By Nathaniel Hill
“No no, this is wrong. None of this hip-hop iconography,” said producer Jeffrey Seller, surveying about 50 mockups for “Hamilton” key art hanging on the walls at SpotCo, our ad and marketing agency. “We need simple. We
need refined.”
It was early 2015, and I was lucky enough to be in the room where it happened: Jeffrey, SpotCo founder Drew Hodges, and “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda were whittling down concepts and figuring out the
brand identity that was going to sell a musical with a hip-hop score to a demographic typically disinterested in the genre: Broadway’s core ticket
buyers (on average, white women over 40). The whole idea of the show seemed like a stretch for this demo, so Jeffrey pressed it was critical that the marketing and branding of the show communicate one piece of information: This show is worth the price of an expensive ticket.
Personally, I thought the concepts riffing on the portrait of Alexander Hamilton that’s featured on the $10 bill were cool. One had him in frat-star sunglasses. (I was wrong.)
We all know what happened next: The show changed the industry, and with it, the public’s perception of Broadway ticket prices (already battered by the most recent mega-hit before it, “The Book of Mormon”). For every article about the innovative concept or fandom “Hamilton” inspired, there was a “can-you-believe-this?” piece on its sky-high ticketing prices, which rose in a game of cat-and-mouse between the show’s producers and ticket brokers (both professional and amateur). Articles about insane ticket prices made for easy clicks for journalists, and they proliferated rapidly. Most importantly, people read them, shared them, and talked about them, and this reinforced the perception that Broadway is a very expensive thing to do in New York.
“Hamilton” was followed by “Springsteen on Broadway” and Hugh Jackman in “The Music Man,” which sent premium ticket prices into the $500+ range on a regular basis, and generated slews of articles to match. Although these super-premium tickets represent a tiny percentage of the number of tickets sold, their existence occupies an outsize proportion of the media coverage that Broadway receives, and the public’s perception of what Broadway costs.
This adds a significant hurdle to new shows aiming to sell tickets fast. Not only does a show need to have an appealing concept and a positive recommendation from a friend, but it also needs to clear the bar of sounding like an experience worth spending a large amount of money. People are less willing to take a risk on a new show when they believe a decent Broadway ticket costs $400, and that has a drastic effect on how they interpret the marketing they see and the word of mouth they hear. This added obstacle has made it even harder for many great shows to succeed if they don’t “sound like” a premium experience to consumers.
“Shucked” is a great example of this, and it breaks my heart. Great show, easy to recommend, but then… Does a show “about corn” sound like it should be expensive? Many recent shows that have struggled don’t sound “luxury.” On the other hand, I’d argue that “Moulin Rouge!” and “Sweeney Todd,” starring Josh Groban, do.
Shows that push our limits and offer groundbreaking creativity struggle to fit into Broadway’s premium-brand image and, therefore, sell tickets. Without celebrities or concepts that sound as exceptional as dinner at Eleven Madison Park, good shows cannot draw enough dollars per ticket to break even — even if they fill every seat. Broadway has a public-perception problem when it comes to ticket prices and availability of affordable
tickets.
The irony is: While the maximum ticket price has indeed increased, there are plenty of affordable tickets to be found for Broadway shows. The industry-wide average paid admission this season to date stands at $127 — significantly less than what the general public perceives it to be. As Broadway League president Charlotte St. Martin pointed out to Broadway News last year, “On any given day, 50 percent of our tickets are less than $100. And on that same day, more than 75 percent of our tickets are under $125. At the end of the day, depending on the time of year and the shows that are there, 3-5 percent of our tickets are premium, and the rest are regular price.”
People don’t realize that affordable tickets abound, and, crucially, they don’t know what website to go to for primary market prices. Many still end up on Stubhub or another site that sells tickets at a markup.
The Broadway League ought to dedicate more resources not just to promoting Broadway — which it does excellently — but to hammering home the point that Broadway can be an affordable, non-premium experience for all New Yorkers and tourists. Chances are high you’ve heard a New Yorker cite high ticket prices as their reason for not attending more shows, but are you sure they know that they could have seen five shows for $500, rather than one? If we want parents to take their children to Broadway and build tomorrow’s customer base, they need to perceive that they can afford to do so.
Campaigns and events — on which the League spends more than $1 million annually — should be partially re-focused on promoting Broadway as a financially accessible experience for everyone. Broadway marketing should push hard on primary-market sources as the place to find fairly priced tickets. It should be our collective goal to re-educate the public that Broadway is for everyone with a very wide variety of price points, not just a
luxury for the rich.
In 2016, I noticed two subsets of ticket buyers willing to “pay more to get more” out of their Broadway experience: luxury travelers and corporate groups. I created Broadway Plus to cater to this market — the 3-5 percent already buying premium tickets — and our packages increase shows’ revenue generated from that group. We apply a relationship-based strategy with corporate clients, and convince them to take dollars typically spent on sporting and restaurant events and drive them toward Broadway instead. It would be easy to argue that I’m part of the “premium” problem, but our work can help support a show that wants to keep its regularly-priced tickets reasonable. I want the public’s perception to be that Broadway tickets are affordable and accessible at many price points, so that more people want to treat themselves, their client or their children to an elevated experience when the occasion calls for it.
When more people see Broadway as an affordable experience on a Wednesday night and not just on their birthday, that will be a great thing. An industry-wide collaboration to rebrand Broadway as affordable would help more great shows sell tickets and succeed. And that’s what we all want.
