Everyone loves a deal. But when it comes to ticket pricing, is your latest discount encouraging the right behaviors, or giving away revenue you could have earned anyway?
It's nearly Halloween. Pumpkins are appearing, costumes are being prepared, and there's no shortage of tricks and treats. For arts organizations, though, there's one treat that audiences often enjoy all year round: discounted tickets.
Flash sales. Multi-buy offers. Promotional codes. Member discounts. Last-minute deals to fill empty seats. 2-4-1s. Early booking offers.
Discounts are often a familiar part of selling tickets, and there's nothing inherently wrong with them. Used well, they can encourage earlier bookings, introduce new audiences to your work, and build stronger patron relationships.
But used without a clear strategy, they can also undermine the very things you're trying to achieve.
So how do you know whether your latest discount is a treat for your organization, or a trick that's costing you revenue?
When a performance isn't selling as expected, a last-minute discount can seem like an easy solution. And sometimes it is. But regularly offering cheaper tickets close to a performance can teach patrons that waiting pays off, while those who booked early wonder why they paid more.
Treat: Give patrons a reason to book early. Early booking incentives can encourage advance commitment, improve revenue certainty, and reward the purchasing behavior you want to see. Just be sure the offer is genuinely encouraging earlier sales, rather than discounting purchases that would have happened anyway.
Ask yourself: Are our current promotions encouraging patrons to book earlier, or teaching them to wait for a better deal?
A blanket discount might increase sales, but it can also reduce revenue from patrons who were already willing to pay full price. And when demand varies significantly between performances, applying the same offer everywhere can mean discounting tickets that don't need an incentive.
Treat: Target discounts where they'll make a difference. Use booking patterns, audience segmentation, and performance-level demand to identify where an offer could genuinely influence purchasing decisions. A targeted incentive for a lower-demand performance or a specific patron segment may achieve more than a broad promotion.
Ask yourself: Which patrons or performances genuinely need an incentive, and where might we be giving away revenue unnecessarily?
Slow sales don't automatically mean tickets are too expensive. The issue might be how seats are priced, which inventory is available, how a performance is marketed, or simply when audiences typically book. Discounting before understanding the problem can mean addressing the wrong thing.
Treat: Make pricing and inventory work together. A thoughtful scale plan and demand-responsive pricing strategy can help you manage availability and prices according to demand. That might mean releasing different seating inventory, adjusting particular price points, or protecting affordable tickets while capturing additional revenue from popular seats.
Ask yourself: Before reducing prices, have we explored what our sales data tells us about demand, seating inventory, and willingness to pay?
Your latest promotion sold 500 tickets. Great! But how many of those sales were genuinely additional? How many patrons would have booked anyway? And did the discount encourage the behavior you intended?
A high redemption rate doesn't necessarily mean a promotion has delivered additional revenue or long-term value.
Treat: Measure what matters beyond the transaction. Define success before launching an offer. If you're encouraging early bookings, measure changes in booking lead times. If you're attracting first-time patrons back, track whether they return. And if you're trying to increase revenue, consider looking at your average ticket price / per capita over time, not simply the number of discounted tickets sold.
Ask yourself: Are we measuring the number of people who use our discounts, or whether those discounts actually change behavior and improve revenue?
Discounts aren't inherently good or bad. Their value depends on when they're offered, who receives them, and what you're trying to achieve.
Used strategically, they can encourage earlier bookings, reward loyalty, attract new patrons, and help manage demand. But they shouldn't be an automatic response whenever sales look a little frightening.
The next time you're considering a promotion, start with the behavior you want to encourage, then decide whether a discount is the right way to achieve it.
The best discount isn't necessarily the one that sells the most tickets. It's the one that helps build stronger patron relationships and sustainable revenue over time.
And that's a treat worth having.
Discounts are just one part of the picture. How you scale your house, release your seats and respond to demand all shape whether patrons book early or wait for a deal.
The TRG Arts Pricing Health Check is a quick way to see where you stand. Answer nine questions on your scale plan, inventory and pricing, including how you adjust prices once tickets are on sale. It takes under five minutes, and you’ll receive your results and practical next steps straight to your inbox.