TDF Overreach Continues

We saw it last week, and I guess it's a permanent feature on the landscape now, kind of like a strip mined mountainside. TDF places their latest advertorial, with Playbill.com as the vector. They continue to advertise their discounts for shows, without regard to the fact that each show listed would surely prefer to sell their tickets at full price, or at a higher discount than TKTS, that they authorized through their own marketing plans. 

Broadway theater ticket purchasers may remember some years back, when waiting on line at TKTS, there used to be flyers offered for discounts to shows that may have been on the board at TKTS that day. On a hot summer day, it wasn't a hard decision to leave the long and winding TKTS line and take advantage of these offers by going to the theater, where, who knows, maybe the box office might even upsell the ticket buyer to better locations for a few extra dollars. Kind of a win-win all around. 

TDF/TKTS didn't much like that, losing out on commission sales and fees. So, this practice was abolished by the powers that be, insulating and protecting TKTS and their commissions and fees. Forget that this may have put more money into the individual shows, that is really not TKTS mission, is it? 

At the end of the day, TDF/TKTS does not give a fig about the health of Broadway shows, only that they get to sell the tickets to those shows, for less than the shows can sell themselves. That may be all well and good, if you are earning a bigtime administrative salary in a corner office at TDF, but for the shows themselves, the producers, investors, and those whose jobs that depend on the shows meeting their expenses each week, not so good. 

As I've said before, the advertising of TKTS discounts is bad for Broadway shows. It will only tamp down the revenue of each show so advertised, and it diverts ticket buyers away from the shows not advertised by TKTS. It's a lose-lose situation all around.