The Off-Broadway League is sending around the following message, in which they used Telecharge.com's data to figure out purchasing habits by geography. Here it 'tis:
We decided to see if there were significant differences in the
geographical breakdown of customers by performance, using sales data
from Telecharge.com Broadway shows for performances between August 31,
2009 and January 3, 2010. Unless otherwise stated, we used the total
number of orders as the basis of our observations.
Summary
* Tourists are less likely to buy matinees than evenings.
* Suburban theatergoers prefer matinees over evenings.
* People who live in Manhattan prefer Tuesday over Friday or Saturday
night. Thursday is their favorite performance.
* More tourists attend the theatre on Thursday evening than on Wednesday.
More info after the jump!
Detailed Results
* Tourists (customers from outside the tri-state area) are less likely
to buy matinees than evening performances.
* The matinees all have a below average percentage of sales from tourists
* The overall average for all performances was 51%, with the lowest
percentage at 41% and the highest at 66%.
* The percentage of tourists buying for Wednesday matinees was 44%.
* Sunday matinee was the performance with the lowest percentage of
tourists at 41%, followed by Wednesday matinee, then Saturday matinee
at 48%.
* There are more orders from tourists for Friday night than Saturday
night; the performance with the next largest number of orders from
tourists is Saturday matinee followed by a big drop to Tuesday, then
Thursday evening, Sunday matinee, and then Wednesday night.
* The performance with the highest percentage of tourists is Sunday
evening at 66% followed by Monday evening at 65%; however, there are
more tourists seeing a show on Monday night than Sunday night. Friday
evening is next at 57% while Saturday night is 55%.
* Suburban buyers prefer matinees. There are more people from the
suburbs seeing theatre on a Saturday or Sunday matinee than there are
seeing a show on Friday or Saturday night.
* There are more people from the suburbs seeing a show on Wednesday
afternoon than there are for any evening performance, including Friday
and Saturday night.
* The performance with the most orders from the suburbs is Saturday
matinee followed by Sunday matinee, then Wednesday matinee, Saturday
evening, and Friday evening.
* There are more orders from tourists for Tuesday night than for
Thursday evenings or Sunday matinees.
* There are more orders from people living in Manhattan for Tuesday
night than for Friday or Saturday night.
* Manhattan buyers. Tuesday is the second most popular performance of
the week for people from Manhattan, after Thursday. Friday night is
third, then Saturday, and Wednesday night. The weekend matinees are a
distant sixth and seventh in order.
* Customers in the Boroughs gravitate towards weekends: Saturday
matinee, Saturday evening, Sunday matinee, Friday night, then Tuesday
night.
What can we do with this data?
The assumption has been that tourists would go to a matinee or an
evening, but the data seems to suggest they prefer doing other
activities during the day (museums, shopping) and are more interested
in spending the evening at the theatre. Perhaps the 2pm curtain time
does not allow time for other activities either before or after the
show. In contrast, suburbanites are more willing to go during the
day, to get home at a reasonable hour. Seeing an evening performance,
even on a weekend, might feel like too much.
If sales for a matinee are not up to expectations, one question to
consider might be whether the performance time for matinees is optimal
for both suburbanites and tourists. Maybe we will never be able to
get tourists to see matinees in greater numbers, or maybe there is a
performance time that works best for both groups.
There are more tourists attending the theatre on Thursday evening than
Wednesday. Is that because there are more tourists here on Thursday
than Wednesday, or because they often have two performances from which
to choose on Wednesday? Would a Thursday or Friday matinee perform
better with tourists than the traditional Wednesday?
Friday night is the performance with the largest amount of sales from
tourists. Tuesday, with the 7pm curtain, is more popular with
tourists than any other weeknight. Would some tourists prefer an
early curtain on Friday night so they could have dinner afterwards?
Suburban matinee buyers are more likely to use the phone than the
average buyer. Suburban evening buyers on the other hand buy on the
web in the same percentage as for all buyers. This more or less
validates what we see or suspect: the suburban matinee buyers are
probably slightly older (and more habitual or traditionalist) than the
suburban evening buyers.
From what I remember of statistics back when I was more involved in this stuff, a large percentage of Broadway show audience members were women age 50 and over, with masters degrees, living in the suburbs. This may very well trickle down to Off-Broadway, as well--especially since places like Labyrinth and the Public have been bringing pretty big names to Off-Broadway (It's not quote the Indie scene it once was.) Since we know this suburban audience is chock full of senior citizens/baby-boomers, that means they most likely are retired. Theatre companies traditioally seek student groups and seniors to fill up Wed. matinees. So, it's not as if the suburbanites decided on their own to go on a Wed., someone else pitched it to them.
Tourists are more likely to go on a Thursday than a Wednesday because, well, I'm pretty sure there are more tourists in the city on that day. When people make a three-day weekend for themselves, they usually do Thurs-Sun because those flights are usually cheaper than Fri through Mon. I'd be interested to see if this data changed on goverment sanctioned three-day weekends like MLK day, and Columbus Day.
As far as Tuesday nights go. . .for a while, several Broadway and Off-Broadway shows were doing 7/7:30 Tuesday night shows targeted toward working New Yorkers and/or New Yorkers with kids who have to be up early for school. Even if that Tuesday time is no longer happening, well, old habits die hard. Hell, I still look at the clock at 8pm on Thursdays and think the Cosby show is going to be on.
Posted by: SashaNaomi | February 26, 2010 at 04:23 PM
In Denver, weekday perfs are 6:30pm, and Th/F/S are 7:30 -- there's always the assumption that there's a long drive home.
Posted by: cgeye | February 26, 2010 at 06:23 PM