The Playgoer: It's not the Tweets, it's the Telephones

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Thursday, April 21, 2011

It's not the Tweets, it's the Telephones

“You hope these sites generate good word of mouth, but they’re not the thing that is still, in this day and age, the best measure of our show’s potential popularity and financial return,” said Jerry Zaks, the veteran director of “Sister Act.” “That’s group sales.”
Interesting reminder from Patrick Healy in NYT about the purely 20th-century technology (i.e. phones) still driving most Broadway ticket sales.
Indeed it should come as no surprise that group-sales business is essential when you're trying to fill about 1,000 seats a show, eight times a week.

Of course, that's only a Broadway situation, with theatres that big. But notice the brief reference to an Anything Goes sale. That's a production of a nonprofit company, Roundabout. So there's one reason they're on Broadway (along with Manhattan Theatre Club and Lincoln Center)--access to the group-sales market.

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