The post covid entertainment landscape in Zimbabwe has become one where festivals and curated events are commonplace. After 2 years of lockdowns, the people decided that they wanted to be outside as much as possible and they haven’t changed their mind since. This has inevitably resulted in a lot of event tickets needing to be sold, and the establishment of platforms to sell these tickets.
The first businesses to truly latch onto this were the pharmacies. How they made a connection between prescriptions and concert tickets, no one will ever know. However it soon became apparent to everyone in the events space that the widespread nature of Booties and Med Orange chains of pharmacies made for great ease in reaching audiences.
Yet even this reach wasn’t enough to service everyone and Zimbabwe’s entertainment space just kept on growing. So naturally digital solutions became a requirement, and this truly gave birth to the race to sell Zimbabwe’s event tickets. Yes it’s a race, everyone and their uncle is trying to get a piece of it.
While uptake of online platforms has been slow, last year saw a shift that announced that Zimbabwe’s event culture had finally gone digital. In just 2 hours after announcing that tickets were finally online, King Kandoro sold out 1,200 early release tickets for the Harare leg of his State Of The Nation Tour via Hype Nation. If digital hadn’t been accepted before, it was truly being embraced now.
So who are the players in this space? Well there’s a lot of them: Flippin Tickets, Hype Nation, Zim Tickets, Tango Africa, Magetsi, Ticketbox, Showstopper, MegaTicket, ClicknPay Africa and most recently Nyaradzo’s SahwiGate (you know there’s money to be made when these guys are involved) and Tikiti which has already partnered with the NAMA Awards. From intimate gatherings of 50 or less, to festivals of 5,000+ the platforms are welcoming all comers.
What is the current strategy for these platforms? Well it seems that at this point leveraging relationships is the chosen route. This is both relationships with event organisers and venues. As a dominant platform is yet to emerge, each online ticket seller is trying to get as many events as possible onto its platform. The approach isn’t simply to sell tickets but to become an events directory where audiences go to for everything to do with events.
In addition these platforms are not just working in the digital space but are also active in actual event organisation. They’ll assist in finding vendors, event setup, and managing the gate, depending on the collaboration you seek with them.
While the user experience is not central to most, platforms like Tango Africa are putting it front and centre. For example, the platform allows you to get a refund on tickets if you can no longer attend an event for some reason. This refund is in the form of Tango points, which you can utilise to purchase tickets for an alternate event late. Such innovation is critical to not only a successful platform but an extended embrace of digital ticketing.
In 2025, 263 Culture Festival intended to be entirely digital for its ticket sales, yet a few weeks after the first ticket release they had to establish physical ticket sales. A signal of a distrust that still remains. Which obviously wouldn’t have been helped by the recent EcoCash scam. However on the other hand, Hinde’s Bulawayo edition last year became the first Afro house event to sellout on presale tickets. This no tickets at the gate approach has the potential to encourage digital sales and further solidify the shift.
Yet while others are joining the train of innovation, many promoters in the Zimdancehall space and festivals like Jacaranda and Carpe Diem, remain attached to physical ticket systems.
Where do you stand on physical or digital tickets and what has been your experience with ticketing platforms? Please let us know in the comments.
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