Pricing can be tricky business.  It's not so much what's happening around the world, the country, or, depending upon size, the state.  It's what the market will bear and, more specifically, it's what your theatre's market (i.e., audience) will bear.  In one theatre I was involved with, when we raised ticket prices a couple of dollars, there was no noticable impact on sales.  However, at another theatre in a very different part of the country, but still only a couple of hours away, when ticket prices were raised by just a dollar, there were people squawking all over the place! 

There is a general rule of thumb:  if you raise prices, don't expect to gain much until the following year.  In almost any retail business whether it's bus ridership, golf course green's fees, or local theatre tickets, when you raise prices, expect a drop off in purchases.  It can often take a season for the market to get used to it and then they'll come back and you will begin to see a slow rise in revenues. 

In another discussion, we were talking about comp tickets and how one theatre ended up making more when they made all ticket prices by donation!  But it can also work the other way.  There is the very murky concept of "perceived value".  If your prices are cheap, then you must be cheap.  There are organizations that flourished after going from very cheap tickets to really expensive tickets.  But with it, they increased the experience the customer got, too, and they targeted a whole new audience.  These are not tactics for the fainthearted. 

You can't isolate just price.  Put yourself into the audience's shoes for a moment and decide if you're getting more, less, or the same for the money you're spending.  Sometimes adding a little something to the experience helps the price increase.

Yours always,

Kibitzer

We are located 20mi SW of Minneapolis, and run usually 10-12 shows over 2 - 3 weekends.  We adjust prices, based on the cost of production, anticipated audience mix, etc.  We have inched up prices over the years, as quality has impoved and production costs have increased.  We recently finished Camelot at $9/$14.  This summer, Tom sawyer (musical) will be $8/$12.  Straight shows are a bit less.  One thing we try to do as an organization is to encourage families to take their children to shows, and so try to keep the student price as low as we can.  The other thing we usually do is offer an opening night price at a flat rate that is the same as the student price.  So many ticket sales come from word of mouth that we need to do all we can to create a buzz early in our run.  We survey audiences at each show, and general the general response is that people find our shows good to excellent value.