4 Hidden Treasures from Our Latest Audience Behavior Study

JCA recently released our latest Trends in Audience Behavior Study. This particular study compares fall ticket sales data across five years: 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. It’s a must-read for data nerds like me! The study revealed a wealth of fascinating insights; I was particularly interested in seeing the data around election season and ticket sales. But for the less data-obsessed among us, the study is still a must-read for its crucial audience and revenue insights. We think of these insights like hidden treasures: valuable nuggets of actionable insight found from digging through data. So what gold did we find? Here are the key opportunities that we identified, based on the study data. No swashbuckling required.

Hidden Treasure #1: Meet people where they are—build on demonstrated loyalty.

When we talked about the Ins and Outs of Arts Marketing in 2025, we discussed the cliché of saying that subscriptions are dead. Subscriptions are not dead; our latest study once again found that subscription sales are stabilizing post-pandemic. But what is true is that where they’ve stabilized is below pre-pandemic levels.

This offers us our first hidden treasure: patrons are still showing their loyalty to our organizations – they’re just showing it in different ways. We have an opportunity to meet people where they are and build on their loyalty relative to how they define their loyalty, not how we define it. Some audience members are still purchasing traditional subscription offerings. Others may be showing their loyalty by purchasing single tickets every year.

Does your organization have holiday programming like The Nutcracker or A Christmas Carol? Do you know how many patrons come back for your holiday programming year after year? One of our clients recently found that they were seeing audiences come back to their big holiday show at a rate of over 30%, year over year. That’s loyalty! Our next question to that organization was: How many other performances at your organization are these audiences attending? Just think, if they could deepen their relationships with even 10% of that audience by getting them to come back for one additional performance, that could have a serious impact on both their audience’s loyalty to their organization and their bottom line.

You have loyal fans. They just might be somewhere that you’re not looking. Meet people where they are, and you may discover a treasure trove of loyal patrons ready to increase support for your organization.

Hidden Treasure #2: Treat your new audience (and their data) like gold.

Our study also showed the continuation of a trend that we’ve noticed: our audiences are made up of more people buying fewer tickets than pre-pandemic. And we’re finding that the majority of these ticket buyers are new to our organizations. New audiences are typically comprising just over 60% of audiences. That’s substantial!

New audiences are our second hidden treasure. You’ve already done the hard part by bringing these ticket buyers into your venues. As these new audiences continue to grow, think about the opportunity they represent if you can retain them. What can you do to get these new audiences back for a second time? If more people are buying less, then retention becomes even more important. You’ll need to retain an even larger percentage of your audience to keep revenue stable.

You also have treasure in the form of data from these new audiences. What gold can you mine from understanding the demographics and behavior of your new audiences ? Is there a pattern to what types of marketing spoke to them? Is there a particular day of the week or time slot that is most appealing to new audiences? Do they buy tickets in particular zones of your house? You can learn a lot from your successes and find ways to continue to grow your audiences and your revenue.

Hidden Treasure #3: Make sure your tickets aren’t underpriced—especially for high-capacity performances.

We saw something interesting—and encouraging—in the fall of 2024. We saw growth in the percentage of capacity that organizations were selling. We love to see even fuller houses! What’s notable is that the largest area of growth was in the bottom 25% of prices.

Think about how your house typically fills up for a popular performance. The best and most expensive seats probably sell first. Your middle price zones will fill up next. You’ll likely sell some low-price tickets to every performance, but for something really popular, those low-price tickets will likely become a hot commodity as people look for any seat, just to get into the hall. Thinking about this likely pattern, it makes sense that fuller houses mean even more lower priced tickets sold.

And here’s our third hidden treasure: pricing. Pricing is always important, but it’s especially important to get right when you know that more of this lower priced inventory will be in play. Your bottom ticket price can’t be a throwaway when you know your house is likely to be full! Make sure that your prices are keeping up with inflation. If you haven’t implemented any dynamic pricing initiatives, now is the time to start. Monitor sales regularly to make sure that your prices are set in accordance with audience demand. Be thoughtful about your pricing from the start to make sure that you’re maximizing your revenue as you fill your houses. If you’re not sure if your prices need updating, read this article for some tell-tale signs that your ticket prices are misaligned with their value.

Hidden Treasure #4: Reveal and activate your shadow audiences.

Our final hidden treasure is literally hidden in plain sight at your organization.

When someone buys four tickets to a performance at your organization, do you know all four individuals that will be using those tickets? Probably not. You know who the ticket buyer is. Perhaps you have their household information, so you may also know the ticket buyer’s spouse, who may or may not be sitting in one of those four seats. That patron could be attending with anyone—their children, their parents, their friends. Those three unknown audience members are part of your “shadow audience,” and shadow audiences usually represent around 60% of the people in your audience. Talk about hidden treasure!

These are individuals who are already attending your performances and are already enthusiastic about the work that your organization does. If you could start talking to them, think about the impact that could have on your organization.

Digital ticket providers such as True Tickets are helping reveal shadow audiences through ticket sharing. As adoption of these technologies increases, we’re seeing the number of revealed shadow audience members rising. And the impact is substantial. Approximately 6.4% of revealed shadow audience members came back to purchase tickets in 2024, buying an average of $120,728 in tickets per organization. Just imagine what could happen if you were able to start building relationships with your shadow audiences through targeted communication. It’s a veritable gold mine!

If you haven’t read the study yet, make sure to check it out. And if you’re looking for help searching for hidden treasures and making the most of these insights, we’re here to help. We’d love to start a conversation about how we can help you reach your revenue goals by making the most of your data.