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Friday, November 14, 2025
When the Price of Art Surges: Royal Ballet and Opera Slammed for £415 Tickets
ticketnews.com: The Royal Ballet and Opera (RBO) is under fire after tickets for Wagner’s Siegfried, the third chapter of the Ring Cycle, were listed for up to £415 — marking the most expensive publicly subsidized arts ticket currently on sale in Britain.
6 comments:
Josh Hillers
said...
While I agree that the practices that go into dynamic pricing (especially when they are highly algorithmic with the pure incentive of maximizing revenue), I do wonder what portion of tickets are affected in this case for the RBO and these shows. There is a statement in the article that some tickets are as cheap as 19 pounds and what I’m more curious about for this particular performing arts center is how much of that accessible pricing is available. If the dynamic pricing mainly targets their most sought after seating, maybe there is a world where it is defensible to ensure support of the organization (even if it does truly harm the consumer through the pricing) so that performing arts centers can continue to carry on. But, there is more to say if patrons and audience members will now more ardently oppose these ticketing systems and no longer go to see these performances, then causing an even larger issue for the RBO. I guess we will see in the near future if they continue this practice and if it affects their audience counts and thus profit in any substantial ways.
I like that these instances are being called out. Half a grand to see a ballet is stupid. Unless they’re feeding and housing you for the night as well I don’t get it. I think the only dynamic part of their pricing should be setting the ticket at the price they’re comfortably going to make a profit based on what they paid to build and operate the show. Dynamic pricing a ballet is even more ridiculous. Unlike a Taylor Swift concert or the Super Bowl, not many bots and scalpers are eating up %80 of the tickets that get released. People who go to see the Royal Ballet Theatre are going because they love ballet and the art of the craft. Making those who love pay half a grand or price out the casual entertainment goer is diabolical. There must be better strategies to increase profit by lowering production budgets or scope than letting bots charge people half a grand for a night at the ballet. It may also set up avid ballet goers to not return if they drop a fat stack on a show and the show doesn’t live up to that price tag.
These ticket prices for every venue are going up to a level that shouldn’t be acceptable at this point and in the current financial situation. $482.35 (USD) is unreasonable for any show, especially considering how the royal opera house has 2,256 seats in the theatre. I think this is making theatre even less accessible, and considering how this is THE opera house in england, it shouldn’t be this high ever. I do appreciate how they are calling them out, rather than just ignoring it. While I do believe in dynamic pricing, it should be reasonable. While sure, they have $22.08 USD pricing, how many actual seats do they have that are that price, they can just have 1 seat on sale for that and then claim on their website for “tickets as low as $22.08” and that would be perfectly legal in all ways, so I am curious to see their pricing distribution.
It's disappointing to hear this story come out of a place where art is subsidized in the way that it is in the UK. Personally, I do tend to think that the model of entertainment that is partially subsidized by the government, while it does have its flaws, is extremely beneficial. It's disheartening to hear that the same issues that we're having with ticket pricing over here is happening on the other side of the pond as well, but I think there is nice that we can still take some amount of solace in the fact that overpriced tickets have become the norm here, will over there they're still a rarity enough to warrant an article being written about them. looking at the proportion of theaters that do have this problem versus don't have this problem in the US versus the uk, I still do think that unfortunately, the UK comes out on top.
I’m glad folks are calling practices like this out. $500 for a ticket to a publicly subsidized performance is a little bit absurd, given that tax dollars are already in use in the creation of the production. It seems to also be an echo of what has been happening here in the United States over the past few years as Live Nation has continued to drive up ticket prices using a similar strategy. Disney and Universal have also done the same at their parks, now driving up the prices at Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, and Epic Universe into the $200 range for a single day. This also may reflect the broader global economy, as the ripple effects from COVID are still playing out across the world. That’s not to mention the AI bubble that will inevitably burst and cause even more macroeconomic chaos than there already is. Perhaps in the case of these publicly subsidized productions in the United Kingdom, the government should step in and limit how much they can charge, rather than allowing the organization to regulate itself.
I think that the few artists speaking out against dynamic pricing really have the practice of it speaking for itself. If (hah) it is price gouging, I find myself wondering what percentage of the revenue is necessary and what percentage of it is plain “greed.” We all know how the live music industry is doing right now in terms of exploitation. Is theatre and other entertainment next? Prices are so high now and they have been all my life that they feel almost normal and justified to me, and anything that actually has a price I’d be willing to pay is a “steal.” It’s funny how they word it to now somehow spin it on “audience demand,” kind of saying “well this isn’t our fault! You just want to see the shows so bad!”
6 comments:
While I agree that the practices that go into dynamic pricing (especially when they are highly algorithmic with the pure incentive of maximizing revenue), I do wonder what portion of tickets are affected in this case for the RBO and these shows. There is a statement in the article that some tickets are as cheap as 19 pounds and what I’m more curious about for this particular performing arts center is how much of that accessible pricing is available. If the dynamic pricing mainly targets their most sought after seating, maybe there is a world where it is defensible to ensure support of the organization (even if it does truly harm the consumer through the pricing) so that performing arts centers can continue to carry on. But, there is more to say if patrons and audience members will now more ardently oppose these ticketing systems and no longer go to see these performances, then causing an even larger issue for the RBO. I guess we will see in the near future if they continue this practice and if it affects their audience counts and thus profit in any substantial ways.
I like that these instances are being called out. Half a grand to see a ballet is stupid. Unless they’re feeding and housing you for the night as well I don’t get it. I think the only dynamic part of their pricing should be setting the ticket at the price they’re comfortably going to make a profit based on what they paid to build and operate the show. Dynamic pricing a ballet is even more ridiculous. Unlike a Taylor Swift concert or the Super Bowl, not many bots and scalpers are eating up %80 of the tickets that get released. People who go to see the Royal Ballet Theatre are going because they love ballet and the art of the craft. Making those who love pay half a grand or price out the casual entertainment goer is diabolical. There must be better strategies to increase profit by lowering production budgets or scope than letting bots charge people half a grand for a night at the ballet. It may also set up avid ballet goers to not return if they drop a fat stack on a show and the show doesn’t live up to that price tag.
These ticket prices for every venue are going up to a level that shouldn’t be acceptable at this point and in the current financial situation. $482.35 (USD) is unreasonable for any show, especially considering how the royal opera house has 2,256 seats in the theatre. I think this is making theatre even less accessible, and considering how this is THE opera house in england, it shouldn’t be this high ever. I do appreciate how they are calling them out, rather than just ignoring it. While I do believe in dynamic pricing, it should be reasonable. While sure, they have $22.08 USD pricing, how many actual seats do they have that are that price, they can just have 1 seat on sale for that and then claim on their website for “tickets as low as $22.08” and that would be perfectly legal in all ways, so I am curious to see their pricing distribution.
It's disappointing to hear this story come out of a place where art is subsidized in the way that it is in the UK. Personally, I do tend to think that the model of entertainment that is partially subsidized by the government, while it does have its flaws, is extremely beneficial. It's disheartening to hear that the same issues that we're having with ticket pricing over here is happening on the other side of the pond as well, but I think there is nice that we can still take some amount of solace in the fact that overpriced tickets have become the norm here, will over there they're still a rarity enough to warrant an article being written about them. looking at the proportion of theaters that do have this problem versus don't have this problem in the US versus the uk, I still do think that unfortunately, the UK comes out on top.
I’m glad folks are calling practices like this out. $500 for a ticket to a publicly subsidized performance is a little bit absurd, given that tax dollars are already in use in the creation of the production. It seems to also be an echo of what has been happening here in the United States over the past few years as Live Nation has continued to drive up ticket prices using a similar strategy. Disney and Universal have also done the same at their parks, now driving up the prices at Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, and Epic Universe into the $200 range for a single day. This also may reflect the broader global economy, as the ripple effects from COVID are still playing out across the world. That’s not to mention the AI bubble that will inevitably burst and cause even more macroeconomic chaos than there already is. Perhaps in the case of these publicly subsidized productions in the United Kingdom, the government should step in and limit how much they can charge, rather than allowing the organization to regulate itself.
I think that the few artists speaking out against dynamic pricing really have the practice of it speaking for itself. If (hah) it is price gouging, I find myself wondering what percentage of the revenue is necessary and what percentage of it is plain “greed.” We all know how the live music industry is doing right now in terms of exploitation. Is theatre and other entertainment next? Prices are so high now and they have been all my life that they feel almost normal and justified to me, and anything that actually has a price I’d be willing to pay is a “steal.” It’s funny how they word it to now somehow spin it on “audience demand,” kind of saying “well this isn’t our fault! You just want to see the shows so bad!”
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