New shows bring ticket headaches

You and I, as entertainment consumers, look at three new shows and say, "Cool, more choices."

Backers of these shows are more likely to reach for another aspirin and say, "Another 35,754 tickets on the market each week!"

That's the figure you get when you multiply the seating capacity for "Monty Python's Spamalot," "Stomp Out Loud" and the upcoming Carmen Electra magic show by the number of performances each week.

Those who track this stuff worry that ticket inventory is growing out of proportion to the known habits of showgoers. The numbers give good reason for headaches.

It takes only a few "A list" titles to add up to 100,000 tickets a week. In fact, you can get to 104,200 with the five Cirque du Soleil shows (86,600) plus the Blue Man Group (17,600).

The Broadway musicals "Phantom -- The Las Vegas Spectacular," "The Producers" and "Mamma Mia!" add another 39,850 per week.

This is interesting: We tend to treat these titles equally in discussing the collective trend. But "Phantom" aspires to sell 18,150 tickets each week, while "Producers" puts up just 9,800.

Then there's the 4,100-seat Colosseum at Caesars Palace. If you average Celine Dion and Elton John over 52 weeks, that's another 14,980. The same averaging for Barry Manilow and other Las Vegas Hilton headliners rings up 4,107.

I threw in enough shows -- "Le Reve," Toni Braxton, Danny Gans, Rita Rudner, Lance Burton, Amazing Johnathan, Penn & Teller -- to make sure I could push the weekly inventory past 200,000. That's without even approaching less-popular evening shows, headliners at The Orleans or MGM Grand or concerts at the Hard Rock Hotel or House of Blues.

Even with this partial list, you're looking at more -- way more -- than 33,400 tickets to sell each day.

"It's insanity, isn't it?" says Jennifer Dunne, the Cirque du Soleil veteran now in charge of entertainment marketing at Wynn Las Vegas. "In a perfect world we'd all do eight shows a week."

Las Vegas drew nearly 39 million visitors last year. But there's an infamous 2005 statistic of visitors seeing only 1.3 "regularly scheduled production shows" during a stay.

A couple of years ago, Cirque du Soleil head Guy Laliberte looked to the skies, literally. He ventured the wave of high-rise condominiums will bring part-year residents who will have time to catch more than 1.3 shows.

But new resorts also will bring more shows: "Jersey Boys," two more Cirques and another Colosseum-size venue already are in the works.

For now, "if we expand the offerings to include something different, then hopefully (visitors) will see more than one," Dunne says. "That's everybody's challenge."

Mike Weatherford's entertainment column appears Thursdays and Sundays. Contact him at 383-0288 or e-mail him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com.