Ten Years Of Tickets

The movie and concert industries have gotten flack for raising ticket prices year after year despite slow ticket sales, but has it really worked out that poorly for either?

An inspection of 10 years of data from Pollstar and the National Association of Theatre Owners shows that increasing ticket prices generated pretty significant gains for both industries during that time.

For the movies, it appears that even with fewer butts in seats in recent years, the industry fared well with box office grosses rising more than 41 percent over the past decade to $10.6 billion in 2009.

Concerts, in comparison, saw huge increases in revenues over the same period, with box office grosses rising more than 170 percent despite several years of slow ticket sales.

Curious, however, is the year 2009. It featured the greatest concert ticket sales of the decade with 40.49 million sold for the Top 100 acts, alongside a 7 percent drop in ticket prices from the previous year and the largest gross of the decade at $4.6 billion.

Time will tell whether this year’s average concert ticket price, which was $60.77 at mid-year, will have a similar effect on the box office.