After customer complaints, the National Theater cancels the ticket commission at the theater box office / Article

Additional payment at the box office of the theater itself

Signe, an audience member of the National Theater, reasoned quite logically: “If I make an effort, waste time, come to the box office of a particular theater to buy a ticket for a performance of this particular theater, then it is quite clear that I will be able to buy it at the price the theater offers. It turns out – nothing!”

When purchasing tickets for National Theater performances at the theater box office, in addition to the ticket price, a purchase processing fee must also be paid.

“I asked a question, where and is it possible to buy tickets to the National Theater for the indicated price – 35 euros?

The lady at the cash desk explained that there is no such option. Nowhere!”

The program “4. studio” surveyed other theaters and found out that at the box offices of other theaters, for performances for which tickets are sold through ticketing companies, as in the National Theater, no additional payment is applied, except for tickets to National Theater performances.

The audience is not satisfied

Raimonds Zebuliņš, the cashier of the Latvian Puppet Theater, said that he very often encountered customer dissatisfaction that a commission fee is applied to tickets to the National Theater. Customers are ready to go and buy tickets at the box office located in the National Theatre, but the cashier of the Puppet Theater has to explain that the situation will be almost the same there.

Zebuliņš has many times urged customers to report to the management of the National Theater and call for a review of the ticket sales system.

It is known that the National Theater and “Arena Rīga” have applied the commission fee when buying tickets at the box office.

For other events offered in the relevant ticket sales network, tickets can be purchased at the box office without commission.

The theater director was unpleasantly surprised

Theater director Māris Vītols was unpleasantly surprised by the commission fee for theater tickets applied at the National Theater box office and other “Biļešu paradīze” box offices:

“I found that the previous director Jānis Vimba had signed a contract in 2022 until the end of 2026 with the “Biļešu paradīze” company, and this company, which has a very good reputation in the market as a whole, has given permission for “Biļešu paradīze” to charge in the entire market 5% service fee from all tickets, also at the National Theater box office. (..) I really don’t understand why this commission is applied at the National Theater box office, which is in our premises.”

The commission fee is no longer applicable

Vitols has received more than one complaint from the viewer and has started negotiations with “Bilešu Paradise”. It turns out that during the creation of the plot of “Studio 4”, the situation has changed rapidly, the director said:

“Discussing, talking and persuading them for a month, I have managed to convince them that this is not the right solution, that such a clause should not be in the contract, and we have reached an agreement that such a clause has been removed from the contract.”

The news is not only fast, but even more pleasant – not only at the National Theater box office, but even at all “Biļešu paradīze” box offices, from the last week of April, tickets to the National Theater will also have no markup, as it was already before 2022, said “Biļešu Jānis Ķuzulis, Chairman of the Board of Paradīze:

“At every box office – both the National Theater box office and all “Biļešu paradīze” box offices throughout Latvia, tickets for National Theater performances are available without additional commission.

We are the executor. Our role is to sell tickets as an intermediary, and ticketing policy is the competence of theaters and event organizers.”

Opernam sells tickets without intermediaries

“Studio 4” examined the ways in which tickets for events are sold by other cultural institutions. For example, the New Riga Theater has chosen to sell tickets only on the Internet. On the other hand, the National Opera and Ballet (LNOB) has taken a big step towards the audience: tickets for the second season can be bought both in person and on the Internet without a surcharge, as the theater maintains its own ticket sales platform.

LNOB board member Sandis Voldiņš admitted that the preparation process was quite complicated and took almost a year:

“We looked at a lot of foreign experiences, we looked at how other opera houses do it. We didn’t find another opera house where we had to pay extra for ticket sales. That was another additional motivator.”

Creating your own ticketing platform required a lot of investment. “The forecasts made for us by an external evaluator, one of the big auditors, were that we would recoup the investment in five years. We actually recouped it in two years,” said Voldiņš.

The Opera House is convinced that such a ticket sales system is a future model for other Latvian theaters as well, but at the same time admits that the example of the opera is the first successful one, because there are already known attempts by other Latvian theaters to sell their own tickets, which have failed.