Venues have gotten much more sophisticated in the last seven or eight years at creating and selling “premium” tickets and ticket packages. I was reading recently about the Seattle Mariners’ successful program to do this recently, and it made me give this issue some thought.As I’ve said many times on this issue, I’m for it. Provided you don’t punish people for not buying premium and you legitimately deliver a ‘premium’ value, this should be a sustainable and positive way...

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… is thinking there is such a thing as a “discount buyer.”And I can prove it to you.Next time you’re gathering six or eight of your co-workers for a meeting and have a few minutes before it gets started, do this little experiment.Ask the group if any of them have a band or musical act that they really, really like but that most people in the room aren’t likely to know. Most people will have one.Pick one of these...

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Fifty percent of seats for live entertainment go unsold. Or is it 40 percent, or maybe 35? Different analysts and executives from major ticketing organizations have been quoted over the years at different numbers, but let’s just agree that it’s a substantial percentage, and a staggering raw number.But it’s also a classic “glass (or venue) half-full or half-empty” kind of question. Is the unsold seat total a bad thing, or is it more complex than that?Let’s work through it....

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Is "free cheaper than cheap"? For Mixed Blood Theatre in the Twin Cities, it seems to be. Its admission initiative called "Radical Hospitality" allows anyone to attend a show for free. Three seasons of the campaign is paying off with increased popularity and donations.After hearing about the program on HowlRound.com, we spoke with Mixed Blood Theatre artistic director Jack Reuler. He shared further insights into what aspects of the program are working, what they're continuing to tweak and what...

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Lately, we’ve been talking a lot about ticket sales marketing and the importance of knowing when to kill a program that's just not working. To help you evaluate whether a marketing program is successful -- or if it needs cancelling -- we've put together four posts that'll walk you through the process. Take a look:• First, a reality check: If a marketing campaign is working, then you should be able to see the results pretty clearly.• But, how do...

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Following in the footsteps of the New York City Opera and Opera Pacific in Orange County, the San Diego Opera will be calling it quits at the end of the 2014 season.Ian Campbell, the company's general director, told the Los Angeles Times that ticket sales had been declining as well as donations, primarily because of death and the economic downturn.A follow-up piece by the Los Angeles Times expressed surprise (and a little outrage) at the closing, using San Diego's...

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I don’t have an Aunt Sally.That was just my way to get you to start reading this before I tell you that I’m going to talk about math …But before you click "back" or shriek in Wicked Witch-like horror when doused with water, know that I majored in English in college! I wrote a thesis about Frankenstein. I like T. S. Eliot.I’ve got non-math-person cred.So stick with me. If you’re a live entertainment marketer and you’re math-phobic, I’m going...

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"Yucky" is a really useful catch-all term that little kids use to describe things that they just don't want to have anything to do with. I remember my own toddlers would describe various things as yucky, which didn't mean they smelled bad or had some horrible sticky substance all over them. It just meant they weren't interested and couldn't be made to get interested.I have a theory that a lot of the mistakes and misconceptions that people make about...

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A man in New Jersey who bought some pretty expensive tickets to the Super Bowl is suing the NFL for not releasing more tickets to be sold to the general public.His claim is that, according to New Jersey law, at least five percent of tickets must be available for regular people to buy.I don’t know anything about the merits of his case, but it shows that consumers are getting savvy to the idea that the primary market sellers (in...

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In summary, the Children's Museum of Tacoma moved to a "Pay As You Will" model a few years ago and saw BOTH attendance and revenue go up. Attendance has tripled, but, if you do the math, revenue has increased by only 50%. "Only."That's interesting enough, but let's look at it differently. In a way, it's dynamic pricing taken to the individual level. Dynamic pricing is an attempt to change a price to reflect the level of supply and demand...

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