Click.
I’m at the Steppenwolf Theatre website, on a mission: Checking to see how easy or hard it is to buy tickets online. Just now it looks impossible.
Plenty of others clearly think it’s a cinch, though. Katie Ide, Steppenwolf’s director of audience services, says that “on average, 40 percent of our single ticket sales come in through our website.” Lori Kleinerman of the Goodman Theatre says about half of the theater’s single tickets are sold online, up 26 percent from last year. Ticketmaster spokeswoman Bonnie Poindexter puts the ticket giant’s online transactions at 70 percent of its total sales.
I feel so left out.
Buying tickets is like other forms of spending money, of course: There are more ways to do it now. Theater tickets are the focus here, but the options—online or by phone from the venue, through a broker, or face to face—apply to most forms of entertainment. What follows is a comparison of a few players, with pros and cons for each.
Tickets can be a click–or a roll of a single die–away
Each method has its own pros, cons
We assess the many ways to buy tickets, from websites and box offices to other methods. Here’s how they stack up:
Directly from the theater
My test case is “The Crucible,” Steppenwolf’s first mainstage show of the 2007-08 season. I’m after two tickets for the Sept. 25 performance, and rather than allow the system to choose the “best available” seats for me, I’ve clicked “Select Your Own.”
This turns out to be a show all by itself. A screen comes up displaying diagrams of the theater’s main floor and balcony seating. You click on the area you want and the diagram turns and expands to reveal all as yet unclaimed seats. There’s even a “photo preview” feature that allows you to “see” the stage from various vantage points.
According to Steppenwolf’s Katie Ide, this new feature represents the latest phase in a long process of branding and articulating the theater’s online presence.
“Initially,” she says, “the point was to get a seamless integration for our patrons, so they could buy tickets for any show we have. … The next steps became trying to create a place where patrons can learn about Steppenwolf, see all the information about the show, and have more of a comfort level: ‘I don’t have to wait on the phone. I can go straight to the website, see what I want to see, look for tickets.’ And then the last step of that was doing select-your-own-seat.” Ide promises podcasts for the future, as well as a choose-your-own-package option that will allow customers to patch together their own “season” from diverse Steppenwolf offerings.
I select two seats and proceed by stages through the check-out process only to arrive at a dead end: “ERROR. . . . Please go back and try again.”
The rest is more of the same, over and over. Finally, I phone the box office where a nice, live “associate” finds me seats.
A survey conducted in May by one interested party — online ticket seller Goldstar Events — asserts that people under 40 prefer dealing with a website over a phone representative by 10 to one; still, Ide has no plans to cut down on her box office staff. “Some people are of the opinion that one day everything will be on the Internet,” she says, “but I think there will always be an element of, ‘I just want to talk to somebody. I just want someone to assure me that these are the best tickets or tell me where to get dinner.’.” She tells me she’s fixing the ERROR problem as we speak.
STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY AND UPSTAIRS AND GARAGE THEATRES
CONTACTS: 312-335-1650 and www.steppenwolf.org, or in person at 1650 N. Halsted St., 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sun.; until 7 p.m. on days with evening performances.
FEES: None.
TIME: Inconclusive.
PROS: No added charges, and the phone experience is pleasant.
CONS: Even a sophisticated online ticket buying system with photo preview can go down.
Intermediaries
As a ticket vending service, Ticketmaster is almost too big to be called a middleman. In purchasing one ticket for “My Pants Are Fire,” a Sansculottes Theater production at Rhino Fest, I keep with the trend and opt for an online transaction over a phone sale.
Before you can buy on Tickmaster.com, you’re confronted with a rectangular box containing pseudo-words that may be distorted or otherwise obscured. That’s a “CAPTCHA,” or Completely Automated Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart. It acts as an electronic sphinx riddle, frustrating computerized scalpers by putting them through test — i.e., discerning the hidden letters — “that humans can pass but current computer programs can’t,” according to CAPTCHA.net.
Once you’ve proven your humanity to CAPTCHA, you have an inhumane two minutes to buy your tickets. Ticketmaster’s Poindexter explains that “there has to be some time limit that allows the next person to have access to your tickets if you choose not to complete your purchase.” Yes, but why just two minutes when Steppenwolf, say, allows 18? She says she’ll “need to look a little deeper into that.”
TICKETMASTER
CONTACTS: 312-559-1212 and www.ticketmaster.com
FEES: Convenience charge — in this case, $4.25 on a $15 ticket — and optional delivery fees, running as high as $19.50.
TIME: If you’re focused, know what you want, how to get it, and already possess a Ticketmaster account, you can go from start to “Submit” in four minutes (my best time). If not, the time-wasting possibilities are infinite.
PROS: Comprehensiveness: I could as easily have bought tickets for an exhibit in Fort Worth, Texas. Also, the CAPTCHA’s kind of fun.
CONS: Comprehensiveness: you’ll find yourself sifting through 7,387 arts and theater listings if you don’t watch out. Also, certain processes time out in as little as one minute. Go overtime and you have to start again. And then there are the fees.
TicketWeb is a little different than Ticketmaster because it’s a service venues can use to sell tickets online themselves. But it’s owned by Ticketmaster. The object is one ticket for “Paradise Lost” at the Timeline Theatre.
TICKETWEB
CONTACT: www.ticketweb.com
FEES: A convenience charge of $5. No delivery option offered.
TIME: 3 minutes.
PROS: A rationally set-up process that makes good use of color to direct your attention to the right places and wraps up the transaction in the fewest possible pages, without the risk of timing out. Good for offbeat listings.
CONS: The fees — but otherwise none, as long as you’re not after Springsteen tickets.
Discounter
The Hot Tix service of the League of Chicago Theaters offers online access to half-price tickets for some productions. The LCT also runs walk-up ticket booths in Chicago and Skokie. The transaction itself is handled by Ticketmaster. I bought one half-price ticket to “Bitty Bear’s Matinee: The Family Tree” at American Girl Theater.
HOT TIX
CONTACTS: www.hottix.org. And at the Chicago Tourism Center (72 E. Randolph St.), the Water Works Visitor Center (163 E. Pearson St. at Michigan Avenue) and in the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts (9501 N. Skokie Blvd., Skokie), 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tues.-Fri., 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sat., and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sun.
FEES: Ticketmaster convenience charge of $2.25.
TIME: Five minutes, four of them with Ticketmaster.
PROS: Tickets at half price.
CONS: Pickin’s can be slim, tickets are sold only for the current week’s performances, and the business end transfers to Ticketmaster where the timing-out regime is in force.
Broadway In Chicago
The blockbuster musical “Wicked” at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre is the test case for tickets to a downtown show.
CONTACTS: www.wickedthemusical.com/chicago or at any of the Broadway in Chicago locations.
FEES AND TIME: Official online ticket-buying done through Ticketmaster, with all that implies.
PROS: Walk-up tickets are available at the three Broadway in Chicago theaters downtown and other locations. They’re also bought and sold on brokerage sites such as StubHub.com. If you’re feeling lucky, you can enter the day-of-performance drawings conducted Tuesday through Thursday at the theater, weekends at the neighboring Borders store, 150 N. State St. Win and they let you buy seats in the first two rows for $25 apiece.
CONS: Aforementioned Ticketmaster issues.
Lo-fi
As a bare-bones ticketing example, you can’t beat “Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind” by the Neo-Futurists. No online or phone sales, just show up. I secured one admission to the long-running off-Loop show that promises “30 plays in 60 minutes.”
CONTACT: The Neo-Futurarium at 5153 N. Ashland Ave., or for information 773-275-5255 and www.neofuturists.org.
FEES: Your ticket will cost you $8-$13, depending on the roll of a single die.
TIME: At least a half hour spent in front of the theater waiting to see if you’ll be one of the 149 people admitted.
PROS: The eccentricities of the admission process (did I mention that they rename you, too?) breeds a nice sense of communal festivity. Plus it can’t sell out in advance.
CONS: The wait in winter.
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onthetown@tribune.com
