Benchmarks on Ticket Sale Tactics
September 21, 2021
As arts organizations open their doors and reopen to the public in this new season, ticket sales are top of mind for audience return. To understand how teams are innovating on this front, our recent Arts Executive Poll surveyed leaders at arts organizations about how they are implementing affordable ticket initiatives to remain accessible to a broad audience and offering complimentary tickets to help fill out houses and venues. Highlights from the survey include:
Over 80% of arts organizations have offered comp tickets and affordable ticket initiatives in the past and plan on offering these tactics this season. However, there are a handful of arts organizations who are launching affordable ticket initiatives this season for the first time — particularly as there has been increased priority for accessible tickets over the course of the pandemic.
Comp tickets and affordable ticket initiatives are offered to a variety of various audience types. Community partners, org staff, and friends/family of artists and org staff lead the distribution for receiving comp tickets while students lead the distribution for affordable ticket initiatives.
Within affordable ticket programs, most arts organizations either implement a tiered pricing structure for different constituents or institute one discounted fixed price, with the average discount for a single ticket primarily falling between 1% and 60%.
