Pretty much unremarked in the general houha of the COC’s season announcement is a rather interesting change in pricing strategy.  Clearly something had to be done as the switch to a six performance season has consequences.  The COC appears to have something over 7000 season subscribers and a further, say, 3500 select subscribers who buy tickets for five performances.  The five performance package isn’t offered for 2014/15 so let’s assume that group split 50/50 into six and four package buyers for no net effect on ticket sales.  The switch then means a loss of 7000+ ticket sales.  The number of performances has only been reduced by 1 so that means the company has 5000 or so more tickets to sell to single ticket buyers or net new subscribers than last year.  That is, of course, on top of last year’s unsold capacity of around 12,000 seats.  For reference last year’s single seat sales were just shy of 40,000.  So, unless subscription sales rise, single ticket sales per show have to rise from 6,500 to 7,500 (more or less) just to stand still.  That’s actually a pretty tough ask.

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