Take a look at your data (if you haven't been saving your data then start! Only looking through your previous data can you accurately pick numbers, note trends, make decisions, etc.) Your data will tell you what you need to know. For example:
We’re beginning to work in class on building the budgets and calendars for the 2015-2016 season. The shows selected for next year are Identity Destiny (a new play being written for our MFA acting candidates), Titanic, Good Kids, 110 in the Shade, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, and The Importance of Being Earnest. Yesterday we determined that the income from ID could safely be entered as $12,000. That does not mean that we will spend $12,000 dollars on the show. It simply means that we feel safe in assuming we are going to earn around $12,000. With a hit show we have the potential to earn more. So how did we get there?
Setting Your Price Points
Ticket prices are an important consideration when calculating your income stream. Finding the right price for your ticket is always challenging. Large urban areas with denser populations and higher income standards will be able to sustain higher ticket prices while smaller, rural areas might not have the size of population and available disposable income to support high ticket prices. It's a good idea to look around at your community to see what others are charging for similar experiences. In addition, there are many plans that are often used to capture income over the course of a season.
Subscription Plans
Some theatres will have elaborate plans that allow patrons to 'choose' which offerings they wish to attend. In presenting houses vs. producing houses, often subscription rates center around the variety and frequency of kinds of offerings, for example; with road houses a variety of shows could include a Broadway Tour series, a classical music selection, dance and opera selections, etc. with different pricing structures according to frequency and choice.
Universities may offer subscription series for their theatre offerings though the frequency and variety of offerings often creates challenges to this kind of plan. Universities have missions that are not always shared with the general theatre going public. It's necessary in the training of the artist to provide opportunities outside the mainstream offerings of the commercial theatre, where butts in seats is the primary economic factor keeping the show running.
Earned and Unearned Income
Primarily used in accounting to reflect money you actually made doing a task or providing a service (earned) vs money you receive from interest on money invested or stocks and bond dividends (unearned) we can extrapolate that to earned income (ticket sales) and unearned income (donations, board fund raising etc. )
Updating this section, we have done a little more data mining thanks to having students who are interested in research. Taking a look back over five years, we averaged out how shows have performed in different theatres and with varying title recognition. Overall we were able to distill the data to the overall average that 54% of our audience will be student while 27% of our audience will be adult. The remaining percentage of tickets are primarily School faculty, staff, students, and complimentary tickets. We do not have a large following of "season passes" as the variety and quality of school productions is constantly changing to meet programmatic needs in addition to producing 'popular' titles. These numbers make it easier to get a handle on income derived from sources.