# Create your first event

This guide takes you from zero to an event that fans can buy tickets for: sign
up, create your organization, set up the event and its ticket tiers, and see
what buyers get on the storefront. Nothing here requires an invite or a
conversation with us — the whole flow is self-serve in the organizer panel.

## Sign up and create your organization

Log in to the organizer panel and create your organization. That's it — you
can create organizations yourself, no invite needed. The person who creates
the organization becomes its **owner**; you can add more members later, and
only the owner manages billing.

Once your organization exists, the panel gives you everything in one place:
Dashboard, Events, Staff, Discounts, Perks, Guest List, Audience, Reports,
Wallet, Audit Log, and Billing.

## Create the event

From **Events**, create your event with its name, venue, and dates.

> **Tip:** Fill in the **Tags** field (e.g. rock, outdoor, festival) and a real
> description. They directly power event discovery — fans see your event in
> "similar events" and personalized recommendations based on them. Well-tagged
> events get surfaced; untagged ones rely on search alone.

When the event is created, TicketConnect generates a unique signing key for
it. Every ticket sold for this event carries a QR code signed with that key,
and door scanners verify tickets against it — even offline. You don't manage
the key yourself; it just means tickets for your event can't be forged or
tampered with.

> **One event, one key.** Each event's tickets are verifiable independently.
> A ticket for one event can never scan into another.


## Set up gate payments & wristbands

On the event page, the **Set up event** button walks you through two one-time
choices: how you take card payments at the door (today: **Tap to Pay** on a
staff phone — no terminal hardware) and whether the event hands out claim-QR
**wristbands** to walk-up buyers. The button disappears once both are set.
The details live in [At the door](#organizers-door-operations).

## Add ticket tiers

A **ticket tier** is what a buyer actually purchases: General Admission, VIP,
Early Bird. Each tier has three things:

| Field | What it means |
| --- | --- |
| Name | What buyers see at checkout and on their ticket. |
| Price | The tier's face value. |
| Supply | How many tickets the tier can ever sell. |

You don't pre-generate tickets. Tickets are created on demand, one by one, at
the moment of purchase — so a tier with 10,000 supply costs you nothing until
tickets actually sell, and supply is claimed atomically so you can never
oversell.

## Publish a price schedule (optional)

If your pricing changes over time — early bird, regular, last minute — you can
publish **price steps** up front and schedule tiers to release at a set time
or automatically when an earlier tier sells out.

The schedule is public and binding: prices can only follow the schedule you
published, and past steps stay visible to buyers. Fans see exactly when the
price went up and when the next change is coming — no surge opacity, no
surprise pricing.

> **Price transparency is a feature.** Buyers trust an on-sale where the
> pricing rules were published before it started. If you don't need steps,
> skip this — a single fixed price per tier is the default.


## Design a seat map (optional)

For seated venues, the panel includes a seat map designer. Lay out your
sections and seats, and buyers pick their exact seat at checkout instead of
buying general admission.

## What buyers see

Your event gets a page on the **storefront** — the buyer-facing site. Fans see
the event details, the available tiers with their prices, the published price
schedule if you set one, and the seat map if the event is seated. They buy
there, and their tickets land in their TicketConnect wallet, ready to be
scanned at the door.

For payment methods, waiting rooms for high-demand on-sales, and purchase
limits, see [Selling tickets](#organizers-selling).

## If you need to cancel

Cancelling an event automatically refunds every buyer their ticket's face
value — you don't process refunds by hand, and you can preview the effect of a
cancellation before confirming it. How refunds, escrow, and your proceeds
interact is covered in [Getting paid](#organizers-getting-paid).