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Broadway Show Ticket Blog

Book Of Mormon Tickets Push New Price of $500 Per Ticket and Raise the Very Lowest Ticket Price to $149

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Book Of Mormon

Book Of Mormon Sets Broadway Ticket Price Record

It’s already the highest priced ticket on Broadway and regularly has the highest “average paid attendance” (last week it was $191.55), but in a bid to further thwart ticket brokers, recoup some of the profit for the show’s investors, and raise money to finance the touring productions, The Book of Mormon has set a new ticket pricing schedule that raises the stakes in its premium and cheapest seat ticket prices to new Broadway ticket price records:

Premium orchestra seat tickets during popular show times are now $477 + fees. At less popular times, these seats are now $352 + fees.

Even the very back rows in the mezzanine, which were previously the only bargain at Mormon at $69 each, have been raised to $149 per ticket (these tickets are set to increase again to $159 after July 2013).  During the holidays and other popular times, the “worst seats in the theatre” have been raised to an astonishing $255. This puts the difference between the best premium seat in the house and the very worst seat at just $222, a difference of only 50%, which sets another Broadway record for lack of pricing diversity. In a bid to not completely divorce themselves from lower priced tickets, Book Of Mormon does still offer sixteen “limited legroom” seats in the very back of the mezzanine for $69, but these seats are not available online or over the telephone – and even in person,  they are sold a year in advance and for the the last eight attempts by this writer, no such tickets have been available at the box office.

All Book of Mormon tickets remain sold-out for a rolling year. But the official face value of Book Of Mormon tickets (which is somewhat academic) is now:

  • Amex Premium Ticket Desk tickets are $252.00 – $477.00
  • Select Mid-Premium Seating tickets are $227.00 – $299.00
  • Select Premium Seating tickets are $352.00 – $477.00
  • Select Premium Seating tickets are $477.00
  • Premium Seats: $352 (off-peak) – $477 (peak)
  • Regular Orchestra and Front Mezzanine Seats: $252 (off-peak) – $299 (peak)
  • Rear Mezzanine Seats: $149 (off-peak, raising to $169) – $252 (peak)

telecharge

The Book of Mormon operates on a rolling-year ticket purchase, so all well-placed regular priced tickets are sold out a year in advance.  Each week the box office makes another set of tickets available to buyers (usually a week’s worth), most of which are purchased by ticket brokers (who are the only people that would normally buy tickets a year in advance). This leaves only the less well placed ticket inventory available for the same price, closer to the performance date. For example: a ticket for a seat in Mezzanine row J on the month prior to the performance is the same price as a seat in Orchestra side row A, but only when sold a year in advance.

Ticket brokers have been actively speculating on The Book of Mormon tickets since the show received its bevy of awards at the 2011 Tonys, which drove up interest in the show by leaps and bounds. Recently, Book of Mormon tickets have become so hot that ticket brokers have even resorted to sending their staff down to the daily ticket lotteries because of the tremendous profits that can be made by selling a $32 front row seat for $400 after winning the ticket lottery – in some cases selling the tickets to clients before winning them (this is known as naked short-selling in the stock market).  Other ticket brokers can be seen on the day of the show selling these ‘recently acquired’ tickets outside the theater 30 minutes prior to the performance. Brokers have brought their full set of market manipulation techniques to bear through practices like drip feeding or scalp seeding – practices that are illegal in the New York stock market, but perfectly acceptable in the Broadway ticket market. More recently, ticket speculation for The Book Of Mormon has reached a fever pitch and is now starting to look a lot like the 1624 Amsterdam Tulip bubble, which ended disastrously for both the buyers and producers. It’s that speculation bubble that all others are now judged by and Broadway may be heading that way.

Creatively speaking, the Eugene O’Neill Theatre is the perfect size for The Book of Mormon, but from a financial perspective, it’s clear that the size of the theater is drastically limiting the revenue that the show could potentially achieve – see The Book of Mormon on the Broadway ticket sales analysis or the Broadway sales chart.  With only 1100 seats per show and eight shows per week, The Book of Mormon is missing out on a much higher attendance potential when compared with its two cousins in the the top three Broadway show list:  Wicked and The Lion King. (The disparity can actually be seen across all Broadway shows in “total attendance” when compared to Book of Mormon.)

With The Book of Mormon producers clawing back the profit from the ticket brokers by setting the new standard for pricing for this show, ticket brokers will in turn pass these price increases onto their own clients.  This could set the after-market broker ticket pricing on The Book of Mormon on Broadway at $750 to $1000 per ticket, from the $500 to $600 that they are currently on, a potential bubble in the making.

As The Book of Mormon is now the number one show on Broadway, it has within its grasp the opportunity to change the Broadway ticket game by cutting out ticket brokers for good. It’s clear that Mormon no longer needs brokers to promote the show, so if they were to add buyers’ names on tickets and demand government ID to match at the door (much like airline tickets), it could recoup all profit for the show overnight, cut out all ticket brokers, and provide consumers with a more equitable situation than the one currently being experienced with runaway pricing, no available ticket inventory and market manipulation.

Book of Mormon touring shows open at various locations across America in the coming months, but it’s unclear how this will affect sales of the New York Broadway based show tickets.  Ticket brokers may find themselves with unsold inventory, which could potentially crash the whole Broadway ticket market – something that has never happened in the history of Broadway, even dating back to the Broadway ticket speculation that transpired with the reign of Joe LeBlang in the early 1900s, when Broadway theatre had just moved uptown and the Broadway business was in its infancy.

But then again, Broadway ticket revenues weren’t $25 million per week and face value Broadway show tickets weren’t pushing $500.

Disney Reduces Lion King Tickets to $99 (Orchestra Seats) for four shows in 2013

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The Lion King Broadway MusicalIn a time of great change for Disney on Broadway, with eternal favorite Mary Poppins now set to close on March 3, 2013, Disney on Broadway announced a temporary price reduction on The Lion King tickets for just 4 performances in February and March 2013. The seats are located in the orchestra and front mezzanine and the normal price for these tickets is $139, so they are clearly a bit of a bargain.  As everyone knows, Disney very rarely discounts The Lion King given that it has maintained very strong sales over the years.

With Mary Poppins leaving Broadway, it is anticipated that ongoing demand for The Lion King tickets will rise even further, leading to overall price increases for The Lion King — both for face value tickets and for aftermarket pricing.  That means that this Disney offer may be the last time that The Lion King will be this affordable for quite some time.  More details about this limited time offer offer can be found at:
http://www.nytix.com/Links/Broadway/listofcurrentshows.html

Broadway Shows Offer Post-Storm Ticket Specials

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As of today, Thursday, November 1, all Broadway are back to performing as scheduled.  However, the fact is that New York City is still not quite back to normal yet, especially in terms of transportation, making it hard for many potential theatergoers to make it to Broadway theaters.  To entice audiences, some Broadway shows are making special post-Hurricane Sandy ticket discounts available.

CHAPLIN – The new musical Chaplin is offering a ‘Buy 1 Ticket, Get 1 Ticket Free’ special for Thursday and Friday performances.  The offer applies to all price levels, but it can only be obtained if you purchase tickets directly at the box office of the Barrymore Theatre, where Chaplin is playing.

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT – Even this hit Tony Award-winning musical comedy is offering a post-Sandy special.  $37 rush tickets are available for performances this Thursday and Friday to residents of areas that have been affected by the storm, which includes New York, New Jersey, Conecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina.  Tickets can be purchased starting at 10am at the Imperial Theatre box office and a valid photo ID is required.  2 ticket limit.  Seats are subject to availability.

THE PERFORMERS – This new comedy’s “Sandy Special” means that ticket buyers can get tickets for the Thursday, November 1 performance for just $29.50 for the best available seats.  Must purchase directly at the Longacre Theatre box office.

It is possible that other Broadway shows are offering ticket specials as well, so it is worth visiting their official websites or theater box offices to see what ticket discounts might be available in the coming days.

TKTS Now Selling Matinee and Evening Tickets Simultaneously

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The TKTS discount ticket booth in Times Square has just made buying same-day tickets a little simpler for the multitudes of Broadway and Off-Broadway theater ticket buyers that wait in line there each day.  As of earlier this week, the TKTS half price booth is now selling tickets for both matinee and evening performances simultaneously on two-performance days (which are generally Wedesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays).  Previously, you could only buy matinee tickets at the booth between 10am and 2pm, with evening tickets being sold 3-8pm.  The change is particularly helpful for theatergoers who have a flexible schedule and are free to buy either matinee or evening tickets.

Another major change that the TKTS Times Square booth, now in its 40th year operating in the heart of the Broadway theater district, has made is to start offering full-price tickets at Window #1.  The booth was designed to offer both tourists and local Broadway theater lovers an opportunity to buy discount tickets and has been valued for that reason over the decades.  However, many Broadway fans also want to see popular Broadway shows that are not offering discounted tickets, so the booth can act as a source of “one-stop shopping” for those people.  The Full-Price Ticket Window will most likely be used primarily by tourists or non-locals who don’t realize that you can purchase full-price tickets directly at the show’s theater box office without waiting in the long line at TKTS.

Peter and the Starcatcher Celebrates Pirate Day With Free Ticket Offer

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“International Talk Like a Pirate Day,” founded by humor columnist Dave Barry, is coming up on September 19, and the Peter Pan-themed show Peter and the Starcatcher has come up with a unique way to celebrate it.  In tribute to the play’s own pirate, Black Stache, Peter and the Starcatcher will have a special “Stache Day” on that date.

In honor of “Stache Day,” Peter and the Starcatcher will give out free tickets for that night’s performance to the first 100 people wearing mustaches (they can be real or fake) who line up at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre (located at 256 West 47th Street) on the morning of September 19.  The tickets will be distributed at 10:00AM, and only one ticket can be claimed per person.

To encourage fans to come bearing their most impressive mustaches, Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson (the authors of the book on which Peter and the Starcatcher is based), as well as the actor who plays Black Stache, Matthew Saldivar, will choose the three best mustaches.  Those people will each be given a pair of tickets, plus a backstage tour at the performance that evening.

Shubert Organization Makes Big Changes To Their Online Broadway Ticket Website Telecharge.com

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Telecharge.com, the Shubert Organization ticketing site that is the official Broadway show ticket vendor for over half of the shows on Broadway, has recently re-worked its website.  Currently in Beta testing, the new version of the Telecharge website is seen by 1 out of 5 people who visit Telecharge.com (or you can click the Beta test button).  Besides an overall re-branding (the primary color is now blue rather than white, for example), there are some key changes in terms of functionality and information offered.

The new Telecharge.com layout features more information on each Broadway show, from cast details to handicapped accessibility information.  This includes a schedule of upcoming show dates and times (and a “View Full Calendar” option) that is a much-needed improvement, making it easier for ticket buyers to see at a glance what show time will be best for them.  The comprehensive pricing breakdowns are shown by performance, enabling customers to more easily see which seats are available at what cost.

Shubert launches new telecharge website

The most significant improvement on the new Telecharge.com site is that it now allows users to search and select seats on a map.  This is helpful to Broadway ticket buyers because they are able to easily see where available seats are located in the theater and to choose their preferred seats accordingly.  Telecharge’s 3-D seat map gives you the option of looking at the theater from overhead or from a stage view — if you already have your tickets, you can even enter your section, row, and seat numbers to see exactly where the seats are located, although Microsoft Silverlight must be installed for this functionality to work. Telecharge has also included functionality to see a view of the stage from your seat before buying.  Not all the theatre data and photos have yet been loaded, but this function promises to be quite valuable to ticket buyers.

Overall, Telecharge’s seat finder is not as good as the one used on Ticketmaster.com, which handles the ticketing for most of the rest of the shows on Broadway. Though it will likely improve in time, at the moment Telecharge’s map has an unfinished look, is often slow to load, is not nearly as intuitive as Ticketmaster’s map, and in some cases lacks the flexibility of being able to see all the available seats on one screen.

The new website still does not allow the use of discount codes, they must be used on Telecharge’s other website, BroadwayOffers.com. The new site also requires Microsoft Silverlight to be installed, further limiting the penetration of their latest development, as Microsoft Silverlight has very limited user adoption and many documented problems with Google Chrome and Safari on the Mac. Similarly this functionality will not work on Apple’s iPad or iPhone.

On the whole, the new Telecharge website is an improvement because it presents Broadway ticket buyers with more detailed information on schedules, pricing and seating, along with a more complex search function. Nonetheless, it needs work in terms of smoothness of appearance, ease of use, and functionality.

Ticketmaster Sets A New Broadway Surcharge Record With a $23 Per Ticket “Convenience Charge” For Cirque du Soleil’s Zarkana Tickets

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Ticketmaster has set a new Broadway record for their “Convenience Charge” surcharge for Cirque du Soleil’s Zarkana tickets at the Radio City Music Hall. The surcharge fees jumped dramatically from last year’s $8 -$16 to this year’s $13-$23, setting a new Broadway record. The amount of the surcharge is no longer a flat fee and is now directly connected to the price of the ticket; this year the $158 prime orchestra tickets are attracting the $23 surcharge.

Cirque do Soleil's Zarkana at The Radio City Music Hall

Cirque do Soleil’s Zarkana at The Radio City Music Hall

The surcharges are only applied to patrons purchasing tickets online or over the telephone from Ticketmaster.  The  ”in person” sales at the Radio City Music Hall Box Office, on the other hand, are not charged this additional fee. The prior two purchasing methods are often the only options for Broadway and other New York City theater patrons that cannot make it physically to the theater to purchase their Cirque du Soleil Zarkana tickets.

This means that a family of four would pay just under a hundred dollars in Ticketmaster fees, without including the price of the tickets.

Noting the unhappiness directed towards Ticketmaster over these inflated fees, they recently adopted a more transparent ticket sales model in the hopes of diffusing customer anger. Needless to say they didn’t accomplish this by actually lowering their fees, but they at least stopped hiding them. Now, when you select a Broadway ticket on Ticketmaster, you immediately see the total cost, so that the surcharge doesn’t come as such an unwelcome surprise just as you’re about to confirm your purchase. Despite the carping by ticket buyers at the time that Ticketmaster announced this ‘innovation’, it was actually a pretty wise move, since customers generally react better to knowing the total cost upfront–even if the surcharges are still outrageously high.

This price increase by Ticketmaster essentially penalizes out-of-towners, as local New Yorkers are wise to cutting out Ticketmaster and going directly to the box office to purchase tickets. It has been said that Ticketmaster was also trying to claw back some profit from ticket brokers, who resell their tickets at a profit. But with 5,931 seats and 3 shows a day, Zarkana at the Radio City Musical Hall doesn’t suffer the same abuse and manipulation from ticket brokers that a “one-off” concert or a hit Broadway show does.

Broadway Theatre Owners Raise Facility Fee Surcharge To $2.00 on Broadway Tickets

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Broadway show producers often increase ticket prices to their shows to match growing demand. It now appears that theater owners want to get in on the action.

Many Broadway theaters have just increased their facility fee charges to $2.00, making that the new standard amount for facility fees on Broadway in addition to the base ticket price, the convenience charge, and the per-order handling fee.

The facility fee (sometimes called the theater restoration fee, or the 3rd surcharge) is the only surcharge that you have to pay even if buying your tickets directly at the Broadway theater box office — unlike other Broadway ticket surcharges, this one comes from the theater itself, not the ticket agent.

In a way, it sounds like a classy sort of fee. After all, everyone wants those beautiful Broadway theaters to continue looking nice, and $2.00 doesn’t sound like that much when you just threw down $155 for a ticket. But when you really consider it, that fee is rather odd. You don’t pay any other industry an extra fee to simply maintain their place of business, do you? People wouldn’t normally pay a facility fee when they dine at a restaurant or shop at a store. If the Broadway theaters need money for upkeep, you would anticipate that they would factor this into the rent that they charge their tenants, the Broadway shows themselves.

The switch that many theaters made over the years from calling the fee a ‘restoration fee’ to calling it a ‘facility fee’ is also telling, since the truth is that none of them are actually guaranteeing that the money is going directly to theater restoration projects. The fact is, that little charge can add up to tens of millions of dollars annually for Broadway theater owners, making it an excellent source of extra revenue.  It is unclear why they don’t just charge the producers of the show more rent, who will in turn increase the prices of tickets to their show.

In an article that Cara Joy David wrote for the New York Times in 2007 on ticket fees and surcharges, veteran Broadway producer Emanuel Azenberg was quoted as saying of the fees, “I think all of these things cumulatively are insane … Someone must have men in the back room making up names, euphemisms for profit.”

The facility fees have not always been uniform, and different theaters have charged different amounts over the years. Ten years ago, most facility fees were around $1.00 or $1.25, and $1.50 was typical for a very long time. But now $2.00 has emerged as the most common amount for the facility fee.  (A few exceptions exist, such as Disney’s New Amsterdam Theater and Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater, which have no facility fee at all; and the Gershwin Theatre, home of Wicked, which charges $1.25.)  Somehow the American theater managed to thrive for decades before fees were introduced in the ’90s, so these charges really do seem unnecessary.

Part of the reason the facility fee doesn’t get that much attention from Broadway ticket buyers is because they are already used to paying much higher surcharges directly to Ticketmaster and Telecharge. The popularity of phone ordering (much easier than traveling down to the box office in person, especially for tourists and out-of-towners) and the advent of online ordering provided an excuse for the “convenience charge,” which usually breaks down into two types of fees: the per-order handling fee (currently $2.75 on Telecharge, after recently being raised from $2.50) and the per-ticket service charge ($7.50 on Telecharge). There also may be additional charges depending on what delivery method you choose.

Broadway ticket buyers can continue to avoid the larger surcharges by making the trip to the Broadway theater district and buying their tickets directly at the box office, rather than dealing with the middle man that is Ticketmaster and Telecharge. But no matter how you purchase your Broadway tickets, that $2.00 facility fee will still be going from your pocket to the theater owners, at least hold the door open for me.

Seating Options Abound For Book of Mormon Tickets – But A Scant Few Tickets Are Actually Available

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More than a year after it won its Tony Award for Best Musical, The Book of Mormon remains Broadway’s monster hit, completely selling out performances several months in advance. The recent departure of original cast members Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells (soon to appear on TV shows 1600 Penn and The New Normal, respectively) hasn’t made a dent in sales either, since The Book of Mormon is the rare Broadway musical where members of the behind-the-scenes creative team (i.e. South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone) are more famous than the people onstage.

Needless to say, The Book of Mormon tickets continue to be challenging to purchase. If you want The Book of Mormon tickets, you better be prepared to make your theater-going plans way in advance (are you free in the summer of 2013 by any chance?). Making matters more complicated is that The Book of Mormon‘s official ticket seller, Telecharge, is now utilizing a surprisingly complicated seating structure. When searching for The Book of Mormon tickets on Telecharge.com, you have the option to search by section (see image on the left). In the past, these drop-down menus might show 6-8 sections to choose from, but now The Book of Mormon is an example of a Broadway show that offers roughly two dozen options.

While this lengthy seating breakdown creates the illusion of choice, the reality is that the pricing options for The Book of Mormon tickets are extremely limited. The available regular ticket prices for The Book of Mormon are $69 rear mezzanine, partial view for $145-$165, and everything else in the $155-$175 ticket range. On that entire list of seating choices, only the Mezzanine Rows J-L gets you the $69 tickets. (By the way, the premium seats on that list will run you $250-$477 each.) Another popular Broadway musical, Jersey Boys, has a similar set-up, with numerous seating choices but limited price points. Meanwhile, a show like End of the Rainbow, which is struggling to fill seats, shows far fewer seating choices, but a slightly wider variety of pricing options.

One possible reason for the increasingly detailed seat offerings for popular Broadway shows is customer demand. When searching for The Book of Mormon tickets on Telecharge, you can just leave it on the default ‘Best Available’ setting to be given whatever Telecharge has determined are the best seats. But with Broadway ticket prices at all-time highs (especially for hit musicals like The Book of Mormon and Jersey Boys), buyers feel that if they are paying $155 for a ticket, they should at least be able to choose what row they want to sit in. The incredibly high demand for tickets, though, gives The Book of Mormon producers little reason to charge anything less than an arm and a leg — except for throwing ticket buyers a little bone by offering a few rear mezzanine rows at $69 (which of course sell out very quickly).

The complex seating breakdown for The Book of Mormon tickets also highlights the problem with Telecharge’s online ticketing system. Unlike Ticketmaster, which now lets you easily view and select the precise seats that you want from a seating chart, Telecharge leaves ticket buyers flailing in the dark, attempting to get the system to pull up desirable seats. Having a detailed list of seat row ranges at least allows buyers to choose their preferred seating sections with greater accuracy. Then again, with a sell-out show like The Book of Mormon, customers often find that there isn’t anything available in their selected row anyway. The truth of the matter is that, for big Broadway hits, you often have to settle for whatever is available — or else pay the premium ticket prices.

Rock of Ages Movie Fails to Rock the Box Office – Barely Moves The Needle on the Broadway Show

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The film version of the highly successful Broadway musical Rock of Ages opened this past weekend to disappointing box office sales and tepid reviews. Featuring a star-filled cast and a slew of beloved ’80s hair-band hits like “Pour Some Sugar on Me” and “Wanted Dead or Alive”, Rock of Ages seemed poised to do well, but when all was said and done, the hard-rocking movie only placed #3 at the box office, bringing in less than $15 million in ticket sales.

The exact reason for Rock of Ages‘ lackluster performance is hard to pinpoint. Some of the reviews felt the Rock of Ages movie failed to capture the silly fun and hard rock spirit of the Broadway show version (and of course the film couldn’t possibly duplicate the concert-like feel of a live show). The movie advertisements, which emphasize the more famous cast members (Tom Cruise, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Russell Brand, Paul Giamatti, etc.), are also rather misleading, since the main characters are actually played by relative unknowns. Some moviegoers may have also simply thought that the movie looked a bit too cheesy for their tastes (Alec Baldwin in a ratty-looking long wig can’t be helping matters on that front).

Perhaps the real question is whether or not ’80s music has as much mass appeal anymore, particularly to the largest movie-going demographic, young men. It’s more likely that their parents are the ones who hold a strong affection for ’80s hair metal, which would explain why Rock of Ages is a bigger success on Broadway (where middle-aged ticket buyers rule) than in movie theaters (which is more the domain of young people).