In a follow-up to Monday’s weblog post about ticket price increases for the Boston Symphony and the Red Sox spring training, at least one of the two organizations has had a change of heart.
After much gnashing of teeth by loyal subscribers, the Boston Symphony has eased back on its announced season ticket prices for 1400 of the patrons most affected. The face value of the tickets will remain, but these targeted subscribers will receive rebates to ease the increase back down to 15 percent. According to the orchestra’s chief administrator, the error was not one of pricing, but of timing:
‘Our mistake was not phasing it in over a longer period of time,’ said Mark Volpe, the BSO’s managing director. ‘We feel we have the right to price seats according to demand, and yet for some people that’s a major burden, and we’re trying to rectify that.’
There are at least two stories in this story (and likely many more): One is the fairly complex question about whether or not nonprofit cultural institutions actually ‘have the right to price seats according to demand’; the other is about how organizations should announce and roll-out decisions about such pricing. In both stories, the public purpose and fiscal privilege of these organizations’ nonprofit status looms large in the debate.
