The National Theatre has declared war on middle-class families, using “dynamic pricing” to hike their costs while handing cut-price seats to the unemployed. The Mail has the details.
The publicly funded theatre announced it had started adjusting supply and demand pressures for certain shows in line with its vow to offer 25 % of tickets for £30 or less. …
And as such, middle-class families face paying more to sit in the audience for the most popular shows.
Dynamic pricing is a model where firms adjust ticket prices automatically when demand is higher than supply.
One father claimed that for War Horse tickets at the National Theatre on Saturday in June for himself, his partner and two children, he was quoted £440.
Another person was offered a price of £160 for the same tickets for the same number of people at the Monday performance.
Meanwhile, one person said he had been quoted £162 for two Les Liaisons Dangereuses – a new show featuring Poldark’s Aidan Turner.
However, he then received another quote at £220 for the same show starring Lesley Manville for nearly identical seats.
It comes as families receiving benefits can claim substantial discounts at major UK attractions, while those working pay more than £100 for the same trips.
A family of four can visit the Tower of London for just £4 instead of £111 if one parent receives universal credit.
While entry to Buckingham Palace, which is typically £99 for a family of four, is just £1 a ticket for those on universal credit, a saving of £95 for two adults and two children.
More than 80 attractions give discounts to benefit claimants, with MPs reacting furiously to the loophole, with one saying the system created a “two-tier system that punishes work”.
London Zoo offers universal credit claimants an £82 reduction, reducing a family ticket down from £108 to £26.
Westminster Abbey provides a £60 saving from its standard £62 family price, costing families just £2.
HMS Belfast provides a £68 saving, with St Paul’s Cathedral, Kew Gardens, Kensington Palace and the Cutty Sark all offering similar reductions.
Around 106,000 visitors used £1 tickets to gain entry to the Tower of London from April 2025 to March 2026, Historic Royal Palaces said.
Meanwhile, London Zoo sold 300,000 reduced tickets in 2024/25, requiring only a screenshot or PDF as proof of eligibility.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Mail reports that the Royal Academy of Music has jumped on the bandwagon as well, it seems, banning private school pupils from its new foundation year.
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This is the future of how wealth will be redistributed and actually that is what climate policies are and always have been. The Climate is simply the seemingly plausible excuse for the eco socialism. ——But don’t take my word for it, here is what a lead author at the IPCC said a few years ago —“One has to free oneself from the illusion that climate policies are environmental policies anymore. We redistribute the worlds wealth via climate policy”—–The poorest who are being forced into energy poverty because of Net Zero will have a part of their bill paid by money skimmed from wealthier people. —Carbon Taxes etc etc. —-Carbon has become a kind of currency.
Oh… my surprised look – so dynamic pricing is OK as long a s it’s not done by ticket agencies or ticket-touts. Two-tierism across all institutions now.
But… it’s not dynamic pricing it is discriminatory pricing. Lawyers: is it legal, given it is public funded out of taxes? Full price ticket holders are already subsidising the lazy oiks on the dole, so now it’s a double subsidy.
A good solution would be to offer premium seats at a higher charge, as with air-lines and rail, giving people choice and cross-subsidising the cheap seats. But that would be capitalism (Boo!) instead of Socialism (Hurrah!)
This is so bad for the consumer. A ticket price should be fixed, not what you can get away with. You can have a few fixed price tickets for people on welfare.
Not a good move!
This news is very interesting, because it reflects the old Communist aim of destroying the Middle Class by making them subsidize the poor Lower Class, leaving only Lords & Serfs (Communist Elites & Peasants).
Speaking of Communism, what an ugly building it is, reminiscent of the grey Stalinist blocks in Russia! The future King Charles III described it best in 1988 as…
“a clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London without anyone objecting.”
Here is its venerable predecessor The Old Vic:
So benefit scroungers can get tickets for a pittance and sell them off to working stiffs.
The UK, the country who’s elites hate people who work to support themselves.
The suggestion that a couple with two children, in receipt of taxpayer funded benefits can afford theatre tickets costing £160 let alone £440 is frankly a bloody insult to the taxpayers keeping publicly financed theatres open in the first place.
As a country we are way beyond having the capacity to subsidise outlets such as theatres particularly given their propensity for DEI and Wokery in general.
That shows the little respect that the state has for the productive people it loots.
Exactly.
I’m sorry, but I can’t see the story here. You pay a high price on a popular night and a lower price on a quieter night, just as you would in a hotel, buying a holiday, even going to a restaurant. Seems the theatre is adopting normal commercial practice to get bums on seats. Hopefully this awakening to capitalism means less of my taxes subsidising the place. Pretty sure that dynamic pricing has nothing to do with social strata and upper, middle and lower classes pay the same for the same seat and same night. Can’t afford Saturday night, take a day off and go to a mid-week matinee.
I thought the point was that “concessions” were not subject to surge pricing – that is the implication though it’s not clear from the text. I don’t have an issue with surge pricing but I do have an issue with subsidies from my pocket
Call me snobbish, but I can’t imagine many “working class” or perpetually unemployed families wanting to go and see War Horse or Les Liaisons Dangereuses…
And that’s coming from a working class Valley’s boy 😂
Indeed
I hope nobody goes and they all go bankrupt. The tourist attraction places would probably survive but the NT would be bust without our money
Close down The Arts Council and the DCMS. Afuera!
I’m strongly of the opinion that no sports or entertainment should be subsidised.
If it cannot attract an audience sufficient in numbers to keep it going, on its own merits, it should be allowed to wither on the vine.
If that makes me a Philistine, so be it…
I agree – certainly not with taxpayer money anyway. If individuals want to do so, that’s up to them, and I suppose the same applies to private commercial sports organizations who may wish to do so for various reasons. Of course elite junior/feeder level sport has to be subsidised to an extent to provide competitors for the top levels that makes money, but those are essentially commercial decisions.
Schemes like this force better off people to subsidise the less well off.
If an attraction introduces a scheme whereby better off people can pay an optional surcharge to subsidise tickets for other people that would be fine but it’s highly unlikely such a scheme would end up subsidising many, if any, tickets.
I suspect some or all of these places are receiving taxpayer money either directly or through grants, tax breaks or having been gifted land or buildings or had capital expenditure development paid for by the state. All of that should stop.
paid for by the taxpayer you mean (I know you know that!).
All of that should stop. !!!!!