mridley2 said: "Question and I know this is a dicey subject online. But I belong to a couple of subscription papering services and have been utterly shocked at the lack of offers for low attendance shows: e.g. Lempicka, Rock & Roll, Patriots, Suffs, even Water has some performances at 30-40% capacity.
Curious to know where you friends are getting their comps? is it a friends of the cast or community groups that are getting tickets?
Thanks
"
I think we should expect to see less and less Broadway offers on these papering services. And when they do appear, it will likely be quite last minute.
People's perception of quality is affected by its price. There have been plenty of studies on it. If your prices are high, it carries a connotation that it MUST be a good show...even if the customer looking at the prices doesn't really know anything about said show. As last minute ticket buying habits have decimated advance sales, the discounts or comps a show has out in the wild have directly affected their ability to survive and built an audience who will pay full price. If there's discounts freely available for all dates, a customer says "eh, I'll get to this show if I have time. I really gotta make sure I can see this $250 show somehow instead". Comps are even worse. List several weeks of dates on a papering service and you see a decrease in demand. Locals are just waiting for it to show up for free! Many shows and theater companies are trying instead to list comps with affiliated groups since they are a bit less public facing: an organization a producer is affiliated with, a corporate partner, rehearsal studio, costume shop, a partner theater, an industry union...reaching out to these places with a comp offer has become much more desirable because those comp offers arent out in the wild. Their overall perception as "quality" and something "sought after" doesnt take a hit.