Season tickets and VIP seats as auction items

Seats are the easiest item a theater has and the one with a trap in it: an auctioned seat is a seat you might have sold, and a subscription auctioned below its price teaches a subscriber what the subscription is really worth.

Use seats you would not otherwise sell

• House seats held back for press and comps, on a night that will not sell out
• The performance that never sells — the second Thursday, the matinee
• Seats in a part of the house you struggle to fill
• A box or a row you can create rather than release from inventory

That last one is the useful move. A "director's box" of four seats created for one night, with a drink and a programme, is not inventory you were selling — it is a package you invented, and it is priced as a package rather than as four tickets.

Make it more than the ticket

A pair of tickets auctions at roughly what a pair of tickets costs. The same pair with something around it does not, and the additions cost the company almost nothing:

• Reserved parking, if you control any
• A programme signed by the cast
• Interval drinks brought to the seat
• A backstage visit after the show
• The same seats for every production of the season, named

Starting bids and honesty about value

State the face value plainly. It is required if your company is a qualifying charity and a bidder can only deduct the amount above fair market value, and it also gives them a reference point to bid past.

Start the bidding below face value on a package and let competition take it above. Starting at face value on a ticket item tends to produce no bids at all — a bidder can buy the same seat at the box office without the auction.

What to avoid

• Auctioning the same seats a subscriber already holds — check before you list
• Open-ended "any performance" tickets with no expiry, which become a liability across seasons
• Discounting a subscription in a way your renewal letter has to compete with
• Auctioning seats to a production whose licence or contract restricts complimentary admissions, which some agreements do

Fulfilment

Put the mechanics on the item page: which performances, how to book, who to contact, and an expiry inside the current season. A seat item with no expiry arrives back at the box office in three years and nobody remembers agreeing to it.

What else belongs in the catalogue: item ideas that actually sell.