Discount Curtain Is Rising

Los Angeles can be a hard sell. Even when you’re selling at half price.

Unlike New York, where Broadway theater thrives on tourists, Los Angeles has never had a same-day, half-price ticket booth like TKTS.

But now the city seems poised to get those kind of discounted tickets. Already, Ticketmaster sells some on its Web site. Theatre LA, the nonprofit group of theaters and producers, is planning a half-price ticket outlet that could open next month. (Theatre LA is negotiating with the Los Angeles Times and other companies to sponsor the booth, which could end up at the Beverly Center.) At the same time, TIX L.A., another new discount ticketing company, is struggling to keep its outlet in the Westside Pavilion open.

Ticketmaster started selling discounted tickets on its Web site in early July. The company is testing out the service, called Southern California Ticketmart (https://events.ticketmaster.com) here before rolling it out in other regions, said Alan Citron, president of Ticketmaster Multimedia.

Citron said Ticketmaster always had an eye on the discount ticketing business. “No one knows better than us how many tickets remains available at any one time,” he said. “The problem has always been that we had no way to market the availability of those tickets.”

The Internet solved that problem. Users can pick a show, see what seats are available and buy the ticket with a credit card--all by computer. The site has sold only 50-60 tickets a week so far, primarily because pickings have been slim. In recent weeks, the Houston Ballet’s “Dracula” and the American Ballet Theatre’s “Cinderella” went on the half-price block, as did the Hall & Oates concert at the Greek Amphitheater.

Many days, though, Ticketmart’s shelves were bare. Citron said that could change quickly if other Ticketmaster clients--especially music clubs such as the House of Blues or Billboard Live--start offering discounts.

Already, the competition is heating up. In June, TIX L.A. opened a booth in the Westside Pavilion Expansion to sell day-of-event half-price tickets to sports and cultural events. It claims to have had a contract with Ticketmaster, but the deal went sour after Ticketmart went online.

While TIX L.A. hasn’t folded, it only has discount theme park, zoo and magic show tickets on sale right now. Owner Roger Campo said, “The reality is, for all intents and purposes, we’re out of business.” He and his partner have hired a lawyer to look at the situation.

But Ticketmaster doesn’t control all of Los Angeles. Venues like the Shubert and the Music Center control their own ticketing, and several smaller ticketing companies have a piece of the pie as well. All of which makes discount ticketing difficult.

That multiple companies want a piece of the discount pie suggests that there’s a burgeoning market there. And why not? The cost of entertainment--from concerts to hardbacks--has outstripped Americans’ disposable income for decades. In 1981, when “Evita,” “42nd Street” and “Amadeus” were running on Broadway, the average ticket price was about $18 (equal to $31.88 in 1997 when adjusted for inflation). Last year, it was $47.

The catch is this: Theaters want to sell off their empty seats, but they don’t want those cheap tickets to be too easy to get.

Executive director William Freimuth ran into such problems a few years ago when Theatre LA tried to sell discount tickets over the phone for that day’s performances. Two things happened. First, large theaters pulled out. “If it’s so easy to get [discounted] tickets,” Freimuth explained, “people will stop buying season subscriptions.”

Second, the callers hadn’t resolved to go to the theater that night. “People would call and say, ‘Do you have tickets to ‘Beauty and the Beast’? ‘No, I’m sorry we don’t today.’ Click. They didn’t have to make any commitment.”

Theatre LA is negotiating with the Beverly Center for a storefront for its booth, an operation that will require some commitment: You have to go there in person and have cash in hand. Tourists, in particular, are a target market. In San Diego, the 8-year-old Times Arts Tix booth (funded in 1988 by a one-time grant from the nonprofit, private Times Mirror Foundation) at downtown’s Horton Plaza has a brisk business that is 38% tourists.

For sprawling L.A., the lack of a defined theater district makes the discount outlet prospect a little more risky. Still, most of L.A.’s major theaters have signed on. And if the Theatre LA booth is successful, it could branch out into other arts--dance, opera, classical music--and other parts of the city.

“In my dreams I see a big line of people in front of our place every day--and that might happen if they know we’ve got four tickets to ‘Ragtime’ or four tickets to ‘Rent’ every day,” Freimuth said.

But it’s up to producers whether to give Theatre LA--or anyone--discount tickets. “Ragtime,” running now at the Shubert Theatre, has offered only $25 student rush tickets so far. When the Broadway hit “Rent” comes to the Ahmanson Theatre in September, each day the box office will sell 28 tickets to every performance--in the front two rows--for $20 each. They have no other plans for rush or discount tickets.

Other theaters, such as the Pasadena Playhouse, give discounts only to series subscribers because they want to encourage regular theatergoing, not the spontaneous ticket-buying such discount programs cater to.

Of course, frugal theatergoers always have found ways to get cheap seats. TicketsLA started its Tickets Club about eight years ago. For annual dues of $25, members get half-price tickets to any of the 10-20 plays on its hotline, mostly at 99-seat theaters.

Another group, On the House, has dues of $149 a year, but then all tickets--mostly to small theater--are free. Founder Sharon Toriello said her group keeps a low profile so as not to compete with regular ticket sales. But producers give her free tickets to get “word-of-mouth marketing,” or to fill up the house when a critic is expected.

And then, of course there are rush tickets. From the Alex Theatre in Glendale to the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood, theaters often sell off their empty seats, anywhere from two hours to 10 minutes before curtain.

There is the risk that the show will sell out--but it’s worth it to get in for $10, said De’Lois Jacobs, who was waiting to see Neil Simon’s new play, “Proposals” at the Ahmanson on a recent Friday night. “What is it costing me? I just drove down after work,” she said.

That night, everyone in line--65 people--got into “Proposals” for $10 (except for the people who didn’t notice the cash-only sign). The theater still had 50 balcony seats to spare.

A regular theatergoer, Jacobs also keeps an eye out for pay-what-you-can performances--like the one of “Proposals” at 2 p.m. today--and then calls her friends to plan an outing. “You get to see the work by these playwrights, and if you like it, and you see the quality, after that you’ll pay [full price],” she said.

How the new discount outlets will affect rush sales--or each other--remains to be seen. Theaters and patrons might embrace the booths. It works in Chicago, New York and Seattle. Or the Internet might become the source of choice.

“It’s anybody’s guess how any of these things are going to pan out,” said Theater LA’s Freimuth. “We have to constantly remind ourselves that L.A. isn’t like anyplace else.”