Of course it’s all for the TV cameras and photographers. And the people that serve this hungry mob. PR folk seemed to virtually outnumber actual journalists at the publicity launch for Viva Forever! at the St Pancras Hotel earlier this week; but then big musicals like this are Big Business.
Never mind that the show hasn’t even begun rehearsals yet, or that a cast has not been formally announced; it’s all about the spin. Just as Apple do an annual new product launch, this was all about selling the sizzle — as the video that accompanied the event was mysteriously called more than once by producer Judy Craymer while introducing it.
And that offscreen sizzle included an onstage appearance by all five of the Spice Girls — reunited at the same hotel where the video for their first hit single was filmed back in 1996 — and included an unsmiling Victoria Beckham. (Is there any other sort?) They didn’t sing; in fact they barely spoke, except to answer a few anodyne questions about how they felt about the show — but it was enough that they were there, endorsing it all with their presence.
The group photo duly made the front page of Wednesday’s Sun and Evening Standard, as well as the front page of The Stage. Holding a press conference and flying a few Spice Girls around the world is small beer (or pina colada cocktails) compared to taking out a front page ad would have been. But for those of us who had already seen the press release, there was no new information. Just a free tee-shirt with the show’s Olympic-like logo of a woman looking like she’s bursting out of a Union Jack to take home after. It may yet turn out to be a collectors’ item, at least.
Ticket prices on the Edinburgh Fringe have not been immune to serious inflation (even as the shows themselves have got shorter; comedy shows, which now cost up to £20 a ticket, typically run just an hour); but one show that’s not in the Fringe brochure but is landing at the Playhouse in Edinburgh in the start of the fringe to capitalise on the captive comedy audience is Michael McIntyre, who’ll be fine-tuning his forthcoming arena tour with a two-night run for which tickets are being sold at a one-price-fits-all £31 a ticket for what are being billed as “works-in-progress” nights.
As Brian Donaldson has pointed out in The List, the local listings title, “Of course, they’ll sell out (if they haven’t entirely shifted already) thus depriving those struggling comedians crawling up and down the Royal Mile just about mustering the strength to force a rain-soaked flyer into a Belgian’s hand. Were any tickets left on sale for it, you could have seen Daniel Kitson’s new show three times for that sum.”
David Lister, arts editor of the Independent, regularly rails in his weekly Saturday column against iniquitous add-on booking fees. As a theatre critic who gets most of my tickets for free, we are of course mostly immune to those hidden extras, though I have observed with despair the inexorable rise of the ticket prices themselves, and the new ‘premium price’ strategy that means that early bookers who are the bread-and-butter of the West End theatre audience are in fact penalised into no longer being able to buy the best seats in the house for their early investment in a show, since those have already been roped off for later sale to people prepared to stump up the extra for the premiums. It’s like a big red rope has been put up inside theatres, promising exclusivity to those with the ready cash to pay for it.
But my attention has been drawn to the crazy per ticket fees being charged for the forthcoming arena stage tour of Jesus Christ Superstar that makes me want to join Lister’s campaign now. To buy the top £65 price seats to see it at the 02 Arena, for instance, incurs an extra £8.45 per ticket charge. For the cheapest £45 tickets, the booking charge is an extra £6.85.
Quite how and why these charges are justified defeats me. Especially in an age of internet booking, the customer is doing most of the work themselves. Sure, there’s a back office cost to managing the computer systems that run the bookings; but surely not £8.45 per ticket worth. It’s just an old-fashioned rip-off.
Quote of the week: Caroline McGinn, writing in Time Out, applauds the £10 tickets being offered for the Michael Grandage West End season at the Noel Coward Theatre: “What does a tenner buy you in a West End theatre? Not much: the rise in price of ‘cheap’ seats means you’ll fork out up to £25 for the privilege of craning your neck in the gods. Sadly, £10 no longer buys a circle seat at the heavily subbed National Theatre, which put its fantastic Travelex-sponsored cheap seats up to £12 last year. And don’t get me started on theatre bars, where your hard-earned tenner undergoes a process of commercial transubstantiation into a few hundred milliliters of warm cat’s piss (which is, I wearily surmise after many nights of disappointment, what ‘posh’ West End theatres serve under the title of house white). £10 tickets are a revolution that the middle-aged, middle-class and often MOR West End is sorely in need of. In fact, in the current market of ‘overprice first, discount later’, a 15-month season which will sell, upfront, more than 100,000 £10 tickets to plays starring Daniel Radcliffe, Judi Dench and David Walliams, with cheap seats sprinkled through the stalls as well as the circle, looks like nothing short of a miracle.”
Entertaining and insightful as ever Mark.
Will Viva Forever live u to the hype?? Time will tell, the marketeers have done their job though, if I had a pound for everytime someone (and a lot of non-theatre goers / musical lovers too I hasten to add asked me about it this week I could probably afford the booking fees :)
"It’s just an old-fashioned rip-off." my views exactly but there ARE ways of not paying it with some theatres(currently), but you have to hunt around etc. I still can't see how they work it out per TICKET - £6-8 per booking is painful enough, per ticket is just ridiculous especially as the customer has to print ticket themselves!
Charging customers a "booking fee" when we do it all ourselves has been a mystery to me ever since I moved back to this country from one where booking online usually means a small discount (about 1 pound).
I love Globe's £5 yard tickets but it makes the £2.50 online booking fee a bit daft. 50% ticket price booking fee?
Booking fees are starting to spiral out of all control, and now bear no correlation to the actual cost of staffing or running their ticketing business, and See are the worst in my opinion. I so dearly wanted to go and see the JCS Arena Tour, I met my partner whilst performing in an AmDram production of it, so its close to my heart, but on principle I'm not going to book, as I feel that its now just beginning to be a huge rip-off.
I'd be interested to know, on any one given performance, say at the O2, how much See make as a grand total of all their per-ticket booking fees - I bet we'd be surprised as to how high that figure is!, anyone fancy doing the maths?
I have seen delivery fees on tickets where it was cheaper to pick up from the box office than to print at home.
There are often £10 dayseats for plays, Grandage is just giving us devotees the option of lie in, which is much appreciated.
Wikipedia says the 02 Arena has a 20,000 capacity, So, let's take £7 as the booking fee per ticket, that's £140,000 per night.
Bah Humbug re Booking fees! Someone mentioned See Tickets- this is how they "warrant" their fees- laughable and tragic at the same time- like the tragi-comic logo.
"Please note, you will typically be charged two fees as part of your booking through See. These are the "Booking Fee" and the "Transaction Fee". The "Booking Fee" is per ticket and applies to each tickets that you buy. The "Transaction fee" is per Transaction and is only charged once. For further definitions, please see below -
Booking Fee
The price of a ticket is set by the event organisers. They don't pay us anything to sell their tickets, so in order to make money See has to charge a little bit on top of the face value of the ticket. We have to do this on a per-ticket basis to cover the cost of providing a 7 days a week, 24 hours a day booking service, labour costs, credit card commissions and all the other costs associated with running our business. The actual amount we charge is negotiated with the venue or promoter for each event.
For some shows (e.g. THE BODYGUARD, MATILDA THE MUSICAL and SWEENEY TODD) there is no booking fee - the £1 shown is a restoration levy collected on behalf of the theatre.
Transaction Fee
The transaction fee covers the costs of processing your order, packing and delivering the tickets to you. In many cases it also covers the cost of producing your tickets. This fee can also apply to tickets arranged for collection.
The transaction fee applies per order not per ticket. If you purchase six tickets, you only pay one transaction fee.
The transaction fee will vary depending on what type of postage we are being asked to use by the event organiser and these costs are reflective of the amount that See are charged by dispatch companies. First class post and Registered Post prices will vary accordingly.
See only send tickets securely for events that do not issue duplicate tickets in the event that tickets get lost in the post."
So that's alright then?!!! It's interesting to know that ALW had a 75% stake in SEE tickets until recently.
Hello, i read your blog occasionally and i own a similar one and i was just curious if you get a lot of spam
feedback? If so how do you prevent it, any plugin or anything you can advise?
I get so much lately it's driving me mad so any help is very much appreciated.
fantastic submit, very informative. I'm wondering why the other specialists of this sector do not notice this. You should proceed your writing. I'm sure, you've a great readers' base already!
Essential Methods Allow you to Develop your Footballing Bars Average
With all the made popular in sports, there are more and more people would like to true love tuning into the actual remarkable activity or even just find out enjoying keep in mind this. Ideal widley known Football karate, you'll notice NCAA advanced schooling karate, tennis ladies clubs where everyday people can watch the exact magnificent basketball online game. Whereas in the sequence to draw a lot more people interact the audience from trusting sports, it's critical for boosting the exact hockey groups average. Well then, simply let?erinarians seriously look into many important techniques and strategies which will help put it into practice.
Versus the remain years, it gets much easier to help measures for his particular nightclub golf currently. Initial, that you've phony playing surface. Anywhere individuals engage in, a similar make-up and not have to stress over the different factors most typically associated with arena. Next, begin to see the nfl golf balls now are around, in addition equipment pertaining to guidance along with making use of. These would be houses rugby and additionally fashion accessories mass produced and additionally publicized by means of Oughout.Azines. agency if you want to 100%, that was in this particular particular field over the last 40 years. Device caliber may be in one piece these days including your buy can be delivered the same day. First and foremost, you will find there's come unconditional money back refund which should insert your mind while resting.
Absolutely serious Karate and even Poor Jump products as well as additional differences as well as soccer ball extra accessories in the process. The essential accessories tend to be pumping systems, air pumps, syringes, feets, hand baggage and additionally duffel bags on the pitch. There?on hour additional. It's possible to set your entire business enhance accents when it comes to hockey that cannot possibly expect. You will discover sports goals accessible in many kinds, which include exercise goals and objectives further movable in dimension as soon as you voyage collectively with your dance club. Then you might separate all the styles of futbol fabric tailgate enclosures, extra accessories to find training companies, participants also referees. Quite a lot of educative supplies is available in terrific clips as well as Discs, and firstaid in addition to area flags.