West End theatre tickets surge with top seats reaching £300 for first time
14 June 2024, 14:34
West End theatre tickets have surged over the last year, with top seats reaching £300 for the first time.
Listen to this article
Loading audio...
The average top-priced West End ticket has reached £154.56, compared with £141.37 in 2023, a survey carried out by The Stage found.
The research, which was published on Thursday, showed that Cabaret had the highest ticket prices for the third year in a row, with the most expensive tickets costing £304.
But for the first time, three plays were found to be charging more than £200 for their top tickets as opposed to musicals.
Among those was the latest production of Romeo and Juliet starring Tom Holland.
To see the Spider-Man actor in the show this weekend, it would cost a maximum of £298.95 - almost £150 more than 2023's most expensive play, which was a National Theatre production of The Crucible.
Musicals have seen a smaller increase in prices than plays, despite tending to cost more to produce.
They saw top-price tickets go up by 3.9 per cent compared to the 9.3 per cent for plays.
The Society of London Theatre defended the price rises, with president Eleanor Lloyd saying the higher ticket prices also allowed for cheaper schemes to bring in "new and diverse audiences".
Producers and venues have also been dealing with rising costs, she said.
Ms Lloyd highlighted that the industry is still recovering from the pandemic, when theatres were forced to close, with average ticket prices only rising by half the rate of inflation since.
