Follow one imagined ticket buyer from need to booking. She wants a night out, and in an August 2025 survey of London audiences by Situation UK with the Society of London Theatre and UK Theatre, entertainment was the top reason for choosing the theatre (theater in the US), with time with family and friends second. Next she hears about a show. In that survey, audiences were most encouraged by strong signals of quality, such as a beloved story, a positive reputation from earlier productions or a buzz among peers. Then she looks for evidence: a 2011 Newcastle University study of theatregoers at one north-east England theatre found that word of mouth and reviews were the most significant factors in choosing a performance. Then she checks the date and the price. Then she books, and may become the recommendation the next buyer hears.
An agency has to influence all five steps, but never all at once. The useful question is which step needs the work this month, and the sections below take each step in the order a production meets it.
Start with your own calendar
Write down your dates first: announcement, on-sale, first preview, press night, closing night and any extension decision. Then ask each agency to send its plan back as a calendar against those dates, with a name against each one: who writes the on-sale ads, who checks price and review claims, and who answers the phone in press week. A proposal listing channels and budgets without your dates is a template, not a plan for a run. Meet the person who will run the account, and ask which production with a fixed run they have worked on. Until dates, prices and capacity are fixed, no one has anything to plan against, and if your venue's marketing team already runs the mailing list and box office data for a run of a few weeks, that team with press-week help may serve you better than an agency retainer.
Before tickets go on sale
The first stage belongs to early bookers. In the London survey, many avid theatregoers were happy to book before a production even begins performances. For a new production no reviews exist yet, so early work means reaching past audiences and people who already follow the company. Check that the plan treats this as a separate job from the push that comes later.
Broadway buyers, at least, book weeks ahead. In the Broadway League's audience report for the 2022-23 season, the average reported date of ticket purchase was 34 days before the performance, compared with 47 days in the 2018-19 season. A plan that starts advertising in the final fortnight begins after that average date has passed.
Ask what the agency will do before on-sale day, and how it will count first-week bookers separately from everyone else. Listen for who it will reach, with what message, and which number would show it is working.
On sale and previews: price, fees and dates
Before any meeting, take an ad from your last production that showed a price and follow it through to the final checkout step. Write down both figures. The moment a price appears, price rules apply. In the UK, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 includes a ban on drip pricing, and the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced in April 2025 that its new consumer protection provisions were in force. The CMA's guidance says mandatory charges include administration fees, however described, such as booking or processing fees, and that an invitation to purchase can exist even where the information indicating the price and characteristics of a product is minimal or incomplete. A social post saying "tickets from" a price therefore counts as an invitation to purchase, and on our interpretation the booking fee belongs in that price.
In the US, the Federal Trade Commission's fees rule has been effective since 12 May 2025. Its staff guide says live-event tickets are for concerts, sporting events, music, theater and other live performances, and that a business must describe what fees are for and avoid vague phrases like "convenience fees". The same guide says an unavoidable online ticket fee must be included in the total price, and gives a theatre example: a theatre may advertise the lowest available general admission total price only if people can actually buy tickets at that price. The UK guidance points the same way: limitations on availability should be made clear if products will not be offered at the advertised price in reasonable quantities for a reasonable time.
Then ask the agency to put its first priced ad for you beside the checkout page in the same way, before it runs. Ask how any "from" price is chosen and how many seats sit at it. Then ask what the agency will say during previews, before any reviews exist. The better answers lean on the story, the cast and the dates.
Press night and the review window
Reviews cut both ways. In the Newcastle study, bad reviews put people off more than good reviews enticed them. Press week needs a plan for every outcome. Ask what the agency will do if the reviews are mixed, and who can approve new copy within hours.
Then check how quotes are used. The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) publishes advice on the UK advertising code. That advice is not binding, but it says marketers quoting from a published source still need evidence to show that the statements are genuine and accurate. It also says testimonials should not be taken out of context or edited in a way which is misleading. In a 2012 ruling, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) found a film ad misleading because a quote credited to a newspaper had not featured in that newspaper's published review. That ruling concerned a film, but the CAP advice above covers any non-broadcast ad quoting a published source, a show poster included. Ask the agency to show, for every pull quote and star rating, the published review it comes from, word for word.
Audience reviews on your own site are a separate matter. A provision of the DMCC Act on misleading consumer reviews came into force on 6 April 2025. The rules the CAP Code added to reflect it say marketers must not publish reviews misleadingly, which includes failing to publish, or removing from publication, negative consumer reviews whilst publishing positive ones.
Mid-run: word of mouth and the slow weeks
Once the reviews are in, recommendation carries weight. In the same Broadway League report, the strongest motivating factors for show selection were the music and personal recommendation. Mid-run work is about making recommendation easy and finding out where it came from. Ask how the agency will learn how bookers heard about the show, because that shows whether your money reaches new people or the same people twice.
Take care with incentives. In the US, the FTC's reviews rule, effective 21 October 2024, prohibits incentives conditioned on the writing of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment. In the UK, the CAP Code requires marketing communications to make clear where consumer reviews have been incentivised. Ask how audience reviews will be gathered and whether any reward depends on the score.
Finally, ask for sales by performance and price band, not clicks. A seat unsold on Tuesday cannot be sold on Saturday, so weekly totals hide the soft nights. Expect the agency to name the weak performances and what it will change for them.
The final weeks and the next production
Near the end, the job changes again. Ask how the agency decides to stop advertising a full performance and where that money goes. Ask too what it proposes for a performance that is still selling slowly, whether that is a targeted offer, a different audience or simply accepting empty seats. Keep that decision yourself, because it is a pricing decision about your production. If the run is extended, a new on-sale starts and the price checks above apply again, so ask who runs them.
Then ask how the agency will carry what it learned into your next production, including which audiences booked and how they heard. Who owns the booking data is a question of its own, and our guide to choosing a marketing agency you can trust covers it.
Proof from a production like yours, stage by stage
For a show, "like yours" means capacity, run length, price range and whether the title is new or known. A logo tells you little. Ask for proof that matches each stage above, from a comparable run and with dates: what was done before on-sale and how many bookings followed in the first week of sales, the weekly sales curve against capacity through previews and press week, and what happened to the soft nights mid-run. A claim of "sold out" with no capacity, dates or run length cannot be compared with your own plans. If the people showing that proof will not be the people on your account, ask whose work it was.
Our one published theatre case is thinner than that. For The Great Murder Mystery, an immersive production by The Lost Estate in London, we ran funnel strategy and Meta paid campaigns in 2021, work we still offer as theatre and performing arts marketing. The case page gives a run total above 11,000 tickets over ten weeks, with the schedule close to full. That is an aggregate, not the dated weekly curve this section asks for, and it comes from one immersive production, not a touring opera or a studio show.
A checklist to take into the meeting
- Can you show your plan as a calendar against my announcement, on-sale, preview, press night and closing dates?
- What happens before on-sale day, and how are first-week bookers counted?
- Can I see the first ad with a price beside the checkout page?
- How is a "from" price chosen, and how many seats sit at it?
- What will you say in previews, before any reviews exist?
- Who approves new copy in press week, and what is the plan for mixed reviews?
- Which published review does every quote and star rating come from?
- Will you report sales by performance and price band?
- How do you learn how bookers heard, and how are audience reviews gathered?
- Who, by name, does each stage, and where is the sales curve for a comparable run?
Print the checklist and put the same ten questions to every agency you meet. When one of those questions opens up something about your own run, tell us about your business.
↳ Frequently asked
01Do ticket booking fees have to be in the price a theatre advertises?
In both countries the rules point the same way, though the detail differs. In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority lists booking and processing fees among mandatory charges, under consumer rules in force since April 2025. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission's fees rule, effective 12 May 2025, covers live-event tickets, theatre included, requires an unavoidable ticket fee to be in the total price, and says fees must be described, not hidden behind vague labels. Check any ad with a price on it against the checkout page.
02Can a theatre quote a star rating from a newspaper review in its adverts?
Only if the rating and the words genuinely appear in that review and are not taken out of context or edited in a misleading way. Advice from the Committee of Advertising Practice says marketers quoting a published source still need evidence that the statements are genuine and accurate, and in a 2012 ruling the Advertising Standards Authority found a film ad misleading because a quote credited to a newspaper had not featured in its published review. Keep the review itself on file for every quote and rating you use.
03Should a production brief its agency before tickets go on sale?
Yes, and before the on-sale date rather than after it. In a 2025 survey of London audiences, many avid theatregoers were happy to book before a production began performances, so the first weeks of sales depend on work done earlier. Briefing late leaves the agency learning your audience while early buyers are already deciding.