Long Wharf Theatre Turns To Membership Model

Welcome to the club.

Long Wharf Theatre has joined the growing number of arts-and-culture nonprofits turning to “membership” business models that would make them more adaptable to changing COVID conditions and more accessible to a wider audience.

The New Haven theater, entering its 56th season, has ditched the subscription model and will now ask its fans for $10-a-month memberships, which will support the theater’s community-centric mission and allow members to purchase tickets whenever they wish for a discounted price of $35 along with other perks.

Nonmembers will still be able to buy single tickets for any show or event, but now at a single price of $55, instead of the theater’s previously tiered pricing structure for various days of the week and seating locations.

Long Wharf will also give people the ability to become members at any time of the year, instead of a limited subscription buy-in period at the start of every season, thus creating a year-round opportunity for cash flow.

For many people, says managing director Kit Ingui, the high-priced, subscription model was seen as a financial barrier for theatergoing.

“[The membership model] is how we’re now going to build our audience,” she says. “Most of us don’t have $400 for subscriptions every year. But memberships for just $10 a month allow people to see any show for a much more accessible price point and supports our community mission because there’s much more to Long Wharf than just the shows you see on our stage.”

Changing habits

Since the regional theater movement began in the 1960s, the subscription model was the primary economic template for not-for-profit play houses, giving performance venues a large pool of money at the start of every season. But in recent decades, peoples’ entertainment habits changed, with many preferring the flexibility to buy tickets a la carte instead of committing to performances months in advance. That pool of cash-in-advance money for many theaters has been shrinking.

In 2020 there were 2,958 Long Wharf subscribers. Ten years ago there were more than 5,100. Twenty years ago there were more than 10,700. In the 1980s, there were even thousands more.

Ingui also points to another change that gradually devalued the subscription model.

“The intention was to give the subscriber the best ticket price,” she said. “But what ended up happening is that the decline in subscription revenue [at the beginning of a season] forced theaters to discount single tickets during the year. In the end we were not necessarily giving subscribers the best price.”

Ingui says the COVID crisis and subsequent shutdown and shakeup of theaters has allowed…|CONTINUED|