Like most other regulars I've noticed that the seats I normally use have become more expensive rather than cheaper. One feels more than a little diddled because we were all told prices were coming down....

As a concrete example my 'normal' seats were Stalls Circle restricted view and right next to the stage. They used to cost about £10-£13 (or so) pre-closure. Now they cost £18-£30. And incidentally they are no longer seats but a less comfortable bench.

I think the 'problem' is that the old house had many different price levels and regular goers of course had sussed out the best bang per buck for them. In general there was heavy contention for the seats we regulars liked ... which was one of the main reasons you became a Friend of course - you stood more chance of getting them before the general public.

So what happened is that certain areas would sell out quickly and other areas - notably the stalls, would be much more slow. But in effect what this means is that your seat pricing is wrong with some people getting bargains relative to others...

It's not a palatable message, but us regulars had all optimised our arrangements and were doing rather better than the Joes who came along later or did not know. Some would argue that that is the way it ought to be, but for myself I'm not sure it is fair. It's the People's ROH and everybody (regardless of rank etc) ought to get a fair deal and an equal share of the subsidy no matter where they sit or when they buy their ticket.

But it's certainly galling that all the folks in the Stalls and Grand Tier, who probably never saw the ticket price as a bar to going out (indeed a fair proportion probably never paid for their ticket anyway..), have seen their tickets prices fall, while many regulars have seen their ticket prices go up.

Certainly ROH were always criticised for the cost of their highest priced seats, but in lowering those prices so noticeably the lower priced seats have all been priced up. The ROH undoubtedly have lots of great stats on this - all designed to say that on average it's never been cheaper or better. But statistics can be 'massaged' and the practical experience is that most regular goers have seen their seat prices go up not down.

To which I guess the ROH response would be that some areas have been reassessed and laid out differently and, yes, they do belive they were perhaps selling some seats too cheaply in the past.. but overall people are paying less and ... we have some great stats...

I think the key ROH 'problem' is that there are often more punters than tickets. No other ballet company has such a problem. So BRB, ENB etc have 'cheap' Friends schemes and BRB regularly discounts tickets to multiple performances and enables you to pay by Direct Debit over six months as well. The ROH effectively have to ration tickets so why discount in such circumstances and lose much needed income? (and it is much needed, let's face it).

The dynamics of getting tickets have changed too and it's now much less clear that it's worthwhile paying £55 to become a low level friend when 20% of tickets in all price ranges are available for public booking. What's more in public booking you can talk through what seats are available - a real boon I find. Yes I know that there are other reasons to be an ROH friend but they are only worth the £20 or so that the other companies charge. And it does irk that while the price of Friends' membership has gone up, 'normal' (ie low-level) Friends have sunk in the pecking order for tickets.

I gather that in the 'good old days' fans would queue all night to get tickets when they become available and I can see that many friends might well decide that moving to public booking (be it by phone or queue) is a better and more cost effective proposition overall - especially at a time when 'their' seat prices have been going up rather than down.