Hi all,
I was trying to put together a budget here for out upcoming productions of Annie, Babes in Toyland and The Secret Garden. However, since we have not mounted our first production yet, I'm unsure of what to count as an average audience size.

Our venue seats 561 people, and is right in the middle of downtown. The surrounding area has population of over 155,000 in this county alone. We are also doing the following advertising:

• City Bus ads: putting ad's on the outside of 12 city bus's for a month before the show. Also there will be ad's inside the bus as well.
  
• Free Ticket Giveaway with our local FM radio station (B97). We will also run several radio ad's starting a week before opening and lasting till closing date (around 5, 30 sec ad's a day).
• Placing table tents on the tables of 4 locally owned restaurants.
  
• Printing Glossy, fancy Fliers (11 x 8.5) and placing them all around town.
• Printing 500 18 x 24" posters to put in the window's of approved business's.
  
• An ad in the local newspaper (1/8 page, runs for a month before first show).
• Holding Critic & Preview screening 1 week before opening night. This means we should get (hopefully) good reviews in around 6 local papers / publications.
  
• The Theater we use sends out an e-mail notice to 6,000 known ticket buyers.
  

Our production is set to run for 6 shows, which will be 1 show on Friday's and 2 on Saturdays for 2 weeks.

Based on the info I have provided, is it possible for anyone to give me a general estimate of what average house will be? I have been figuring up as 50% house at each Matinee, and 80% house at our night shows.

PS) Our Ticket prices are: Main Floor (301 Seats) - $32 Adults, $19 Child.
                                         Balcony (260 Seats) - $26 Adults, $14 Child.
In our opinion, these are pretty good prices for Musical productions in our area. We wanted to keep rates as low as possible to ensure more people have the option of seeing a show.

Thanks,

It's really hard to predict audience size because we don't know your market.  What I can tell you is what we've learned and our past experience. Because you're new, you could have a lot of interest in people checking you out.  You could have good attendance and a "honeymoon period" before attendance drops.  You're a good sized organization and by looking at other posts, looks like you have a lot of things going for you in your favor.

Also, that 6,000 person mailing list is not ours. It's included in with rental of the Theater as is Box Office and front of house service. I'm sure it took them years to build that email list. Our town and surrounding county also has more than 150,000 people which might have helped too.

Some thing to think about?

Yes, the current US national tour of Annie came to Bloomington in October and played 2 dates at the IU Auditorium (3,150 seat Theater). The Tuesday night performance I seen was sold to at least 2,800 seats if not more. Don't know about Wednesday.

Although, there ticket prices where different than mine. The minimum price was $37 for Balcony, up to $59 for Center Orchestra.

I'm thinking along the lines of $32 for Main Floor and $26 for Balcony. Also, the Theater we play at is more "Community Oriented" than IU Auditorium. The Auditorium usually plays to about 60% IU Faculty and Staff, the Buskirk-Chumley (the one we use) almost always plays to community residents.

Thats pretty much what we are going on is that: #1 people who could not afford to see the national tour might be able to afford this a little better and #2: Those people in the general community who are not familiar with IU Auditorium probably will have a better chance of coming since the Buskirk-Chumley is not located on IU Campus like the IU Auditorium.

WHAT I AM CONCERNED ABOUT THOUGH: Is that it might be "too soon" to do another production of Annie, and expect it to sell. As it stands, it will be September before we actually put on the show, so it will have almost been 1 year since the national tour left... I'm sure there is people who would like to see it again, and of course though who would like to have seen the national tour but didn't have the money at the time, or time to go see it, etc. that may want to see it now.

Any comments on this? Thanks.