At the high end of the ticket range for San Francisco Ballet — just as at many of the popular shows on Broadway — seats cost a ducal (or princely) amount, reaching above $300 (Metropolitan Opera Parterre center seats cost $460).
In order to balance the price of premium seats with the need to fill seats, arts organizations have experimented with various pricing models. The most successful, apparently, is "dynamic pricing." Patrick Healy writes in yesterday's New York Times:
How did The Lion King turn around its once-shaky fortunes and become the top-grossing show on Broadway in 2013, an unprecedented feat for long-running musicals, which usually cool after a few hot seasons?Since 2011, the show’s producers, Disney Theatrical Productions, have been relying on a previously undisclosed computer algorithm to recommend the highest ticket prices that audiences would be likely to pay for each of the 1,700 seats at every performance. While other shows also employ this so-called dynamic pricing system, only Disney has reached the level of sophistication achieved in the airline and hotel industries by continually using its algorithm to calibrate prices based on demand and ticket purchasing patterns.
By charging $10 more here, $20 more there, The Lion King stunned Broadway at year’s end as the No. 1 earner for the first time since 2003, bumping off the champ, Wicked. And Disney even managed to do it by charging half as much for top tickets as some rivals. The algorithm, a software tool that draws on Lion King data for 11.5 million audience members so far, recommends prices for five different types of performances — peak dates like Christmas, off-peak dates like a weeknight in February, and periods in between.
To help keep audience demand strong, Disney has made a highly unusual choice among Broadway hits: limiting ticket prices to a maximum of $227 — far less than the top prices of other hit shows. The Lion King is widely believed to be selling far more seats for $227 than most Broadway shows sell at their top rates, a situation that bolsters its grosses.
The Public Relations Department of Cal Performances, which may be using some form of variable pricing, was asked for comment, but did not respond at the time of publication.