Your average ticket price this year

£23.56
Seen a total of 148 shows this year, been lucky to see a few of them for free (either through comps or as presents from friends/fam) which has kept the cost down, equally I’ve splashed out on a couple tickets.
My average is actually less than I was expecting it to be. My overall amount is a scary amount but it’s brought my a lot of enjoyment so I don’t regret it at all.

I refuse to even try to work it out. Let's just say I've been to the Royal Opera House a lot in the last year & that I like sitting near enough to see facial expressions. That doesn't come cheap!

Glad I'm apparently not the only one who has a spreadsheet

Mine is £25.58 - pushed up by a few Royal Opera House tickets and Hamilton and down again by offers and a papering site.

I have a spreadsheet on google drive

51 shows at an average of £34.33 - I see I have more expensive tastes than most of you!



I have a spreadsheet I’ve kept since 2011, so I can see my average creeping up over the years. That’s partly ticket price inflation and partly my ageing out of cheap ticket schemes and not being willing to put up with bad restricted view seats any more.

I'm quite shocked how low people's averages are. I daren't try to work mine out as I think it'll just make me depressed at how much I'd overpaid.

I too am surprised at low others' averages are. I reckon my average excluding the ROH would probably be around £30. My average for the ROH is probably around £70. I don't feel I overpay though. I could see West End shows from the very back of the balcony for maybe £10 but then I wouldn't be able to see the acting & so wouldn't enjoy it. Also, not living in London, I try to keep most of my theatregoing to weekends & this excludes many ticket offers. I'm prepared to pay more for the ROH because there are only a small number of performances for each production each season, hence I feel paying up to £100 is worth it, whereas I'm not prepared to pay up to £100 for West End shows that have 8 performances a week for months on end.

Day seating, papering, old vic £10 tix, todaytx £15 offers keep the average down. My most expensive ticket was £30 and incidentally that was the only upper circle and therefore worst seat last year.

18.50. Haven't paid over 30 pounds for a ticket this year.

Indeed, ftfadia - and suppose those of us who also track those added transport costs! I didn't mind checking my annual total for tickets as recording this enables me to calculate the average ticket cost, but I only look at the end of the year and don't attach any views to the amount either way.

Theatre, cinema and long-distance walking are my 3 main hobbies, the last probably the cheapest of the trio, so anything I spend on any of those activities is intended to bring me pleasure and paid out in that hope (and expectation), though it doesn't always pay off and theatre is probably the least reliable form of expense as so much depends on personal taste - and whether I can stay awake when it comes to it, which is a perennial frustration.

I don't begrudge anything I spend and don't stint myself but I rarely splurge either and am definitely of the occasions when I spend more on a ticket and feel that the production really has to deliver in return. I use all the methods others have mentioned and spend as much as I need to, but no more, in order to have the experience I prefer.

Triggered by this thread, and out of curiosity, I went and added up my total UK theatre expenditures for the year. Well, actually, half a year, since I moved to London mid-July (from elsewhere in the EU), but there were a few plays I'd seen in the UK before that.
 
Anyway, my average comes down to £14.6, for 49 theatre visits, which isn't all that bad. (Is it? :) )
It's a bit unrealistically skewed towards a higher number, because I splurged out on a few tickets deliberately (to celebrate getting a new job, that kind of thing), and the overall highest amounts come from seeing some (basically, two) plays more than once, but it all kind of balances out because some of the shows were gifted (friends, family, festivals...) or really, really cheap. The cheapest ticket was £5, the most expensive individual ticket was £65. 
I'm seeing the last one today - heading to Stratford East for Dick Whittington and His Cat (my first ever pantomime!) - and that was a lucky upgrade (also a first!) from £10 to £35 tickets, no clue why. 
I've also been digging through the archives as much as I could (the National Theatre and the V&A one), so I'm kind of telling myself that's a lot of plays (9 more, not counted in the theatre visits, of course) for overall not that much money. 

It's a rather expensive hobby. But absolutely worth it. :)