Public box-office reconciliation

Status and interpretation

Live Index Performance Estimate — not reported box office. This version 1.0.0 protocol defines what Live Index will accept before publishing an estimate; it is not a claim that observations have already been collected or that the protocol has been validated against actual settlements. No estimate rows are released with this document. A method can establish a reproducible decision rule without establishing any particular show’s attendance, gross, sellout status or promoter profit.

Freeze the original prediction

Keep the estimate band, inputs, observation timestamp, event configuration, price scope, confidence, limitations and method version as they existed before the public report. The reconciliation references that original record. Changing an estimate after seeing an outcome destroys the distinction between prediction and measurement. A later correction may be warranted, but it is a new version with a reason, not a replacement masquerading as the earlier forecast.

Match quantities

• Match artist, venue, date and number of performances. A multi-night tour return cannot be compared directly with a single-night estimate.
• Confirm currency, tax treatment and whether gross excludes mandatory charges, refunds or other items. An all-in checkout total and reported face-value gross are not interchangeable.
• Determine whether attendance is paid tickets, tickets distributed, scanned entries, unique people or cumulative attendance. Record the source’s wording.
• Check configuration changes, cancellation, rescheduling and added dates. Where the event scope changed, mark it noncomparable and preserve the record instead of manufacturing a corrected outcome.

Error record

For genuinely comparable measures, store the reported value, source publication date and retrieval date beside the frozen estimate band. Record whether the value falls within the band and the signed and absolute difference from any explicitly defined central estimate. Do not invent a central value when the original record contained only a range. A percentage error needs a meaningful nonzero reported denominator; a missing value is not a zero.

Publish limits with results

Keep missed estimates and ineligible comparisons visible in the reconciliation ledger. Report sample selection and exclusions before describing aggregate accuracy. No error rate is released until actual comparable observations exist; an empty table is not evidence of perfect performance. Separate source corrections from method failures and distinguish a price-scope mismatch from attendance error. Reconciliation can improve future protocol versions, but it cannot validate private artist payouts, costs or promoter margins absent those documents.

Release gate

Publication requires a dated primary ticket-inventory observation, a venue configuration source, primary price-band evidence, promoter and ticketing evidence, a confidence classification and a record-specific limitations statement. A later reading is a new observation, not an overwrite of the previous state. The pilot remains withheld from search and the sitemap until ten observations individually pass these requirements. Downloads are offered only for real released rows, never for an empty demonstration or synthetic sample. Inventory protocol, capacity protocol and price-band protocol describe different inputs; none substitutes for the others.