Free Night of Theater - 2006 Overview
Building on the success of the pilot program, Free Night expanded to include the pilot partners plus thirteen additional communities: the cities of Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland, Lexington, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Seattle and Washington, DC; and the states of Connecticut, Oregon, New Jersey, North Carolina and Wisconsin. Launched nationally on October 19, the 2006 campaign offered 35,627 free tickets to 522 performances presented by 387 participating theatre companies from coast to coast.
In order to provide assistance to our partners that did not have the funds or staff to manage ticketing internally, TCG created a national interactive website, www.freenightoftheater.net, which allowed visitors to learn about events in their areas and reserve tickets online. Nine of the larger Association of Performing Arts Service Organizations (APASO) groups chose to use existing websites to handle ticket reservations, while the seven organizations in Austin, Connecticut, DC, New Jersey, North Carolina, Philadelphia and Wisconsin utilized the national website.
National Website Overview
The national website was initially created to provide basic information
about the Free Night of Theater program and allow visitors
to browse listings of participating theatres in the various regions.
Since some regions did not have a "ticketing partner"
in place, TCG began developing a simple reservation utility that
theatres could use for the 2006 Free Night program. As
the utility developed, it became apparent that a centralized ticketing
system would be indispensable as the program expands in 2007 to
areas of the country that do not have a strong regional partner/organization
in place.
The national site experienced an unprecedented run on tickets, receiving
450,000 hits on the first day, with 2,800 tickets reserved in the
first 5 minutes. Philadelphia, Washington DC and Connecticut distributed
their entire initial ticket allotments within 15 minutes. A total
of 10,000 tickets were reserved through the national website with
almost every region and performance “sold out.”
Ticket Reservations
- 387 participating theatre companies presented 522 performances offering 35,627 tickets (actual attendance figures are not yet available)
- 27,517 tickets offered in first round
- Tickets in several regions were completely gone within hours (DC, CT, Philadelphia)
- 8,110 additional tickets were added to the initial program allotment
Shugoll Research Highlights
- Of those trying a new theatre during Free Night 2006, 32% returned to that theatre and purchased tickets, including 3% who purchased a subscription, showing the benefit of the program to the participating theatres
- Of the 32% who returned and purchased a ticket, 49% bought a full price ticket
- Eighty-one percent of those attending Free Night have gone to a theatre since the program, including 38% of those who only attend the theatre infrequently (two or fewer times or less). Further, 33% say they go to the theater more now than before the program and 86% of them attribute additional attendance to the Free Night program
- The program attracted a significant number of people who fall into non-traditional theatre participant categories, including infrequent theatregoers, young people, less educated, non-white and those with lower household incomes. Specifically, 24% of those at Free Night attended the theatre two or fewer times in the last year, 31% are under age 35, 18% have less than a college degree, 26% are non-white, and 33% have incomes under $50,000.