The Great Unraveling: Putting "Butts in the Seats" During the Downturn

I found myself utterly fascinated by Melinda Newman's piece in today's Washington Post that explored ways the concert industry is trying to fill seats at a time when more and more fans are finding themselves short on cash.

U2 set aside 10,000 seats at each upcoming U.S. stadium date for under $30. That's $20 less than the cheapest seat when the Irish band played a U.S. stadium date on the 2005-06 Vertigo Tour (the rest of the domestic dates were in arenas). Lucinda Williams is offering ticket holders $7 off a T-shirt or $5 off a CD at her merchandising tables this year. Bruce Springsteen gives fans a way to do good while saving money: The Boss has donated a limited number of $20 tickets to food banks in select cities to sell to his shows (usually through Ticketmaster) with 100 percent of the proceeds going to the charities. Those prices are roughly $80 less than the highest-priced ticket for most Springsteen shows...

...Live Nation is upping the ante to encourage concertgoers to bring pals along. "We sell the overwhelming percentage [of tickets] in twos," Garner says. A few years ago, Live Nation discounted tickets on the John Mayer-Sheryl Crow tour; fans who bought four tickets paid for three, or got six for the price of four. Live Nation rolled the program out to more than half of its shows last summer, selling 1.5 million tickets (15 percent of its amphitheater ticket sales overall) via some kind of discount program. This season, the goal is to offer the discount on 70 percent of the shows.

It started me thinking about how local cultural institutions are dealing with a slowing economy and its impact on an already lean arts-and-entertainment fan base. The Valentine Richmond History Center, for instance, has started a "pay what you will" program on Sundays, while the folks at Historic Richmond Region recently added a page of free attractions in the area to their site. And -- interestingly enough -- local theater stalwart Bruce Miller has just started a series on the Barksdale Theatre Blog in which he promises to explore issues of financial accessibility in local theater. I seem to remember that Barksdale offered some deep discounts for some of its shows a few months back, as well.

But is anyone creatively addressing the "price of admission during tough times" issue head on? (I mean, besides the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which somehow managed to schedule its closure during expansion perfectly.)

Free t-shirts with the price of admission? Four tickets for the price of three? A percentage of the take at the door donated to local charities?

It seems to me that there is a huge opportunity -- Hello, organization soon-to-be formerly known as the Arts Council of Richmond? -- for a crazy-mad local PR blitz from the local arts-and-culture community aimed at the tens of thousands of Richmond residents strapped for cash this summer.