Opera Philadelphia offered $11 tickets. What happened next?

Hello to all my new readers! I’ve been posting regularly on my website for about a month, so it was time to actually tell people that I was writing here. I shared on LinkedIn (my primary spot for online networking and staying on top of interesting ideas) that this is the place to find short posts about what I’m thinking about and reading about. And I’m thrilled that many people took me up on the offer to check out what I’m doing, in addition to my ArtsJournal blog Row X and what I normally post on LinkedIn. So let’s get right to it.

Opera Philadelphia’s $11 Ticket Initiative: More than a lesson in pricing

Opera Philadelphia’s $11 ticket initiative that kicked off last season and will extend into the 2025-26 season based on its success. They offered a “pay what you can” model, with a minimum ticket price of $11. The result? Ticket sales surged by more than 25% compared to previous seasons, and the diversity of the audience improved significantly—bringing in more first-time opera-goers and people from underrepresented communities.

It isn’t a new idea. Many performing arts organizations have some form of making pricing for arts events low, transparent, and easy to understand. One of the most prominent was Signature Theater in New York City, who tried it in the early 2000s with $20 tickets, underwritten by Time Warner. The goal of these programs are the same: increase the total number of people attending and diversify the audience by age, socioeconomic status, and race/ethnicity to better ensure that the organizations are relevant to a broader cross-section of the communities they serve. Opera Philadelphia’s program had the same goals: the program lowered the price barrier that kept many potential attendees away—and it sent a strong but familiar message: everyone is welcome at the opera, no matter their background or financial means.

Simply put, if arts organizations want to claim that the arts are important to society, they have to prove it by being able to point to as big and diverse an audience as they can. They need to support their arguments that they are legitimate as community organizations and charitable nonprofits. If they’re falling short, they need to show that they’re trying.

The outcome of the Opera Philadelphia program is not a surprise.

Many arts administrators, including me, like to point out that price is not the main barrier to attendance. We’re not wrong, and we can point to research that supports that price is about #3 on the list of most frequently named barriers. Pointedly, price is ranked lower than lack of interest and lack of time. (Meaning, the biggest barrier is that most people just aren’t interested in what arts organizations are offering. That’s hard to swallow, but it’s true.) But price IS a barrier for some people – whether because they truly can’t afford it, or that the price is too high compared to the value they hold for the event. Research I read for a chapter I wrote on free admission policies even showed that this was true for countries like Germany that significantly subsidize their arts organizations so that tickets are pretty cheap. Interest in what’s being offered is the most important factor, not price.

Further, it’s important to understand that affordability and what’s called “willingness to pay” are two different things. It’s important to keep that in mind. Here’s what I mean:

• I CAN afford a ticket to a country music concert. But I’m not interested in country music. It doesn’t matter if the concert is $10 or free, I won’t be going. My “willingness to pay” is zero. But if a friend of mine wants me to go with her, then my willingness to pay increases. I would probably pay up to $50 to go to a country music concert with my friend so we can hang out together.
• I CAN’T afford a trip to Japan for the annual Kabuki theater festival in Tokyo. (Or, I could afford it, but it would put a big dent in my personal savings.)
• I wanted to see Pearl Jam when they came to Raleigh last month; I was a fan throughout my teenage years. The cheapest tickets was $275. I haven’t paid that much for a ticket ever before in my life. I CAN afford it, but it was beyond my willingness to pay, even though I was interested.

My point is: willingness to pay isn’t fixed and it isn’t necessarily tied to how much money a person has. So when I say the results of the Opera Philadelphia $11 ticket initiative is predictable, what I mean is that the program didn’t just make opera more affordable. It also tapped into a pool of latent demand—people who wanted to go but hadn’t acted yet. Some were held back because ticket prices were higher than they were willing to pay; others may have felt unsure whether they’d be comfortable attending at all. For some, the $11 ticket, combined with the buzz and publicity, transformed the opera into a more attractive event that felt welcoming and accessible.

I appreciated that Opera Philadelphia’s President and General Director, Anthony Roth Constanza, who created the program actually said out loud: “We have to be honest that not many people are interested in opera,” He’s right. Only a tiny fraction of Americans attend opera regularly. According to the latest research from the NEA, just 0.7% of American adults attended an opera in the past 12 months. This means that making opera more attractive —through pricing or marketing or something else —is essential for the survival of the art form at the professional level. It matters that arts organizations reach out to the people who want to come but haven’t yet taken the leap.

The lesson here isn’t just about price. It’s about deeply understanding your audience—what they want psychologically, emotionally, and socially from their arts attendance—and designing experiences that meet those needs. Remember, lack of interest is the main barrier. By focusing on the nuances of price sensitivity, the social signals your pricing decisions send, and the latent demand that might be waiting just outside the door, arts organizations can get that audience they’ve been wanting.