Ticket cost inflation

Forget the stereophonic speakers... the last time I went, I had my very own conductor right in front of me. If they've done anything to the theatre, you wouldn't know. The chandelier over the stalls falls down in EVERY performance. I'm taking some "No More Nails" to fix it next time. It worked in Regents Park for Jesus Christ Superstar, so it'll work for Phantom.

*hovering 😆

(I hoovered earlier)

The subject is really ticket price inflation, isn’t it?

Though really this is probably dynamic pricing in action, either inflating the price of the tickets in the hope that a gullible American will pay that much for them (they’d still look reasonable compared to the $ price for the best seats on broadway), and then reducing them later if not sold, or pushing the price of the best seats up once a large proportion of the house is sold.

I do hate dynamic pricing.

I think it's various things at play, but first and foremost the rise of online booking and advancing technology WITHIN online booking that makes it much easier for producers to change the prices quickly. So it's much easier to start with sky-high prices and reduce them at short notice when they aren't selling. 

Stuff like "rush tickets" seem to play into it, too. I normally don't really follow these things all that keenly, but I've seen that for both "Chess" and "Bat out of Hell" they have apparently started to shift the ludicrously overpriced premium seats by giving them away as rush tickets. Which is less visible than, say, flogging them at TKTS at 50% and thus making it more obvious that they aren't selling out. So it's easier to take a risk not getting rid of them without losing face. 

Another thing is that London producers see what Broadway gets away with. Both New York and London are huge city destinations, so at any given time there are several thousand tourists in town who aren't theatre-savvy and want to catch a show as part of the experience. They don't mind spending big because it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing for them. Tourist shows like Phantom probably benefit mostly from there, because they might have seen Phantom twenty years ago in their home country and want to see it again or just finally see it.

I bet that a tourist walking into the box office and being offered a £150 seat, isn't even aware that this isn't a norm - especially when they're not familiar with exchange rates. I mean, I can easily calculate Euro vs Pounds vs Dollar in my head at this stage, but if I'm going to a new country whose currency I'm not familiar with, it gets a lot more complicated and I've found myself thinking "what the hell have I just spend?" more than once. I also have no real yardstick to measure if I'm being way overcharged for, say, a taxi ride or not, because I have no idea how much locals pay (and how it balances against their income).

Thirdly, tourism is booming. There's a whole new affluent middle class in many countries that is able to travel for the first time and spend big on things. Only today I've read a half-amusing half-sad article on 4000 Chinese tourists descending on the nearby designer outlet village at the same time, having been given the trip as a gift from their company boss and each of them throwing hundreds of Euros around on designer brands. Do you think these people would think twice about spending £150 on a musical as part of their "London experience"?

Obviousy tourist-orientated shows like Phantom benefit more from this kind of thing than smaller shows like Jamie or plays where the language barrier keeps most tourists away, which (I think) is why so many decent new shows have struggled recently. 

Everything you've said makes sense. How unfortunate that the regular theatregoer, for whom it is more of a hobby comes off worse in this - in market aimed in the West End particularly at affluent tourists.  We seem to be the Cinderellas in this tale!

That's certainly got a lot to do with it. The trend towards "premium seating" began on Broadway (I think The Producers was the first show where it stuck, though there were some $100 premium seats for the Broadway production of Miss Saigon way back in 1991). Dynamic pricing also, because it enables producers to test the outer limits of what people are prepared to pay.

Some of it, though, is plain old-fashioned cynicism/greed on the part of the producers. The seat that cost me £57.50 in the first booking period for Hamilton is now £100 - towards the rear of the dress circle, far enough to the side that some of one side of the stage is not quite visible. £57.50 is a fair price for that seat, £100 is not. It's cheeky pricing - and when they get away with it, they'll push the boundary a little further on the next big hit show.

And ticket prices on touring productions have shot up over the last few years. A cheap seat at somewhere like the National AND return train fare from where I live to London - about 200 miles each way - costs a bit less than a stalls seat for the Manchester run of Matilda.

It happens everywhere across the board. Talking with some work friends today who never go to the theatre but they were chatting about football. One of them has a ticket to the Arsenal match at the weekend which they got ages ago. Now it’s going to be Arsne (sp?) Wenger’s last home game the prices have been hiked up. Apparently there’s some Champions League match taking place next week so the airlines have increased the flight costs to £1200.

It’s all a case of supply and demand. I’ve not yet seen Harry Potter or Hamilton and don’t expect to do so for several years, or at least until it’s no longer such a hot ticket. Some prices listed are way beyond stupid, but be flexible and you can get Day seats to 42nd street for £15.

Exactly that. Dynamic pricing means the supplier can raise/lower the price in response to demand.

It's called greed. Pure and simple. But as long as the tickets continue to sell, the prices will continue to rise.

It is what it is. There's always going to be more expensive versions of everything we buy. It's about choice.

I did a two show day in London this weekend.

Chess was £17 and the view was perfectly fine.

I got my ticket for 42nd Street for free with my Today Tix credits.

Two great West End shows for £17 seems pretty great to me. Even adding on travel costs that costs less than the inflated prices of touring productions at my local theatre.