Roland wrote a short post a couple of weeks ago about an innovative ticket sales strategy at ACT Theatre in Seattle, prompting me to dig deeper.
I write regularly about marketing and revenue challenges facing the theatre business in America. (I'm a former producer who spent more time than was healthy worrying about ticket sales.) In the last decade massive demographic forces and the explosion of media options have plunged the live stage business into turmoil. I should add that theatre is hardly the only sector suffering ulcers. How many newspapers were on your porch this morning, how many magazines came in your mailbox last week, how has your television viewing changed in ten years? Come on, how many ways do you “consume” movies today? Chaos rules the media world.
ACT Theatre has demonstrated more initiative and downright courage in meeting these challenges than any other theatre I know of. Desperation can provoke bold measures, and that’s what happened when ACT almost went under in 2003. The Board and leadership faced the choice of closing the joint or reinventing its business model. They didn’t close the joint.
One success has been the ACTPass. For $25 a month (tied to a yearly commitment) you can see any play as many times as you want, and you can buy a ticket for a companion at a considerable discount. For a theatre junkie like me, this is a no-brainer. I recently enjoyed Yussef El Guindi’s superb new comedy Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World three times at a price that comes out to well less than a movie ticket.
ACT’s latest innovation is a pay-what-you-can policy for ALL performances. There are a few qualifications: you can only buy tickets in person at the box office after 1:00 pm, day of show. ACT is in the process of adding a feature to its website that indicates how many day-of-show tickets remain available so that someone doesn’t waste a trip downtown.
I recently interviewed ACT’s longtime Memberships and Audience Services Director Harley Rees (that’s him in the picture at the box office) about this initiative. Harley explains that people express lots of objections about why they don’t attend theatre and their number one excuse is ticket price. ACT's initiative has knocked that objection right off the table. Harley and his colleagues at ACT fervently believe that it is in tough economic and social times that we need theatre the most, and they are making sure theatre is available to all.
ACT launched this initiative mid-July and while Harley considers it an experiment, so far he is pleased. He reports selling about fifty additional tickets to each performance under this program and he is pleasantly surprised at the prices being paid. Buyers are trending younger, also pleasing ACT which wants to get younger butts in more seats. Harley adds that some even pay full price, recognizing that “pay what you can” really does mean “what you can.” After all, when was the last time you paid less than the “suggested donation” for the entrance fee at the Metropolitan Museum? Harley knows of no precedent for this strategy in the U.S. He says he was influenced by an initiative at the National Theatre in London whereby some tickets to every performance are only 12 pounds.
