Matt Rogers said:
If people will just stop paying these terrorist prices, producers will stop charging them. Well over $300. Jesus Christ. PS - on Valentines Day, various shows I looked at were charging nearly $500 per ticket and idiots were paying for them."
I don't post here much anymore, but I thought I'd weigh in on this as I had an "a ha" moment recently while seeing "Mamma Mia." (I hadn't seen the show since 2001, and a theater loving friend had never seen it, so we went for the novelty.)
From my rear side orchestra seat, for which I paid an obscene (to me) ~$140, I was looking at all the "idiots" who paid upwards of $250 to sit in the center orchestra. I realized these folks (in their pink boas and rhinestone sunglasses) arent your day-to-day theater goers like us. They may be more inclined to see a concert at MSG where (depending on the artist) the first ring is easily a couple hundred bucks, and floor seats are generally over $1k. Last year I spent about $170 per ticket to be in the last row of the first ring for Kylie Minogue; Gaga is commanding $300+ to sit in the literal rafters.
For this demographic, shelling out $500 for a great seat to a Broadway show once or twice per year seems reasonable and unsurprising when you're used to spending the same in other places.
"If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it." -Stephen Colbert