When you produce a show, whether at your local school hall or on Broadway, you would want to know how many tickets you are likely going to sell. This would make it easier for you to plan how much you can spend on costumes, set design, designers, directors, and all the other creative aspects.
Your financiers will ask you how many tickets you will sell before they give you a bag of money to spend. What do you expect them to say if you reply that it is not your problem? You just sell the tickets.
If this is so important, you would want to know; how can you forecast how many tickets you will be able to sell for your show. Every producer - and every business man - should ask this basic question when planning a show - or running a business. Question is, who's responsibility is it to make that guess?
Your first port of call could be your minister of finance, or secretary of the treasury, but can you as a local business man or producer expect the minister of finance, or secretary of the treasury, to give you the answer to that question? The minister has an economy to run. He or she does not have the time, not the ability to forecast ticket sales at every school hall or theater in the country. You can expect the minister of finance to give you a reasonable accurate forecast of what the growth in the economy in general will be. If you however expect to phone the minister and get an intelligent answer to your question about ticket sales, you are missing something big in the picture.
Well, if you can not ask the minister, who else can you ask and expect to give you an answer? Why not phoning the local intellectual rights licencing agency? At least, they are the ones selling you the rights to produce your show. Should they therefore not also be able to tell you how many tickets you will sell?
If we think about this one for a moment, it may sound like a reasonable answer to our question. They have the industry knowledge and they have a vested interest in this. However, do you really think that they have the time and resources to do a detailed forecast for every school hall around the country, each and every local theater, and for every show? Do you expect them to have this secret super computer where you punch in your location and your show name and then it will tell you exactly how many tickets you will sell? (42?). If you later-on sell less tickets than their computer predicted, do you then have a right to accuse them of incompetency in planning or sue them for the losses you made? Do you think it is reasonable to accuse them of incompetency if the union went on strike and you had to close the show for 2 weeks?
I can tell you that the licensing agency should be able to give you general guidelines about how many tickets shows are selling in the country in general, or maybe even in your area. They might be able to give you some indication of capacity achievement on Broadway vs. the Market theater district, etc. They can even tell you that you should be able to sell a certain number of tickets if you do everything right. Some organizations will go as far as telling you that they expect you to sell a certain number of tickets and that you can earn certain bonuses by achieving those targets. They can even incentivize you by way of annual awards programs like the Tony or Naledi awards. Whatever you can get from them, do you think you can now accuse them of incompetency if you discounted your tickets beyond norms and more people attend your shows, but you are still making losses because your revenue is not enough to cover your winter Holliday?
I hope, in general, you are getting the idea by now. You, yes you, you and you, have some responsibility here as well. The number of tickets you sell will depend on many things, most of which are under your own control as producer. The quality of your show, the quality of direction, the competency of your actors and musicians, your advertising effort, etc. have a much greater influence on the number of tickets you will sell than the growth in the country's gross domestic product. If you put up a poor quality show and do not bother to advertise for it, you are neglecting your basic duty as producer and business man. Please do not blame the licensing agency, or the minister of finance, for your failures.
Now, for the final take away.
You, as a producer, have a responsibility to plan your show. You have to plan your show like a business. As a businessman you have to make a prediction or forecast on the number of tickets you will sell and plan the rest of your show around that number. You will have to do market research locally, in the industry and nationally and then come up with a number. There are many ways to make this forecast, and with experience you will get better at it.
Do not accuse your licensing agency of incompetence if you are to lazy to do some work yourself. This is your show. It is your business. Now go out and run your business like a professional. Any public outcries of how incompetent your minister of finance is because he could not forecast your ticket sales accurately is not really needed and only impress those who are just as lazy as you are.
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