Robin Hood, Ticket Broker?

Wow, there's been a lot of inside baseball-type talk in this space lately! I suppose this is what happens when you give musicians a couple of weeks with no evening concerts to play - we start to navel-gaze and argue amongst ourselves about the business. (This is one of the reasons that musicians tend to hang out with/date/marry other musicians: we're almost genetically incapable of choking off our tendency to talk shop all the time.) But we'll try to get things back to matters of interest to a broader readership this week.

I did spot a piece in last Thursday's Guardian (my favorite UK daily) that qualifies as being of interest to anyone who regularly attends or plays in a concert hall. It concerns London's Royal Opera House, which has, for the last couple of years, been trying to bring down its average ticket price. They've kept a large block of tickets under £30 ($60), which isn't bad by London standards, and half the house is priced under £50. Next season, they'll also be screening filmed versions of many of their productions in movie theaters around the country (as the Metropolitan Opera has been doing to great acclaim in this country,) and charging only £12 a head.

The problem of ticket prices is one that nearly every performing arts organization is highly sensitive to. We talk a pretty good game concerning our desire to bring our music to everyone, but the reality frequently is that our ticket prices make it very difficult for a family on a budget, or anyone under the median national income level, to afford to attend on anything approaching a regular basis. Now, we're hardly alone in this - have you tried taking your family to a Minnesota Wild game for under $200 lately? - but as cultural organizations that are supposed to serve the broader public, not just line our own pockets, we're seen as having more of a responsibility to strive for accessibility than a for-profit entertainment industry would. And that's as it should be.

To that end, the Minnesota Orchestra offers severely discounted student tickets, a hefty number of cheap rush tickets that anyone can queue up for an hour before showtime, a series of free family concerts where tickets are apportioned by lottery, and various other discounts and specials that we hope will allow those who otherwise might not be able to afford a ticket to attend. However, the sad reality is that, for our core weekly concerts, our average ticket price still hovers somewhere north of the $50 mark, for the simple reason that we would go out of business if we charged everyone $15 a head.

In striving to keep a large number of tickets in the affordable range, the Royal Opera House has run into the same conundrum we have - namely, finding ways to make up for the revenue lost when ticket prices are dropped. And starting next season, the ROH will be trying out a solution that few American orchestras would dare attempt. Basically, they're asking their higher-end ticketbuyers to subsidize the lower-end tickets, hiking the top ticket price for their most prominent productions to a whopping £210 ($420!) By comparison, New York's Metropolitan Opera's top ticket remains under $300 - hardly pocket change, but a far cry from what the ROH's high rollers will be shelling out.

The theory here, of course, is that, for operagoers who actually buy the top tickets, money is clearly no object, and the very act of spending lavishly on such an extravagance may even be part of the allure. Therefore, why not make the passes even more expensive if it will help make other tickets more affordable to those who can't afford much luxury? The danger is that every consumer has his limit, and that latest price hike might just cause some of your most loyal audience members to scale back their attendance.

Furthermore, while egalitarianism still sells fairly well as a concept in Europe, Americans asked to give up some of what they have so that others less fortunate might benefit have a tendency to start muttering about socialism and redistribution of wealth, and we in the American arts world are terrified of being seen as ungrateful to the wealthy elites who, quite frankly, keep us in business with their generous annual donations.

Since the ROH and other UK arts institutions receive much of their funding from the government (which effectively means that all Britons are contributing, not just the wealthy,) they don't have exactly the same pipers to pay that we do. (Which is not to suggest that their road is any easier than ours: as I'm sure our orchestra's British CEO would tell you, being beholden to the whims of politicians who know little to nothing about the arts is at least as tough as being beholden to individual private donors who, by definition, like and appreciate what we bring to the community.)

The ROH's Robin Hood pricing plan, as the press are calling it, likely won't provide any broad answers for the rest of the global music industry. But in an era when it's harder and harder to get the average person to leave the house and spend money on live music, there will definitely be eyes on London, looking for signs that the public is embracing the concept. Meanwhile, I guess we'll just keep handing out those rush tickets and student vouchers...