Quote:
Originally Posted by Stu from NYC
We do get to pay a premium when purchasing tickets online so wonder why they are doing this?
|
I am the leader for one of the groups affected, The Villages Pops Chorus. In the letter we received from the Entertainment Dept (which runs the Box Offices), they said the pandemic has affected the resources available to them (presumably human resources) and they could "no longer divert" the resources they have to these groups. The change affects every resident performance group that performs anywhere but the Savannah Center.
For us, it's a two edged sword. On one hand, it will cost us significantly less to use a company called Thundertix for online sales, and our audience will save as well, as we will not include an upcharge on the value of the ticket when they buy tickets to our concerts. A $15 ticket will cost $15, not $16 or even $18 as it did thru the Box Office. We will have to educate our customers as to where and how to buy tickets, but we think we will get the word out adequately. We'll also offer face to face sales at Bridgeport Rec Center on Saturdays. Tickets for our Summer concert will go on sale June 4, so we'll announce more on this soon.
The real downside for us is that we will no longer be included in the Entertainment Dept advertising pages of The Daily Sun every week. We'll advertise in the Club Connections section twice a month, and in the Local section the weeks that Club Connections doesn't run, but that is not as effective as being part of the overall Entertainment Dept ads. It will also be more expensive by a few hundred dollars per concert.
We regularly sell 1450 to 1600 tickets to our concerts, so it will be interesting to see how our new processes work for our Summer concert on July 25. We'll survive the change, but it's yet another example of the powers that be taking something away from residents. It's not only the resident performance groups that suffer, but our audiences now have to use multiple ways of buying tickets from the groups involved.
By the way, our group has donated over $180,000 to local charities since we started in 2014.