Data Thistle Publishing API

Data Thistle is the UK’s leading live events data business. It aims to source, understand and organise live events data in ways that makes them useful to all.

It includes the broadest range of events from: opera, film, festivals, comedy, car boot sales, sport, talks, visual artwork, shops.

DATA THISTLE has the UK's most comprehensive dataset of events listings. Everything from hyperlocal community events through to international megastars at the O2, at venues across the length and breadth of the country.

Get started as a user of our API by applying for a key. Alternatively, discover other ways to receive our data.

Partners range in size from start up companies to the UK and Scottish Governments across a variety of different industries. We also hold data on event capacities, we measure the ‘impact’ of future events and we hold historical events data. Learn what else our data can do for your business.

At peak times we hold around 500,000 PERFORMANCES of around 45,000 concurrent EVENTS. What does this mean? An Event (Ghostbusters) may have multiple Schedules (Ghostbusters at Odeon), which may have multiple Performances (dates and time) at that location:

To learn how our data is structured you can jump into the OpenAPI specification or read our quick Data Dictionary:

Data dictionary

This will help you to get a quick overview of the type of data returned by this API.

Events

An `event` is the top level item, which contains: `name`, `tags`, and `descriptions`.

Places

A `place` is a physical location, or venue, where events can occur, they typically have: `name`, `address`, `tags` and `descriptions`.

Schedules

Each `event` is made up of one or more `schedule`, and each `schedule` describes the relation between the `event` and the `place` (the physical location where the `event` occurs).

Performances

Each `schedule` (which refers to a `place`) contains one or more `performance`, each of these has a timestamp for when the performance is happening along with optional duration (in minutes) and booking links. Performances may have a `time_unknown` field, which contains text that can be used in place of the time of a performance, for example 'Times vary' or 'Times tbc', with the `ts` field omitting the time information.

Descriptions

Each `event` or `place` may have multiple `descriptions`. Descriptions are markdown. Typically, there are two types that may be present, `description.list.default` which is a description written by us, and `description.third-party` which is a third party supplied description, usually from the promoter or the event organiser themselves.

Tickets

Each `performance` can have zero or more tickets. Each `ticket` may have a `type`, `min_price`, `max_price`, `currency` and `description`. `type` is a rough text description for the type of `ticket`, typical values are: 'Standard', 'Concession', 'Family', 'Children', although they can be any text value. A `min_price` of 0 denotes a free ticket, a ticket with no `min_price` and a `description` of 'free' is also a free ticket.

Links

`events`, `places` and `performances` may all have a `links` to external websites. `performances` can have booking links with a type of 'booking'. Events and places may have social links.