Premium Tickets: Frustration with Broadway Pricing- Page 2

[ARTc]

Posted: 3/11/13 at 4:12pm

Regarding purchasing tickets at the last minute... I put that under the category of cancellation. I realize this option is still available to me. For some shows this is easy, but others with a huge following, this requires spending the entire day waiting in a cancellation line.

Thanks for the information regarding Audience Rewards. I wasn't sure what their policy was regarding seating location. I would join, but I really don't want to sit in seats off to the side or very far back. I have sat in these seats and I have found it profoundly impacts my enjoyment of the show. (I wish this wasn't the case.)

As for the whole scalper issue. There is some truth in this, but it doesn't explain sectioning off an entire orchestra (sans the pair against the wall and the back two rows). At Pippin's box office yesterday, I tried to purchase full price seats at ANY future date only to be shown a seating chart that had every seat I'd be willing to sit in pink highlighted (premium). This wasn't quite as bad as BOM's chart, but it was still quite unfair and deceptively advertised.

Another interesting point... Both BOM and Pippin are in smaller houses. I wonder if this is a new policy of smart producers. Put a show in a smaller house to increase demand and charge premium.

I did not see Pippin in Boston, but my understanding is that it is a spectacle quite capable of filling a larger stage. Was it a calculated choice to book this production in a small "play" house, or were there just no larger theaters available?

Producers, please work with us here. We're your adoring audience. I may not be able to afford $500 a ticket, but I assure you I am spending far more than that on your product over the course of a year. I try and see at least one or two performances a week; not always Broadway, but some form of live performance art.



Updated On: 3/11/13 at 04:12 PM

[Kelly2]

Posted: 3/11/13 at 4:22pm

At some point you have to decide whether you care more about seeing theatre or about your seats. I would never miss out on a theatrical experience I wanted to see because I couldn't get the "best" seats, but if you would, then that's your choice. The market value of tickets is whatever people are willing to pay for them and we can whine about how it isn't fair but MOST shows flop and close at a loss so unless producers can find a way to sweeten their piece of the pie, they're not gonna put the money up. Selfish and greedy? Yeah. But without people willing to risk 5-10 million or more on a show, shows wouldn't even exist for us to see, so I try to monitor how outraged I get about this particular issue.

[ARTc]

Posted: 3/11/13 at 4:22pm

It might require javascript. You should have gotten a message explaining why it wasn't working.

Also... I am open to this thread being opened to any discussion regarding ticketing. I thought your experiences with Audience Rewards and the various ticketing services very pertinent.

[FishermanBob]

Posted: 3/11/13 at 4:23pm

Art - I will certainly agree that they should make the premium price clear and include it when they advertise their upper end price. Other than that, your arguments are not resonating with me. I think most if not all would agree theater tickets are VERY expensive and it affects us all. But you basically want to sit in the sweet spot of the theater, the very best seats everyone wants and unfortunately you will be required to pay what the market will bear and what others are willing to pay for those seats. And your argument that there should be a compromise which basically means they can charge premium prices for almost all of those seats as long as you can buy one for the regular price is nice but highly unlikely to happen. This isn't just a theater phenomenon. More and more entertainment venues (sports, concerts) are using dynamic pricing which is a fancy term for if there is a lot of demand for an event, we will jack up the prices. I don't like it but it's the new reality we need to deal with. If people aren't willing to pay those higher prices, then they will come down. But until they do, nothing is going to change. There's a part of me that can't blame them. Theaters sit vacant for months and they absorb that cost. Shows close early never recouping their investment and they absorb that. So if they have a winner, they will be sure to make their money. I'm unwilling to even pay $150 for a theater seat so I use general rushes, TKTS etc. and I take what I can get. It requires compromise and flexibility and sometimes I get great seats like I did on a recent trip with TKTS seats 8th-10th row center orchestra for several shows and sometimes I'm off to the side or at the back of the orchestra but still enjoy the show. We live in a market economy. If you want the very best seats and want to buy them in advance etc. and not have to spend time checking every day or lining up at TKTS, you'll have to compete with what others are willing to pay.

[DEClarke]

Posted: 3/11/13 at 4:28pm

My favorite seat is the center of row A in the center mezzanine. Maybe, you just need to try different places out and see if you find one you like that isn't so objectionably priced... :-/

[ARTc]

Posted: 3/11/13 at 4:38pm

I have enjoyed first row center mezzanine. In fact, the first Broadway musical I saw I sat in that very seat. I was 10. Hundreds of shows later - and I mean hundreds - I know the seating at every New York theater.

I think FishermanBob was perhaps sadly correct. We live in a market driven economy and until other likeminded people demand with their dollars a different system, I really don't have much of a leg to stand on.

I truly do appreciate the economics for putting up a Broadway production. I don't begrudge producers wanting to be profitable, including their hits covering the costs of their less commercially successful productions.

I am even willing to be that guy who presses the refresh button and keeps pestering the box office attendants. The truth is that its cancellations for me, or a better paying job to keep up my "habit".

Thanks for the reality check, FishermanBob.

I would just ask the producers to be more honest and upfront about their pricing. Full-price doesn't buy any seat in a theater. Premium is the new full-price. Updated On: 3/11/13 at 04:38 PM

[oasisjeff]

Posted: 3/11/13 at 4:53pm

I think Telecharge requires the Microsoft Silverlight plug-in for seat selection.

Compared with the Ticketmaster seat selection, it is definitely a bit low-end, and when a show first goes on sale, it will be turned off (same as Ticketmaster), since everyone will be clicking on the same seats.

[Matt Rogers]

Posted: 3/11/13 at 8:17pm

It's like the subway. Prices are going up too much.....and too fast. It's incredible how painful this quarter raise on a MetroCard has been. Buy a ten dollar card and you are done after two round trips.

The difference is that most of us have no choice but to the the subway, and theatre is something that is optional. I HATE these new high prices. I hate that $150 is the new $100. I hate that 30% off is the new 50% off on the discount flyers (and 12% off on the already overpriced Last Five Years - thanks Second Stage! Why bother? You can keep your little two character musical. I'll keep my eighty bucks.)

But that's the point. We don't have to accept these prices when there are so many affordable alternatives here. LCT3 for twenty bucks. Signature's endless offerings for twenty five. Sure, most are boring, but every once in a while you get a Piano Lesson or Old Hats.

And it is no secret that greedy producers release their premium seats for regular and sometimes even discount (lame as the discount may be) sale a day or so before a performance. So there are options. I have never bought one of these ridiculous premium tickets, and never will. I'm not eating peanut butter on toast for a week just to have the best seats to the hottest show while I line some greedy asshole's pockets with half my paycheck.

[HaroldInNY]

Posted: 3/11/13 at 8:24pm

On a somewhat related issue, I have grown increasingly frustrated with the apparent ability of Ticketmaster and Telecharge to restrict availability of discounted seats. I find that many productions attempt to restrict discounts to less desirable seats, oftentimes even way ahead of the performance date, and even in the face of poor-ish ticket sales.

I go to the theater quite often, and I find even the discounted tickets to be far from inexpensive. While I certainly do understand market-driven economics, I think that many producers are significantly missing the boat with their discount policies, especially early in a show's run.

How many times lately have we seen BroadwayBox (ie, advance) discounts be available for only relatively poor seats, only to have much better seats be available at significantly lower prices at TKTS? I can understand an occasional miscalculation, but it seems to happen much too frequently, and in the long run I believe this type of thing injures the show because of restricted word-of-mouth.

Also, have you ever been to a show that SEEMED like it was sold out, but had MANY available seats? As an example, I went to see Cinderella on Wednesday, March 6th, three days after it opened. I had bought discounted orchestra tickets with a BroadwayBox discount code two or three weeks earlier. Based on the seats for which discounts were apparently available, and based on the grosses posted on this site, it seemed like this production was close to selling out. Really? The performance played to an orchestra section that was AT LEAST a third empty. It seems to me that if I were a producer being cagey with discounts, all I was accomplishing was losing possible income, while decreasing the velocity of word-of-mouth about the show.

I would strongly encourage producer types to NOT try to take advantage of the esoteric capabilities of the ticketing systems in doling out discount tickets. Make most of your tickets available to early buyers at reasonable prices, and hopefully you'll end up with a genuine hit such as Wicked -- and then you can completely forget about discounts for quite a while.

I realize that this is just one side of a complex issue... that it might make some sense to "reserve" better tickets for people willing to pay a higher price. But unless you're really good at fine-tuning this, I think you would be better served by more of a first-come-first-served policy.