Do Theater Influencers Have a Huge Influence on Ticket Buyers?

In recent years, we’ve talked a lot in the theater about influencers. There is good reason for this—in terms of the broader landscape, influencer marketing has grown to an over $20 billion industry, as per numerous studies. According to a post by SlickText, 38% of shoppers rely on influencer reviews when online shopping. But I’ve long wondered whether influencers are directly selling theater tickets. And, in my polling of 200 theatergoers, the answer was: “Very very rarely.”

That’s not to say influencers are irrelevant. The Broadway League demographic survey has some stats that may shed light on how they are useful. “What motivated you to see this show?” is one of the questions asked on the League survey and, while TikTok isn’t an answer option oddly, 7.3% of decision-makers selected Instagram as one of the motivating factors, 2.5% Facebook and 1.8% Twitter. (I should note that the percentages all add up to over 100% because you can select multiple entries, so I think a hard number would be more useful than a percentage, but I don’t decide these things.) While most of this is likely from friends/family on social media, and could also include any of the theater sites promoting content on those sources, I don’t doubt that some of this is influencer impact. Additionally, “Where do you look for theatre information?” is another question on the survey and a considerable amount of people get some of their theater information from those three social media outlets, with just over 1/5 of survey respondents getting information from Instagram.

But the League doesn’t ask patrons to rank the primary driver in their ticket purchase. (Individual shows sometimes do in their own research surveys. I’ve heard various figures from producers throughout the years—and most are similar to what I found. Though it has varied to a certain extent show to show.) That’s what I asked of people—what truly drove their purchase. I went to musicals as well as plays from last spring to this fall; I did not poll at any show running over two years. For Shucked, a show that several people told me greatly benefited from influencers, I spoke to twenty people during previews and then another fifteen people later in the run. In total, two of 200 people I spoke to said an influencer was the primary reason they purchased a ticket. Both of those people were under 30. Several others had seen influencer content, but that content was not the primary reason they purchased tickets. (Source material, stars, personal recommendations, and press topped the reasons; show specific obviously.)

There are likely many reasons that influencers are not driving ticket sales. According to the League, last season the average theatergoer was 40.4 years old, older than the typical influencer target. Theater tickets are generally expensive, so it may take more than one person’s word to take the plunge and buy. But, additionally, most influencers that push theater consistently are so-called "theater influencers" and primarily have their content pushed to theater fans. Therefore, of the people I spoke to who had seen influencer content, all had spoken to friends about the show and had read press on it. The results would perhaps be different if a wider range of influencers were pushing theater regularly.

Industry Trends Weekly is a short column that runs in the weekly Industry Pro Newsletter. To read past columns and subscribe click here. If you have an idea for the column, you can reach the author at cara@broadwayworld.com.