The Stage recently published this article that breaks down the cost of a theatre ticket and gives theatregoers an idea of how much goes towards each individual, crucial ingredient for putting on the show. Some more transparent costs that we’re perhaps more familiar with now, like the restoration levy come as no surprise but there are other things to consider, like royalties and even the marketing. It does a lot to justify the expensiveness…
People often tell me that the only cheap and regularly affordable seats they can find are in the balcony, pillar restricted or restricted legroom and so on… I’ll never sit in those, for I just won’t enjoy the show. Equally, I’ll never pay £250 for a ticket to Hamilton or The Book Of Mormon. Commercial theatre is expensive. It’s expensive to put on and it’s expensive to go and watch, but it doesn’t have to be expensive for every theatregoer…
Forget restricted views, I’ve written this to help you find amazing seats at a really affordable prices. Here are a few tips and tricks that I’ve come to learn over the years and I make it work for me…
Sometimes you have to be prepared to travel. For UK touring productions you’ve got to be savvy and look at multiple venues on the tour. It may be the case that a touring production sells out in one city but doesn’t do so well in another. Look out for offers and it may work out cheaper to see the show somewhere a little further from home, even when you include transport and/or parking costs. Look at this view I had for Wicked at Liverpool Empire…
To see Wicked at my local theatre on row E of the stalls, it would have cost me £67.50 a ticket plus fees. There were no discounts, it sold really well and good on them for filling it up. It was a similar price at Liverpool Empire… however in Liverpool, they sold off seats that had been left singularly for £20 and £29.
I got a ticket for £29 (row E in the stalls), my train travel cost £12 return and I bought a programme at £4 and a souvenir brochure at £6 – that’s a total of £51 all in! A saving of £16 against my local theatre’s ticket price alone.
But how did I find out about the offer? Sometimes ATG (Ambassador Theatre Group) will send an email about a single seat offer as a marketing campaign (so sign up), but not all the time. Wicked technically wasn’t an “offer”, it was a change in the standard price of the seat. You do have to spend a bit of time checking online booking pages and you’ll spot trends. It could be that prices increase as the auditorium fills up but if you’re lucky sometimes you may notice prices coming down!
The downside to the single seat pricing is sitting on your own (if you see that as a downside) but people are usually friendly and you don’t speak when the show’s on so I don’t see a problem. Obviously it’s sometimes nice to share the experience with someone you know and you can always buy two single seats and meet up at the interval. But take it from me, there is nothing wrong with going to the theatre on your own!
Now, mailing lists…
I get far too much ‘junk’ email as it is so the idea of signing up to mailing lists doesn’t particularly thrill me with joy, but some are definitely worth it! LiverpoolTheatres.com and ManchesterTheatres.com have some amazing ticket offers (those are links to offers by the way), such as the above email for Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella at only £19.50 for a price band A ticket! Just think of the pre-show Instagram’s you’ll get from those seats! If you can make the travel work in your schedule, with train, or petrol and parking costs on top that’s still cheaper than a regular top price ticket – so sign up to those! Obviously travelling is a bit easier if the offer includes matinees…
It’s a case of always planning ahead and last minute doesn’t always mean discounts. In the case of West End theatre, a lot of my less-regular-theatregoing friends often ask which is the cheapest Leicester Square ticket booth. If you’re like me, I hate leaving plans to the last minute anyway and the truth is, this rarely works in anyone’s favour, especially at the weekend. London ticket booths are owned by the same few companies and they share a Box Office, so the tickets are the same, prices are similar and often more expensive than from a theatre Box Office directly, for they add on commission. It does sometimes work in the buyer’s favour if a show is offering discounts, but if the show isn’t offering discounts then the tickets can be more expensive from a booth than from the theatre’s own Box Office.
Day-seating is about as last-minute as I’m prepared to do in London, providing I’m in town before 10am and it’s another good way of getting a decent seat rather cheaply! It’s an on-the-day offer where the theatre Box Office sell the front row (or sometimes somewhere else subject to availability) at a first-come-first-served basis as soon as they open on a morning. On-the-day offers include Kinky Boots for just £20, Wicked for £29, 42nd Street do “reduced price” day seats at the front of the stalls or circle, Disney’s Aladdin and The Lion King at £20… and there’s more out there! More often than not, these tickets are in amazing seats!
There’s also ticket lotteries, which are online. If you win, you get a cheap ticket similar to a day seat. Some of these are through the show’s own website, like The Book Of Mormon and Harry Potter And The Cursed Child. There’s plenty of lotteries through TodayTix too… TodayTix also do “rush tickets” which is like a day seat but online where you virtually fight other users at 10am on the app to put the tickets in your basket first – think of it as Black Friday at Primark… Despite trying lotteries and rush tickets on the app many times, it’s never ever worked in my favour so I’ve given up there.
I wanted this blog post to benefit everyone, regardless of age but it’s slightly easier to get discounts in amazing seats for 16 – 25 (sometimes 16 – 30) year old’s with theatre’s own schemes. Now I’m 26 I’ll miss out on glorious £7.50 tickets at the National Theatre but if you’re 16 – 25 definitely sign up to National Theatre Entry Pass, it’s free to join and not only can you get super cheap tickets for all their productions (sometimes front or second row) but 10% off in the Book Shop too! This was my £7.50 view at Follies…
For 16 – 25 year old’s there’s also RSC Key, which includes RSC Stratford upon Avon and even £5 tickets to Matilda in the West End in a variety of seats across the auditorium. Chichester Festival Prologue is also free and offers £5 tickets with so much more – with a lot of their shows transferring to the West End, such as Guys And Dolls, Half A Sixpence and now Caroline, Or Change, it’s worth it even more. Whilst I was a member of the Prologue scheme, I never did make it down to Chichester, it’s a bit of a jaunt from the Midlands! But if you’re further south, go for it!
If you’re 26 – 30 like me, we can still benefit from the likes of Hampstead Theatre’s Under 30 Scheme, I got one of the last tickets to the Chichester transfer of Caroline, Or Change before it sold out for just £10. They have £10 tickets available at all shows, every performance.
What if worst comes to the worst and it seems there’s no discounts? I find that I can justify a slightly more expensive ticket if a two course meal is offered in with the price. Check out Love Theatre Meal Packages which I’ve done in the past for Mamma Mia!. Instead of paying £127 for a Saturday Night stalls row G ticket, I paid £79 for a stalls row D ticket including a two course pre-theatre meal. There’s usually a good selection of nearby restaurants to choose from. If you say the value of the meal is £20 then £59 for a top price West End ticket on a Saturday night isn’t so bad…
Talking of Mamma Mia!, benefits of being a Delfont Macintosh Plus member include opportunities such as free tickets to the new cast dress rehearsal before their opening night… what better way to spend a Monday afternoon?
DMT+ is £35 a year but you can reap that back in benefits across Delfont Mackintosh theatres rather quickly. They send drinks and programme vouchers when you buy or renew and then other vouchers throughout the year. You get discount at the bar, complimentary use of the cloakroom and priority booking. I avoided any stress at all booking Hamilton with a two-hour priority booking window over those who’d signed up for priority booking – I got a £10 discount for booking a preview performance too – which is another way to see shows slightly cheaper, booking before the press night.
I could go on, but this already feels as long as Les Miserables, so maybe I’ll write another soon, but my best advice is all here.
Happy (affordable) theatre-going!
SCOTT JAMES BIRD 
Lots of interesting stuff here – I regularly go for the gallery seats just to see a show but will definitely make more of an effort to scout some good deals!
LikeLiked by 1 person