When I fill up at the petrol station and I’m offered premium fuel at a higher price, I never know quite what that means – all I know is that I have a faint feeling of being fleeced (mind you, nowadays one has a faint feeling every time you fill up, period. Whenever I tell my American friends that it costs me around $110 to fill my standard sized car now, they are amazed; their President – and our then Prime Minister – may have pursued an illegal war, but at least they can still fill up their 4x4s for $30; what benefit did we get?)
But when The Producers first opened on Broadway in 2001, its producers became their own touts, introducing “premium” seats at four times the “top” price so that they could cream off the profits that would otherwise go to scalpers. It worked with The Producers, at least initially, as the laws of supply and demand in the theatre mean that when the demand far exceeds the supply, there’s no way to increase the revenue by adding seats so simply increasing the price imposed a different kind of regulation on the market. Those who were impatient to see the show could do so, at a price; or otherwise wait until, as they inevitably did, the demand fell away and the supply duly increased.
However, what The Producers did soon became a norm, and every Broadway show nowadays has premium seats advertised at their box offices: never mind that last week’s grosses for the limping (but far from limp) revival of The Homecoming, for instance, register attendances of 41.8%, but though regular top price is $102.50, they are offering premium seats at $176.50 on weekdays and $226.50 on Friday and Saturdays.
When Young Frankenstein opened on Broadway last November, they announced even before it opened that the premium price would be a staggering £450; as the Variety review commented, “most folks might have waited for hit status before introducing such a lofty ducat”. I blogged here the day after the opening last November of “the hubris of a series of commercial calculations that have undermined both the integrity of the show itself and the goodwill that might otherwise have been extended to it”.
The strategy appears to have backfired badly – only last month co-producer Robert FX Sillerman was back-peddling furiously, and as I blogged here, was reported telling Variety that the premium pricing set the tenor of public perception, and encouraged some potential ticket buyers to believe that all seats were that expensive. And he believes it even influenced the critical reaction, too. “I gave people something to focus on that had nothing to do with why they should be in the theater. The whole emphasis was not on the art, but on the commerce.”
Now Young Frankenstein has taken an even more drastic step: as reported in the New York Times, they’ve withdrawn premium pricing altogether. Though Sillerman claims in the New York Times that there is still both appetite and demand for premium seats for the show, he also says they needed to counteract the perception that these were the only seats available, so have removed them altogether: “The way to correct the mistake is with a bold gesture”.
Having started the trend, could they now be ending it? Or is it, as the New York Times suggests, merely the latest sign that the show “may be in real trouble”? Group sales agents – who were initially largely frozen out of the market to tickets for the show – are polled for their comments, and get their revenge: “We don’t get much request for it”, says one. Another ticket re-sale website executive is even more brutal: “Young Frankenstein is showing the signs of not having any legs… I think if Young Frankenstein came in from the get-go with reasonable prices, it would have built up demand.” But greed and hubris are difficult things to manage; and even harder to reverse the effects of.
Even in their contriteness the producers of Young Frankenstein are rewriting history. The top price for tickets was $450 - it wasn't initially announced as "Premium Seating" it was simply that most of the center section of the stalls ( rows 3 - 12) were that price. The lower $375 seats were in the side sections toward the center. It was only after the immediate negative feedback that they changed their tune to the words "Premium Seating" . One wonders how many of the Group sales agents point their clients away from Young Frankenstein as a sort of revenge against these producers. Of course all of this would be immaterial if the show were any good, which alas, it is not. If it were good, people would be happy to go - but because it stinks people can smell a turkey a mile away.