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