THE DEMAND FOR BROADWAY THEATRE TICKETS.

Broadway attendance during an average week in February of 1963 was only 20 per cent better than it had been in 1933. Yet over the same period, spending on the performing arts more than tripled, ticket sales for spectator sports more than doubled, and real per capita GNP advanced 160 per cent. The purpose of this paper is to determine why the demand for seats to the most professional, most polished, and most popular legitimate theatre in the United States should have grown so slowly. In the process, elasticity estimates of the relationship between income-quantity, income-quality, price-quantity and cash costs-quantity are derived. From these figures, computed from cross-sectional data and from time-series data, a reasonably clear understanding of the theatre's problems emerges. The cross-sectional data were developed in April of 1962 by means of a survey of theatregoers conducted by the author. Questionnaires were inserted in all Playbills distributed in seven Broadway houses. A total of 18 performances were involved. The form requested only one member of a family to answer. Those replying were asked to drop the completed copy in one of several large boxes in the lobby and near the exits.