#1
Posted: 2/14/15 at 12:44pm
I am bewildered as to why tickets to ALL Broadway shows are essentially priced at the same level...roughly $175 for orchestra seats to a musical, and only slightly less than that for plays. It just doesn't seem to make economic sense. Perhaps someone can explain it to me.
I mean, yes, if you're at the helm of a juggernaut/phenomenon like Mormon/Wicked/Lion King, or have a play headlined by a Bradley Cooper or Denzel Washington, you can probably charge $500 and still sell every seat in the house. But for the rest of the shows (and they are the majority) that don't have the same buzz or star-draw, it seems utterly nonsensical to charge these prices. And the weekly grosses bear that out.
Unless you are very rich, spending $175, per person, for two hours of entertainment, is an enormous amount of money. Throw in dinner, drinks, a babysitter, and transportation, and a couple is easily looking at shelling out $500 for a single evening, if not more -- an exorbitant sum to spend on a single evening for a middle-class couple. For the vast, vast majority of people, spending that kind of money is completely off the radar for anything but the most special and rare occasion. And even for those people for whom $500 is pocket change, that sum would still likely FEEL like too much to spend with any degree of frequency on an evening. (And don't forget, you're not even getting GREAT orchestra tickets for that price. Those are reserved for "premium" ticket buyers.)
The weekly grosses bear this out. Eliminate the Wicked/Lion King/Mormon juggernauts, and the plays with megawatt stars, and you find that most Broadway tickets go unsold. A significant number, if not an outright majority, close well in advance of their originally scheduled closing date in a desperate effort to stanch the bleeding. And of those shows that do survive, a simple analysis of their grosses reveals that a significant number of tickets they ARE selling are not going for full face-value.
So why the charade? Why overcharge, then desperately discount, then close with your tail between your legs and your pockets bereft of cash? If you're the producer of a Love Letters, Country House, Honeymoon in Vegas, This Is Our Youth, Side Show, On the Town, or a million others, why not buck the trend, figure out how much producers of less-acclaimed shows typically make per SEAT, and make the face value of your orchestra tickets reflect that? For example, taking last week's numbers: On the Town had about 15,000 tickets to sell, and brought in around $375,000. That means they brought in roughly $25 per seat in the house, even though they charge as much as $200 per ticket. 2/3 of their tickets went unsold. I would venture to guess that if they dropped their orchestra ticket price from $150 - $200 per ticket to, say, $40 or $50 per ticket, their tickets sales would increase so dramatically that it would offset any loss from lower prices.
The irony is that with TDF, and the TKTS booth, rush policies, and the various discount services, a good chunk of the tickets don't sell for face value anyway. The producers of most shows are perfectly willing to accept less than the exorbitant prices they ask at the box office and at Ticketmaster/Telecharge. But for some reason, they seem to believe that making people "work" for the discounts, and publicly pushing the exorbitant face-value tickets, makes sense. But it doesn't. All it does is keep the casual ticket-goer away.
Like most of the theater junkies on this site, I seldom pay full-face price for a ticket. As a frequent theater-goer, I am cognizant of the various discount options out there. (Though I believe in supporting the theater, I wouldn't be able to go with nearly the frequency that I do if I had to pay full price all the time.) Because I am an avid fan, I am willing to put in the "work" required to find the most affordable way to get a seat. But I, and fellow participants on sites like this, are in the minority. For the vast majority of people, theater is just one of a million different kinds of entertainments and escapes -- a pleasant one, to be sure, but not something worth obsessing over. Given the choice of going to a movie for $20, or a nice dinner for $50, or to drinks for $40, or a sporting event for $50, etc. very, very few non-hardcore fans are going to choose the theater for $175 -- again, not because they think they wouldn't like it, but because the price is out of whack with other forms of entertainment. If it were as "easy" and (financially) comparable to drop in and see a Broadway show as it is to have dinner at a decent restaurant, a lot more people would do it. If the producers are only pulling in $25 per seat anyway, why not make it easier for people to pay those prices?
The charade of inflated face-value prices really does keep people away. Almost none of my NYC friends are theater geeks; everyone likes it, but actually going is considered an "event" reserved for special occasions...because of the ostensible cost. Casual fans don't want to line up at TKTS or prove their eligibility for TDF...they just want to be able to go. If the producers enabled them to do so, shows would do better, and more of them would survive.
I mean, yes, if you're at the helm of a juggernaut/phenomenon like Mormon/Wicked/Lion King, or have a play headlined by a Bradley Cooper or Denzel Washington, you can probably charge $500 and still sell every seat in the house. But for the rest of the shows (and they are the majority) that don't have the same buzz or star-draw, it seems utterly nonsensical to charge these prices. And the weekly grosses bear that out.
Unless you are very rich, spending $175, per person, for two hours of entertainment, is an enormous amount of money. Throw in dinner, drinks, a babysitter, and transportation, and a couple is easily looking at shelling out $500 for a single evening, if not more -- an exorbitant sum to spend on a single evening for a middle-class couple. For the vast, vast majority of people, spending that kind of money is completely off the radar for anything but the most special and rare occasion. And even for those people for whom $500 is pocket change, that sum would still likely FEEL like too much to spend with any degree of frequency on an evening. (And don't forget, you're not even getting GREAT orchestra tickets for that price. Those are reserved for "premium" ticket buyers.)
The weekly grosses bear this out. Eliminate the Wicked/Lion King/Mormon juggernauts, and the plays with megawatt stars, and you find that most Broadway tickets go unsold. A significant number, if not an outright majority, close well in advance of their originally scheduled closing date in a desperate effort to stanch the bleeding. And of those shows that do survive, a simple analysis of their grosses reveals that a significant number of tickets they ARE selling are not going for full face-value.
So why the charade? Why overcharge, then desperately discount, then close with your tail between your legs and your pockets bereft of cash? If you're the producer of a Love Letters, Country House, Honeymoon in Vegas, This Is Our Youth, Side Show, On the Town, or a million others, why not buck the trend, figure out how much producers of less-acclaimed shows typically make per SEAT, and make the face value of your orchestra tickets reflect that? For example, taking last week's numbers: On the Town had about 15,000 tickets to sell, and brought in around $375,000. That means they brought in roughly $25 per seat in the house, even though they charge as much as $200 per ticket. 2/3 of their tickets went unsold. I would venture to guess that if they dropped their orchestra ticket price from $150 - $200 per ticket to, say, $40 or $50 per ticket, their tickets sales would increase so dramatically that it would offset any loss from lower prices.
The irony is that with TDF, and the TKTS booth, rush policies, and the various discount services, a good chunk of the tickets don't sell for face value anyway. The producers of most shows are perfectly willing to accept less than the exorbitant prices they ask at the box office and at Ticketmaster/Telecharge. But for some reason, they seem to believe that making people "work" for the discounts, and publicly pushing the exorbitant face-value tickets, makes sense. But it doesn't. All it does is keep the casual ticket-goer away.
Like most of the theater junkies on this site, I seldom pay full-face price for a ticket. As a frequent theater-goer, I am cognizant of the various discount options out there. (Though I believe in supporting the theater, I wouldn't be able to go with nearly the frequency that I do if I had to pay full price all the time.) Because I am an avid fan, I am willing to put in the "work" required to find the most affordable way to get a seat. But I, and fellow participants on sites like this, are in the minority. For the vast majority of people, theater is just one of a million different kinds of entertainments and escapes -- a pleasant one, to be sure, but not something worth obsessing over. Given the choice of going to a movie for $20, or a nice dinner for $50, or to drinks for $40, or a sporting event for $50, etc. very, very few non-hardcore fans are going to choose the theater for $175 -- again, not because they think they wouldn't like it, but because the price is out of whack with other forms of entertainment. If it were as "easy" and (financially) comparable to drop in and see a Broadway show as it is to have dinner at a decent restaurant, a lot more people would do it. If the producers are only pulling in $25 per seat anyway, why not make it easier for people to pay those prices?
The charade of inflated face-value prices really does keep people away. Almost none of my NYC friends are theater geeks; everyone likes it, but actually going is considered an "event" reserved for special occasions...because of the ostensible cost. Casual fans don't want to line up at TKTS or prove their eligibility for TDF...they just want to be able to go. If the producers enabled them to do so, shows would do better, and more of them would survive.
