ROH pricing survey

[bridiem]

I've now been told that in 2016 I opted out of receiving ROH survey emails which is why I didn't receive either of the recent surveys. Frankly, I think that's incredibly unlikely since I would always be keen to participate in surveys (and there's no option on the membership that mentions surveys so how could I have done this?). At any rate, I have asked to be included in all future surveys.

 

I was also told that the Friends survey went out to all Friends (except, presumably those who had opted out of surveys...) but the pricing one went to a random sample of ticket buyers whether Friends or not. (Which tallies with what was posted above.)

Edited March 8, 2023 by bridiem

[Blossom]

1 hour ago, bridiem said:

I've received an answer saying that the survey was sent out to all Friends 'except those who had previously opted out of certain types of marketing'. However 'due to demand' they're now sending it out to those people too and we should receive it by the end of today. I am a little bemused by this, since I'm not aware that I've opted out of any ROH marketing, so I've asked for clarification.

 

P. S. I've just checked my account, and the only type of contact I've opted out of is 'Supporting us', which I assumed to be linked to requests for extra financial support which I know I would not be able to offer. That doesn't seem to me like a good reason for excluding me from ticket price surveys.

I got a similar response and replied to say it’s strange as I am opted into everything. 

[bridiem]

Just now, Blossom said:

I got a similar response and replied to say it’s strange as I am opted into everything. 

 

I've now been told that the way to opt out of survey emails is to click on 'unsubscribe' at the bottom of a survey email once received. I am told that I must have done this in 2016 but I honestly think that there is just about nil chance that I actually did this (but of course I can't prove it).

[Guest oncnp]

Has anyone ever seen the results of any ROH survey? Or do they just go into some "We did a survey" round file?

[zxDaveM]

25 minutes ago, oncnp said:

Has anyone ever seen the results of any ROH survey? Or do they just go into some "We did a survey" round file?

 

Those cards are played very closely to their chests.

The only people to see those results would be those that the begging bowl is put in front of, I should imagine

[JohnS]

Friends Membership have been in touch again. They have checked and now realise that a number of Friends (including me) were not sent the survey. They say they’ll send the survey to everyone who’s so far been missed and I’m pleased to say I’ve now got the survey.

No explanations were given about why some Friends were missed and there was no comment about Friends who’d opted out of emails.

Hopefully all Friends will be receiving the survey shortly.

[bridiem]

I've also now received the Friends survey, and have included comments about ticket prices in some of the answers.

[Blossom]

I have also now received and responded

[JohnS]

Good to complete the survey and look at the pattern of seating prices for ballet and opera. I knew there’d been changes recently but I hadn’t appreciated just how significant these have been. For last weekend’s Sleeping Beauty I’d paid £112 for a Stalls Circle bench seat (B26), a late purchase as I was extending my London stay. I was surprised just how expensive the ticket was for an uncomfortable seat with a restricted view and checked what the ticket price is for opera. For Don Carlos that seat is £90. But the top price for Don Carlos is £255 whilst it’s £170 for Sleeping Beauty. Hence for Don Carlos the bench seat is 35% of the top price. For Sleeping Beauty it’s an eye watering 66%. I sometimes choose Balcony A33 or A55, restricted view because of the safety rail. For Swan Lake the ticket is £112 (66% of the top price); for Don Carlos it’s £122 (48% of the top price). Interestingly Stalls Circle standing places for Sleeping Beauty are £12 (7% of the top price); for Don Carlos £18 (7% of the top price). I can’t see what the rationale is for the disparities in ticket price patterns between ballet and opera and I think the ROH need to look again at these patterns. Some ballet seats do seem incredibly expensive for restricted views and to me are questionable value for money - I wouldn’t book the Stalls Circle bench seats for ballet. I guess the ROH may argue they can pretty much sell all tickets at the prices currently being charged so there’s no problem. But in terms of fairness perhaps top price tickets for ballet should increase with decreases in the price of cheaper seats.

[bridiem]

36 minutes ago, JohnS said:

Good to complete the survey and look at the pattern of seating prices for ballet and opera. I knew there’d been changes recently but I hadn’t appreciated just how significant these have been. For last weekend’s Swan Lake I’d paid £112 for a Stalls Circle bench seat (B26), a late purchase as I was extending my London stay. I was surprised just how expensive the ticket was for an uncomfortable seat with a restricted view and checked what the ticket price is for opera. For Don Carlos that seat is £90. But the top price for Don Carlos is £255 whilst it’s £170 for Swan Lake. Hence for Don Carlos the bench seat is 35% of the top price. For Swan Lake it’s an eye watering 66%. I sometimes choose Balcony A33 or A55, restricted view because of the safety rail. For Swan Lake the ticket is £112 (66% of the top price); for Don Carlos it’s £122 (48% of the top price). Interestingly Stalls Circle standing places for Swan Lake are £12 (7% of the top price); for Don Carlos £18 (7% of the top price). I can’t see what the rationale is for the disparities in ticket price patterns between ballet and opera and I think the ROH need to look again at these patterns. Some ballet seats do seem incredibly expensive for restricted views and to me are questionable value for money - I wouldn’t book the Stalls Circle bench seats for ballet. I guess the ROH may argue they can pretty much sell all tickets at the prices currently being charged so there’s no problem. But in terms of fairness perhaps top price tickets for ballet should increase with decreases in the price of cheaper seats.

 

If anything, I would say that restricted view seats for ballet should be proportionately cheaper than for opera because the entire visual element is so important in ballet.

[capybara]

4 minutes ago, bridiem said:

 

If anything, I would say that restricted view seats for ballet should be proportionately cheaper than for opera because the entire visual element is so important in ballet.

Absolutely! It defies logic for it to be the other way round.

[Bluebird]

56 minutes ago, bridiem said:

 

If anything, I would say that restricted view seats for ballet should be proportionately cheaper than for opera because the entire visual element is so important in ballet.

 

Below are other examples which illustrate the thinking of those who set the prices.

 

i.e. they clearly think a restricted view is less important for ballet than it is for opera!

 

Front row Upper Slips (the ones furthest from the stage)

 

Sleeping Beauty £22

Cinderella £22.

Barber of Seville £15

Marriage of Figaro £16.

 

 

Edited March 10, 2023 by Bluebird

[bridiem]

14 minutes ago, Bluebird said:

Below are other examples which illustrate the thinking of those who set the prices.

 

i.e. they clearly think a restricted view is less important for ballet than it is for opera!

 

Front row Upper Slips (the ones furthest from the stage)

 

Sleeping Beauty £22

Cinderella £22.

Barber of Seville £15

Marriage of Figaro £16.

 

I don't know about the respective popularity of these or other operas, but I wonder if they simply charge according to 'what the market will bear' (or at least what they think it will bear), rather than any more fine-tuned thinking about the 'product' on offer?

[Dawnstar]

4 hours ago, JohnS said:

Good to complete the survey and look at the pattern of seating prices for ballet and opera. I knew there’d been changes recently but I hadn’t appreciated just how significant these have been. For last weekend’s Sleeping Beauty I’d paid £112 for a Stalls Circle bench seat (B26), a late purchase as I was extending my London stay. I was surprised just how expensive the ticket was for an uncomfortable seat with a restricted view and checked what the ticket price is for opera. For Don Carlos that seat is £90. But the top price for Don Carlos is £255 whilst it’s £170 for Sleeping Beauty. Hence for Don Carlos the bench seat is 35% of the top price. For Sleeping Beauty it’s an eye watering 66%. I sometimes choose Balcony A33 or A55, restricted view because of the safety rail. For Swan Lake the ticket is £112 (66% of the top price); for Don Carlos it’s £122 (48% of the top price). Interestingly Stalls Circle standing places for Sleeping Beauty are £12 (7% of the top price); for Don Carlos £18 (7% of the top price). I can’t see what the rationale is for the disparities in ticket price patterns between ballet and opera and I think the ROH need to look again at these patterns. Some ballet seats do seem incredibly expensive for restricted views and to me are questionable value for money - I wouldn’t book the Stalls Circle bench seats for ballet. I guess the ROH may argue they can pretty much sell all tickets at the prices currently being charged so there’s no problem. But in terms of fairness perhaps top price tickets for ballet should increase with decreases in the price of cheaper seats.

 

As someone who's been seeing opera at the ROH since 2004, mostly from the sides of the stalls circle, but ballet only since 2018 this proportionate price discrepency between ballet and opera for seats at the sides of the stalls circle has been baffling me since 2018. Now it's got to £70 for the cheapest stalls circle seats for the classics I really feel the significant view restriction is not giving value for money. However with the recent big hike in stalls prices & abolition of package booking the stalls are now way beyond my price range for ballet (I've never been able to afford them for opera) so I have to put up with the stalls circle prices or not go. I fear if the stalls circle prices go up much more then I won't be going.

[Blossom]

I just can’t understand how they can charge £100 or more for restricted view seats. Or for any seats in Amphi. Or benches.  Or charge the same for full view balcony as they do for lower tiers.

 

Along with the significantly higher prices in the full view seats, it seems as though the ROH are shooting themselves in more than the foot.

Keenly watching Cinderella ticket sales - with some dispair.

[Bluebird]

3 hours ago, bridiem said:

 

I don't know about the respective popularity of these or other operas, but I wonder if they simply charge according to 'what the market will bear' (or at least what they think it will bear), rather than any more fine-tuned thinking about the 'product' on offer?

I’ve just checked the price of the same seats for the Kaufmann Werther (which will be very much in demand) They are £18 (as opposed to £22 for Beauty and Cinderella)

[serenade]

1 hour ago, Blossom said:

I just can’t understand how they can charge £100 or more for restricted view seats. Or for any seats in Amphi. Or benches.  Or charge the same for full view balcony as they do for lower tiers.

I think it’s just because they can. If people buy them I guess they will just keep going up and up 😐

[OnePigeon]

I used to treat myself to my favourite MacMillan or Ashton and sit in the side area of the stalls for £70 around the early to mid 2000s.  Having moved away and no longer working in London, on top of having young children, I have only just started attending again and am horrified how much the prices have gone up, but then it’s the same with the theatre.  The only real way for me to go now is with Friday Rush offers, but I can only ever get amphitheatre seats that way and it does impact on how immersed I feel in the production when I am so far away.  I do fear they’re only going to increase and never come back down.  I’m grateful to be able to go at all theses days though, and there hasn’t been anything programmed that I haven’t seen or am desperate to see, but if they resurrect something on my wish list I might have to sell a kidney to get a good seat.

[bridiem]

As a very direct comparison, the Amphi tickets I bought for Swan Lake in March 2020 (performances then cancelled so I have a record) were £30; exactly the same tickets for Swan Lake in the spring/summer of 2022 were £46. So that's a 53.3% rise in just over two years, for some of the very few (for me) affordable tickets in the house.

[Lizbie1]

And my 2017 Sleeping Beauty ticket has exactly doubled in price: £17 then, £34 now.

 

I've been saying for a while that they appear to have identified certain bands and areas as underpriced. Maybe they're right, but that doesn't make it easier to swallow.

[Scheherezade]

I have friends who, for various reasons, are unable to stand or to sit in the slips or the back of the amphi and since the massive hike in price of the previously £30 tickets are now unable to afford to attend. I find it shocking. And it is certainly careering towards elitism of the very worst sort. 

[Dawnstar]

Maybe they're so keen on getting in new audiences because those people won't realise how much the prices have gone up!

 

Given the relatively lower-priced Woolf Works has sold out I suspect they'll now be planning a significant price hike for that the next time it is performed.

[zxDaveM]

6 hours ago, Lizbie1 said:

And my 2017 Sleeping Beauty ticket has exactly doubled in price: £17 then, £34 now.

 

I've been saying for a while that they appear to have identified certain bands and areas as underpriced. Maybe they're right, but that doesn't make it easier to swallow.

 

Seems they have 'gone' for the tickets that sell out first - i.e. the tickets the hardcore, multi-performance buying fans go for. This could be for two reasons: firstly, cos they believe fans will buy said tickets regardless; or secondly, to reduce multi-performance buying of the 'cheaper' tickets to enable 'new audience' to buy them instead. Go buy the expensive tickets, you cheapskates, seems to be the message. To someone new, they wouldn't have known the £34 ticket they just bought (which looks a bargain to the top priced £170 ones) was £17 a year or two back. I often feel they think of some of the more hard core fans as simply a nuisance to be endured, and they would much rather have the newbies

[alison]

This struck me last night, when there did seem to be an awful lot of newbies there.  To judge by the crowds everywhere, perhaps newbies and irregular visitors see the visit as a special night out and spend more in the bars and things?

[zxDaveM]

11 hours ago, alison said:

This struck me last night, when there did seem to be an awful lot of newbies there.  To judge by the crowds everywhere, perhaps newbies and irregular visitors see the visit as a special night out and spend more in the bars and things?

 

slurpy, slurpy, cheap-cheap as it were... 😉

[JohnS]

14 hours ago, zxDaveM said:

Seems they have 'gone' for the tickets that sell out first - i.e. the tickets the hardcore, multi-performance buying fans go for.

But why ballet and not opera? Or do the cheaper seats for opera not sell out as quickly? Or is it ballet’s multiple casts that help increase demand with a number of audience members wishing to see many casts (although I recall going to multiple performances of some operas)?

[JNC]

As someone who mainly sits in the amphi due to price (and I like being reasonably central without a restricted view) I have noticed a real shift post pandemic.

 

I saw La Bayadere for £27 (!) in row L of the amphi (the central part) in 2018. I paid £67 to sit in row M last year for Swan Lake. 
 

I know these are different ballets and Swan Lake would likely be charged higher than Bayadere (having said that I paid £29 to sit in row P for Swan Lake, so two rows behind where I sat for Bayadere, also in 2018) so we’re looking at nearly or over double the prices now! 
 

I remember thinking all the talk about ROH being elitist wasn’t true back in 2018/2019 when I was paying £30 to sit not right at the back of the amphi, in the centre with an unrestricted view. What a difference a few years make! The fact those tickets now are £70 means I’m effectively priced out of over half the amphi it feels like. 
 

Given for ballet sight lines and non restricted views are something I won’t compromise on, I’m left with central stalls circle standing (which I’ll happily take if available but is obviously limited and not guaranteed!), and a middle section of the amphi (not the slips sides). further back than row R/S I really struggle to appreciate as it seems so far away. I’ve already been pushed out of my comfort zone with pricing (increasing I’d say spending £30 to £40-50 a ticket post pandemic) but I’ve reached the point where I can’t spend anymore, and certainly couldn’t justify £50 to sit in row R or something! I think I was also willing to give some leeway on increased pricing post pandemic as it was financially tough for roh and I was desperate to get back to seeing live performance - but this rationale has now also run it’s course for me. (I know things are still tough for roh financially but increasingly so for everyone else too!)
 

I’ll likely drastically reduce attending from maybe 10-15 times a year to 2-3 to spend the same on more expensive tickets. 
 

the sad truth is, as already mentioned, roh won’t care as long as tickets still sell. I wonder how many friends are currently not totally financially comfortable and will look to cut their memberships to fund fewer performances? It’ll be interesting if roh does internal data capture on the friends that leave, how much they earn, whether their performance attendance has reduced etc. 

[zxDaveM]

15 hours ago, JNC said:

I’ll likely drastically reduce attending from maybe 10-15 times a year to 2-3 to spend the same on more expensive tickets. 
 

 

I think you'll be the marketing team's dream punter!

[JNC]

51 minutes ago, zxDaveM said:

 

I think you'll be the marketing team's dream punter!

I don’t want to be! When I say “more expensive tickets” I think I mean the same tickets that used to cost £30, now £70.

 

I don’t think I’ll ever be spending top price in the stalls. Maybe I’d make one exception if they did a rare programme I was desperate to see with dream casting, for a once in lifetime thing! 

[LinMM]

Looks like I’m turning into their dream punter as well!! 
I had been sitting in Balcony area pre pandemic but this season the seats have been getting so expensive there that it’s going to start meaning choosing only one visit per ballet as I’ve already cut down to two at the moment. 
However having already booked two performances of Cinderella a friend who was very keen to go but who couldn’t make the dates I’d booked  (chosen for particular casts) and she cannot stand so can only afford to sit in an area of the Amphi which is too high up for me these days since the old vertigo has got worse 😳

However I’ve risked booking  a seat as near to one of the entrances as possible so don’t have to  walk up or down too much ….around row G at £70 still too expensive for the seat I think….. but also with the view that if this works I will have to be back in the Amphi if want to see more than one performance as Balcony just getting too expensive. 
Im going to try out the seat I’ve booked for Cinderella when go to Woolf Works next week to see if I can actually sit in it 😳 fingers crossed ….or I will be desperate for a standing ticket for that performance lol!! 

But can see next season I won’t be going more than once per ballet unless I can stand. 

 

[zxDaveM]

23 minutes ago, JNC said:

I don’t want to be! When I say “more expensive tickets” I think I mean the same tickets that used to cost £30, now £70.

 

I don’t think I’ll ever be spending top price in the stalls. Maybe I’d make one exception if they did a rare programme I was desperate to see with dream casting, for a once in lifetime thing! 

 

I was being a bit tongue in cheek there - I share your sentiments exactly

[Lizbie1]

Some people have mentioned the discontinuation of packages here, so I thought it might be interesting to throw in what Paris Opera have done.

 

Their subscription model has been substantially rejigged, with discounts varying not according to where you are sitting in the house - this season there were no discounts for the lower tiers - but to what show you are booking: four of them (all operas) attract a 25% discount; thirteen (including some ballets) attract 15%; the rest have no discount. This is if you are booking for four or five shows; if you are booking for six or more, the discounts are 30%, 20% and 5% respectively.

 

From my point of view this is a welcome innovation and I'd like to see ROH adopting something similar.

[Blossom]

Just seen this article and wonder if Baker Richards are responsible for the strange pricing survey we ‘enjoyed’ :-

 

https://www.baker-richards.com/emerging-in-a-position-of-strength/