Rethinking Success: Beyond Sellouts and Full Houses

The scoreboard most arts leaders are trained to watch is the box office. Did it sell out? How close did we get to a full house? These metrics feel familiar, even comforting, but in today’s economic reality, they can be dangerously misleading.

Inflation is rising faster than revenue growth. Too often, organizations celebrate a packed hall without asking: Did this performance actually strengthen our sustainability? A sellout at unsustainable prices isn’t a win; it’s a warning.

Not Every Show Needs to Sell Out

Some are designed to pull in new customers, others attracting specific audience demographics. Others are meant to deepen loyalty and relationships; the honey that keeps patrons returning year after year.

Defining demand realistically means resisting the urge to hold every production to the same “sellout or failure” standard. Instead, leaders should ask:

• Which audience segment(s) is this performance for?
• Is its role to attract first-timers, or to deepen loyalty with existing supporters?
• What demand level should we reasonably expect based on past behavior, market appetite, and artistic intent?

Judging every performance by whether it sells out misses the point. The real question is: what is this show meant to do? Attract new audiences? Re-engage lapsed attendees? Strengthen donor and subscriber loyalty?

Defining demand realistically means measuring success by the outcome that matters most, not by whether every seat is full.

Applying TRG’s honey and magnets lens helps leaders answer these questions and value each performance for its true role in sustainability.

Explore ‘Honey & Magnets’ here.

Right-Sizing the Room

Once you’ve clarified the role of a performance or season, the next step is shaping inventory and pricing strategy around it. Success doesn’t require every seat to sell, but it does require the right number of seats at the right price.

We’ve seen this in practice: a Canadian dance company effectively rescaled its 2,200-seat venue, effectively treating it as an 800-seat hall. Demand filled into that footprint. The result? Optimized revenue, even for a ‘lower demand’ performance.

Scaling your seating inventory is about shaping capacity to fit demand, whether that means strategic holds, using data to decide which prices (and how many) are located and where, or ensuring a broad spread of pricing access throughout your sales cycle.

It ensures you’re not overextending supply or undervaluing demand. It’s about designing capacity that reflects reality, and gives you room to adapt.

Managing Revenue Per Seat with Confidence

Sellouts may be exciting, but a better measure of financial health is revenue per seat (also known as ‘per capita revenue’, ‘average yield’ or ‘average ticket price’). This means monitoring both price performance and demand patterns in real time, and being confident enough to adjust.

• When demand is strong: Optimize. Don’t leave money on the table by treating high-demand shows as “safe bets.” If you’ve scaled your house well, your average yield should increase with demand. Use dynamic pricing to lift premium inventory as it sells, capturing the true value audiences are willing to pay.
• When demand is soft: Resist panic. Dropping prices across the board rarely solves the problem. First ask: are my lowest-priced seats even selling? If not, the barrier isn’t price, it’s probably awareness. That calls for marketing adjustments, not discounts.
• When equity matters: Widen the wedge. Raising the ceiling on premium prices doesn’t just increase revenue, it also creates room to expand affordability at the bottom. This ensures accessibility is built into every performance, not siloed into special offers or restricted programs.

Maximizing every seat requires leaders to treat pricing with the same strategic weight as programming or fundraising decisions. It’s about moving past gut instinct and emotion, and toward clarity, discipline, and a willingness to test, learn, and adapt.

In other words: don’t just count the seats you’ve filled. Make every seat you sell — and every price you set — work harder for your organization.

Redefining Success: From Capacity to Sustainability

What does ‘success’ look like in practice? It’s not just a sold-out house. It’s a pricing and demand strategy that:

• Maximizes revenue when demand is strong.
• Creates affordability and access for audiences.
• Values loyalty and return behavior as much as one-off attendance.
• Aligns programming, marketing, and development around clear, shared goals.

In other words: success is not measured by whether every show sells out. It’s measured by whether your pricing and programming strategy is fueling both your mission and your margin.

Ready to Go Deeper?

In the latest episode of our Leading the Way series, we unpack why fear still drives too many pricing decisions, how demand (not discounting) should shape your strategy, and why pricing belongs at the leadership table.

Watch the full episode to see how leaders can balance access and sustainability while making every seat (and every price) work harder for their mission.