Butts In the Seats: Yesterday, commenter Lee Saylor asked a question about foul weather and refunds on a post I did a couple weeks ago regarding that subject.
He noted that like many performing arts organizations, the no-refund policy was on the back of the ticket. That raised an interesting topic I wanted to discuss.
When I was first starting out my career, I was told that a ticket was a contract with the audience member and that the policies on the back were the terms of the contract. If I recall correctly this was to support the idea that if someone purchased a ticket, they had the right not to appear and we had to hold the empty seat for them.
5 comments:
I think a ticket is a contract. But I think that it is a contract on both sides. The theatre, by selling someone a ticket, agrees to hold a seat for an audience member. That is their end of the contract. The audience member is expected to conform to the rules of the theatre and to not disturb other patrons, or they will be asked to leave. That is the agreement they make when they desire to go to the theatre. The no-refund policy is a little more vague. It is true that the audience doesn't agree to that until after buying the ticket. But most often the box office will inform them of this before they buy a ticket. And it is pretty much common knowledge that you will not receive a refund if you buy a ticket. So even though it is not an official contract, a ticket really is one. Because the audience expects something of the theatre, and the theatre expects something of the audience. And by buying that ticket an agreement is made.
I definitely agree with what John has said above. A ticket is most definitely a contract, and that contract is two-sided between the audience and the theater. If an audience member buys a ticket to a performance, the theater has the responsibility to hold that seat for the audience member, regardless of whether they show up or not. I strongly believe this should be the case, simply because an audience member may show up very late for a performance, and that seat that they spent money on should still be available to them even if they are late. While I do not think it is necessarily optimal that audience members show up late to performances, they spend a lot of money on tickets, and I think it is the theater's responsibility to hold seats that audience members have spent money on.
This is something I never would have given much thought to. After reading the article though, I think that it makes sense to view a ticket as a contract. Even though it is ideal for audience members to arrive to a performance on time, they have reserved their seat for the night by purchasing a ticket. Therefore, it is their seat for whenever they chose to arrive and use it. That said, as an audience member, I do think that you have an obligation to respect the theater and performance by arriving on time. But circumstances sometimes arise that are out of your own control that make a person late for things.
This is something that I never really considered, but the point that the article makes is pretty interesting. I don't think that the ticket is a contract in the legal sense, but it is definitely an agreement that both sides should honor. Theatre tickets aren't like doctors who choose to double book appointments, and the person who gets there first is the one who gets the appointment. That sort of policy sucks on one hand, but on the other hand it prevents the doctor from losing money. If a doctor didn't do that and a patient cancels, that an hour+ of the doctor's time that he's not being paid for. The ticket as a contract thing is theatre's way of avoiding this; they're not going to double book a seat, but if you can't make it they're not going to refund you. That ticket means that no one besides you will sit in that seat for the time that the ticket specifies, but that the seat belongs to you, whether or not your rump is in it.
I think that, even if it legally is not, a ticket should be viewed as a contract with the audience. It makes sense from the theater's point of view, as not honoring a ticket as such has the potential to create a giant PR fiasco and also is just not very nice. I'm sure almost all audiences are expecting their seats to be open regardless of when they show up, so they clearly think about a ticket as a contract. If a ticket isn't a contract, then what is it? If it doesn't hold a seat for someone, then what's the point of having them at all? While I think the author was thinking about the term contract in a legal definition, I believe that, if nothing else a ticket is a social contract built upon mutual trust and, you know, money.
Post a Comment