lower ticket prices?

That could very well be the case, but productions will still need to make a profit, so the amount of the discount could still not be enough for people facing financial hardship to afford theater tickets. I received an email message today from Teleharge regarding my tickets to Company on May 31. I was given the option of getting a refund or exchanging them for a date after September 8. The exchange is really a refund and repurchase, and if you bought your tickets at regular price, they offered a 10% discount. If you purchased your ticket with a discount, the discount still applied. It seemed a rather paltry savings to me.

Yesterday I was browsing tickets for October-December and noticed Hamilton has great rear mezzanine seats for $159. The regular prices haven't been that low for Hamilton in years.

If I were them, I would lower prices slightly/offer discounts at first. Yes, it could potentially mean they make less money, but if people aren’t able to afford the typical ticket prices, it’s probably better for shows to sell more tickets at discounted prices than fewer tickets at higher prices. I mean under normal circumstances shows often have sales on tickets and in those cases people probably often go who wouldn’t otherwise be able to.

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Call_me_jorge said: "Lower ticket prices implies production costs will go down."

Not necessarily. A very successful show (like Hamilton, for example) can afford to lower their prices significantly and still make a profit it each week - if the drop in attendance called for that sort of strategic pricing shift. But for the average Broadway production, you're probably right.

There's really no telling. Productions can make their tickets cheaper and fill more seats or make their tickets more expensive, fill less seats BUT make the same amount of money.

Lowering ticket prices in order to fill the seats, knowing tourists aren't as likely to come to New York right now and that a lot of local residents may not be able to afford premium seats right now, is definitely an option. But the flip side is that if these shows have been shut for 3-4 months, making no money, they may need premium prices to make up for lost time in order to stay afloat and could potentially even raise the prices instead. They may get to the point of deciding 35% capacity all at premium ticket prices is better than 90% at heavily discounted prices. So it will definitely be interesting to track which way they go.

Updated On: 4/10/20 at 06:57 PM

How can they make any money if they limit capacity substantially? I don't think it's worth it to all involved to just sell every other seat, right?

A second wave is already heavily predicted anyway...I'm just prepping my psyche for that. If by some miracle it doesn't happen? Great! But I'm just going to assume it's gonna happen.

That being said, as I said in another thread, distancing measures for certain industries doesn't work financially. If it were attempted I can almost guarantee it wouldn't last long because here's my theory...industries like theatre/entertainment in general, airlines, and anything similar, rely on the "butts in every seat" model to survive. Airlines have had way less business and more than one report has surfaced of flyers saying they were the only one on their flight. Of course airline have also VASTLY lessened their daily schedules and routes, and even then there's been hardly anyone on those flights. Even that can't go on forever but on the other hand, that tells me people are taking this is at least mostly seriously.

Ok, fast forward to when this is over (or at least mostly over). The idea of airlines and theaters implementing distancing measures has come up. Even from a social standpoint this is almost ridiculous. I 100% understand the fear of crowded places for a while, but once there's a treatment with little error margin and a vaccine readily and widely available, distancing just sounds irrational. Will I myself be trepidatious of visiting crowded areas until then? Yep. But once it's safe according to science, not gov't (This is apart from our gov't's complete ineptitude, BTW), I'll have next to no problem being out and about again with some optimistic caution. And believe me I'm pretty realistic, borderline pessimistic, about this whole mess.

Moving on to the financial part of this. There's no way these kinds of "Butts in the seats" industries can survive with distancing measure in place. They'd go under in the blink of an eye if attempted in the long term. In reference to theatre, because it would fail quickly, there's no point in even attempting it because they'd fall short of their weekly nut every time...IF they continued to charge what they did before or did heavy discounts. I can also see theatre and airlines possibly attempting it but instead, trying to make up the difference by charging more to make up for the half of the seats that won't be used. Well...not one person I know likes or wants to be charged for someone else that doesn't even exist. So that's another scenario that would fail. And while I'm no fan of the current GOP prosperity gospel style capitalism, THAT is a specific scenario of a specific style of capitalism that works. Charge me for a life extracurricular that requires me to pay for two people when I know that the 'other person' won't even be there? Easy enough to pass on.