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Research Details
Lyric Opera of Chicago: Setting the Scene to Grow Ticket Sales
Abstract
In the summer of 2022, the Lyric Opera of Chicago (Lyric), a major opera company, is facing a deepening challenge. Lyric has seen ticket sales decrease, declining from 54% of revenue in 1998 to 33% by 2018. Since 2010, the primary source of this decline has been a loss in subscribers--high-value patrons who attend several operas per year. This subscriber lack is concerning not just for the lost ticket sales but also because subscribers are far more likely than single-ticket buyers to make gifts (a stream that now constitutes 51% of Lyric's revenue).
As it plans to counter this downward trend, Lyric's marketing team has two questions to answer: First, the team must decide which audiences to focus on to fill its empty seats--past subscribers, "opera-primed" lookalikes of past subscribers, more diverse audiences closer to Chicago's urban core, or millennials; then, once the team chooses a target audience, it must determine how Lyric should address that audience with its product, customer experience, and opera programming choices.
Type
Case
Author(s)
Jim Lecinski, John Masko
Date Published
03/07/2023
Discipline
Marketing
Key Concepts
Arts, Brand management, Consumer marketing, Customer experience, Customer retention, Marketing, Marketing strategy, Nonprofit organizations, Sales, Sales and marketing
Citations
Lecinski, Jim, and John Masko. Lyric Opera of Chicago: Setting the Scene to Grow Ticket Sales. Case 5-123-004.