• Automatic refunds — process refunds directly from the admin panel
• CSV export — download attendee lists for your own records
• No marketing to your attendees — your audience stays yours, with no cross-promotion of other events on the platform
• Community Interest Company — run by a CIC, not a subsidiary of a publicly traded entertainment conglomerate

Data ownership and privacy

This is where the trade-offs get serious. Under EVENTIM.Light's UK terms of use, you and CTS EVENTIM are joint data controllers under GDPR Article 26 (clause 9.5). In practice, this means:

• EVENTIM can send personalised mailings about similar events to your ticket buyers — their UK terms (clause 9.2) confirm they may contact buyers about "events which are identical or similar to the one for which the customer purchased a ticket"
• If you sell through the EVENTIM network (eventim.co.uk), you have no claim to that customer data — clause 9.4 states "the Event Organiser has no claim against EVENTIM UK Ltd. to the transmission of such customer data"
• EVENTIM can amend their terms unilaterally with notification — clause 14.1 states an amendment "is deemed approved unless the Event Organiser lodges an objection in text form within one month"
• Your first event requires authorisation from the EVENTIM UK team before it goes live (clause 1.2) — subsequent events do not

The consumer-facing eventim.co.uk has a 3.7-star rating on Trustpilot (UK), though reviews are mixed — common complaints include refund difficulties and customer service responsiveness. While EVENTIM.Light is a separate product, buyer issues are typically directed back to the event organiser rather than EVENTIM's support team.

With Chobble Tickets, attendee data is encrypted with hybrid RSA/AES encryption and stays entirely under your control. There's no platform marketing to your attendees, no joint data controller arrangement, and no third party with access to your customer data.

Flexibility and lock-in

EVENTIM.Light has some rigidity worth knowing about (confirmed in their UK FAQ and German FAQ):

• You cannot change the venue once an event is published
• You cannot edit the seating plan after publishing (no adding or removing seats)
• The scan app's barcode synchronisation only works within 12 hours of the event start, requiring an internet connection during that window
• Offline scanning devices cannot sync with each other
• Cancelling in EVENTIM.Light doesn't cancel your linked Facebook event — you have to do that separately
• Box office ticket buyers cannot be contacted if you cancel or relocate — EVENTIM doesn't hold their contact details

Chobble Tickets lets you edit event details at any time before the event. There's no approval process, no locked settings, and no dependency on syncing windows.

When EVENTIM.Light might be the better choice

• You want your events listed on eventim.co.uk to reach an existing audience of ticket buyers
• You need a seating plan editor for reserved seating at a theatre or seated venue
• You want Facebook event integration and ad pixel tracking built in
• You prefer the backing and brand recognition of a large, established ticketing company
• You have very low volume and prefer paying 8% per ticket over an annual fee
• You want promotion codes for marketing campaigns

When Chobble Tickets is the better choice

• You already have your own audience and don't need a discovery platform
• You want predictable, flat-rate pricing with no per-ticket fees
• Privacy and encryption matter to you
• You want a public API or webhooks for custom integrations (EVENTIM.Light has neither)
• You don't want a platform marketing competing events to your attendees
• You're a community group, charity, or school (£25/year)
• You want Apple/Google Wallet, calendar feeds, or pay-what-you-want pricing
• You value open source and the ability to self-host
• You want the flexibility to edit event details after publishing without restrictions
• You sell enough tickets that 8% per ticket adds up to more than £50/year

Who owns CTS EVENTIM?

CTS EVENTIM AG & Co. KGaA was founded in 1989 and is headquartered in Bremen, Germany. It is publicly traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (EVD) and is Europe's largest ticketing company and the second-largest globally after Live Nation. The company operates across 26 countries and markets over 300 million tickets annually through its systems.

EVENTIM.Light is CTS EVENTIM's self-service product, operated in the UK by EVENTIM UK Ltd. The parent company also runs the consumer-facing eventim.co.uk marketplace and provides enterprise ticketing solutions to major venues and promoters.

Chobble Tickets is run by one person as a Community Interest Company (CIC) — a UK legal structure that locks the company's assets for community benefit. All of Chobble's code is public under AGPLv3, and the platform can be self-hosted by anyone without depending on Chobble as a company.

Pricing sources

The pricing information on this page was verified in March 2026. Fees may change — check the links below for the latest figures.

• EVENTIM.Light UK pricing — 8% per ticket (includes payment processing)
• EVENTIM.Light UK features — full feature list
• EVENTIM.Light UK FAQ — frequently asked questions for organisers
• EVENTIM.Light UK terms of use — organiser terms (PDF)
• EVENTIM.Light overview — B2B product page (250M+ tickets in 2019)
• Eventim UK on Trustpilot — consumer reviews
• Chobble Tickets features