Theatres holding tickets back from sale

It's a disincentive to touting - if people know more tickets will be released at a later date, they're less likely to pay over the top prices for shows that sell well.

Bat is performing just shy of 17 weeks next year, 8 shows a week in a 2,069 seat theatre.

That approximates at something close to 280,000 tickets. It will be one hell of a task to shift these. I've just checked the dates for Meat Loaf's last UK tour, which took in 11 UK dates - for the sake of easy maths, I'll say 15,000 tickets a night - 165,000 over the whole country. The musical, which doesn't move, would have to be substantially more popular than the artist it's paying tribute to.

So, holding off the rear circle from sale makes sense, just in terms of getting people close to the stage, and rear stalls are still available at £35 (from memory). There may be a little bit of penny pinching going on in keeping the front three rows off sale from now, but equally, they could just be there for dayseats and offers later on.

It's nothing remotely close to that. No shop has an obligation to tell you when they're planning to lower their prices.

I can't think of anything that has announced and released tickets with some kind of 'loads more available later' announcement - it doesn't make any sense for producers, ticket agents or punters :/

If not selling tickets to customers who wish to buy them is the best they can come up with to stop touting then things must be in a bad way. Sorry, I’m not really buying that as a reason. 

This happens a lot these days. I suppose from their point of view as well its not great for the performers if all the more expensive front stalls seats are empty as we have all opted for the cheap seats at the back.

For me it's a balance - I don't have an issue with them holding off seats, as long as all price points are still available. If you want to hold off the rear circle until the house is more full then that's fine, but make sure that the rear circle prices are available elsewhere. As has been discussed on here before, Wimbledon do this - if the Upper is closed, they re-price the back row(s) of the stalls to £15. Fair enough.

The moral issue arises when seats are being held off sale to push people into booking more expensive seats. This sucks and shouldn't be allowed.

This also leads to a slightly off-topic point about pricing- it really bugs me when theatres publish "tickets from £x", only there aren't any seats at that price. Whether they've been held off sale or sold or whatever, the currently available prices should be the ones displayed.

This just adds weight to my theory that NO show is ever "sold out" in advance. As an ex- theatre pro, in my day box offices HAD to have "holds" which were usually released on the day of performance. These were for producers, investors, named talent etc plus their OWN keeps for any last minute problems. I cannot imagine this practice would have declined in any way. Ticket agencies make mistakes and seats have to be kept back for any unforeseen problems. Can you imagine refusing a "star" seats to a production they are appearing in?