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Thursday, September 29, 2022
Brown Paper Tickets still owes Bay Area theaters thousands of dollars, long after lawsuit
Datebook: Sharron Drake had used Brown Paper Tickets for years without any problems. So when her Inverness Theatre Project mounted its first show since the pandemic hit, she used the ticketing service again without giving the matter much thought.
I thought this article was a good commentary on one of the unfortunate events caused by the pandemic. Brown paper tickets work like any bank where the money is circulated until it is paid out to the consumer. This means that when shows stopped and money stopped coming companies stopped getting paid. This ruined Brown Paper Tickets reputation as they could no longer pay the companies that have sold tickets through them for years. Theater costs money to make that is why tickets are sold and without that profit making theater becomes an unsustainable debt pit. I was working at a theater company that used to use BPT when the pandemic struck and we, like so many other theater companies, did not receive money from ticket sales. Luckily my theater company had enough money to bounce back from this setback but so many theater companies did not. Though I knew about BPT lawsuit I did not know the fight was still continuing. Theo K
I was shocked when I saw the headline of this article talking about Brown Paper Tickets not paying out to the people who use the service. My high school used (and to my knowledge, still uses) Brown Paper Tickets for all of our shows. I don’t think we ever had any issues of not getting our ticket sales returned to us, but if that ever was the case, we would be completely screwed over. My high school’s productions ran on virtually no budget, so the ticket sales were really the only way we got our money back, outside of considerate donations of the families of those involved in the shows. Not getting the money back would be devastating to the drama department. I am very hung up on the points the article makes – as it mentioned, Brown Paper Tickets only adds a small fee on the ticket price as their surcharge, so where did all the money go? It makes me think about banks – banks have many thousands of people with accounts, but if every single person who has an account with the bank went to withdraw all their money at the same time, there simply would not be enough cash to give. It makes me wonder if somehow Brown Paper Tickets has a similar thing going on, but it wouldn’t make sense with the point listed above – that is why I am so confused by this whole issue in the first place.
It really sucks to hear about a business like this. Although there is no doubt that they may have had financial woes during the pandemic, we all know that the entire theatre world, especially smaller theatres and artists, were not exempt from this economic hurt. It’s frankly really shitty that this company would keep all of the money that these people EARNED in order to make up for their own problems, especially when their business promises to only take a small cut on top of ticket fees. I think that many wouldn’t have been as upset with them if they took an additional cut but still passed on some of the money, but the fact that they kept all of it is upsetting. Especially because there appears to be no reason as to why they would need all of this money, except to make up for the fact that they weren’t making enough through digital ticket sales. That is fair, but that doesn’t make it ok to literally steal millions of dollars from others in order to make ends meet.
I think the Brown Ticket should be more transparent about their ability to pay theaters back and in what time frame. Understandably the pandemic has made companies like Brown Ticket lose significant amounts of money due to lack of use when no shows were happening during the pandemic. It’s unfortunate that in an already rough industry when it comes to turning a profit like theatre already without a pandemic, that productions aren’t getting paid back when they’d expect. In the long run it will only do Brown Ticket harm as upset users now will probably not use their service again. Unfortunately there is no feasible lawsuits without a closer inspection of a promised date for compensation. Producers who put their own money into shows without return can be devastating to not just their career but their quality of life and ability to maintain their personal finances. I think Brown Ticket is not excused for the shifty activity listed in the article but definitely understandable to an extent with the pandemics’ destruction of the industry.
4 comments:
I thought this article was a good commentary on one of the unfortunate events caused by the pandemic. Brown paper tickets work like any bank where the money is circulated until it is paid out to the consumer. This means that when shows stopped and money stopped coming companies stopped getting paid. This ruined Brown Paper Tickets reputation as they could no longer pay the companies that have sold tickets through them for years. Theater costs money to make that is why tickets are sold and without that profit making theater becomes an unsustainable debt pit. I was working at a theater company that used to use BPT when the pandemic struck and we, like so many other theater companies, did not receive money from ticket sales. Luckily my theater company had enough money to bounce back from this setback but so many theater companies did not. Though I knew about BPT lawsuit I did not know the fight was still continuing.
Theo K
I was shocked when I saw the headline of this article talking about Brown Paper Tickets not paying out to the people who use the service. My high school used (and to my knowledge, still uses) Brown Paper Tickets for all of our shows. I don’t think we ever had any issues of not getting our ticket sales returned to us, but if that ever was the case, we would be completely screwed over. My high school’s productions ran on virtually no budget, so the ticket sales were really the only way we got our money back, outside of considerate donations of the families of those involved in the shows. Not getting the money back would be devastating to the drama department. I am very hung up on the points the article makes – as it mentioned, Brown Paper Tickets only adds a small fee on the ticket price as their surcharge, so where did all the money go? It makes me think about banks – banks have many thousands of people with accounts, but if every single person who has an account with the bank went to withdraw all their money at the same time, there simply would not be enough cash to give. It makes me wonder if somehow Brown Paper Tickets has a similar thing going on, but it wouldn’t make sense with the point listed above – that is why I am so confused by this whole issue in the first place.
It really sucks to hear about a business like this. Although there is no doubt that they may have had financial woes during the pandemic, we all know that the entire theatre world, especially smaller theatres and artists, were not exempt from this economic hurt. It’s frankly really shitty that this company would keep all of the money that these people EARNED in order to make up for their own problems, especially when their business promises to only take a small cut on top of ticket fees. I think that many wouldn’t have been as upset with them if they took an additional cut but still passed on some of the money, but the fact that they kept all of it is upsetting. Especially because there appears to be no reason as to why they would need all of this money, except to make up for the fact that they weren’t making enough through digital ticket sales. That is fair, but that doesn’t make it ok to literally steal millions of dollars from others in order to make ends meet.
I think the Brown Ticket should be more transparent about their ability to pay theaters back and in what time frame. Understandably the pandemic has made companies like Brown Ticket lose significant amounts of money due to lack of use when no shows were happening during the pandemic. It’s unfortunate that in an already rough industry when it comes to turning a profit like theatre already without a pandemic, that productions aren’t getting paid back when they’d expect. In the long run it will only do Brown Ticket harm as upset users now will probably not use their service again. Unfortunately there is no feasible lawsuits without a closer inspection of a promised date for compensation. Producers who put their own money into shows without return can be devastating to not just their career but their quality of life and ability to maintain their personal finances. I think Brown Ticket is not excused for the shifty activity listed in the article but definitely understandable to an extent with the pandemics’ destruction of the industry.
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