Last month, Ellen wrote about plunging ticket sales for the Kennedy Center after Trump took it over, but it's gotten worse. The Washington Post took a good look at the numbers, saying this year, more than 40% of all seats remained available/unsold on the day of the performance. Further, ticket sales hit their lowest point since the 2020 pandemic shutdown.
Via the Post:
After President Donald Trump took over the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in February, he and the executive he put in charge repeatedly accused the institution’s former leadership of not doing the very thing they are responsible for: selling tickets.
“We had spent way too much on programming that doesn’t bring in any revenue,” Richard Grenell, a Trump ally and former ambassador to Germany, told the Washington Reporter, a conservative media outlet, in late March. According to Grenell, the center hadn’t been making money. It was too woke and niche. The new team was, in Trump’s words, going to make it “hot” again.
Nearly nine months after Trump became chair of the center and more than a month into its main season, ticket sales for the Kennedy Center’s three largest performance venues are the worst they’ve been in years, according to a Washington Post analysis of ticketing data from dozens of recent shows as well as past seasons. Tens of thousands of seats have been left empty.
I wonder what Grenell thinks about the revenue the Kennedy Center is generating now.
Since early September, 43 percent of tickets remained unsold for the typical production. That means that, at most, 57 percent of tickets were sold for the typical production — and some tickets may have been “comps,” which are given away, often to staff members or the press. That compares with 93 percent sold or comped in fall 2024 and 80 percent in fall 2023.
The drop in ticket buying may have broader consequences. Fewer patrons in chairs could lead to fewer donations, warned Michael Kaiser, who served from 2001 to 2014 as president of the Kennedy Center, where he boasted a budget surplus every year.
“Depressed ticket sales not only cause a shortfall in revenue; they also bode unfavorably for future fundraising revenue,” Kaiser wrote in an email after reviewing The Post’s findings. “The vast majority of donors are ticket buyers who are anxious to enhance their relationships with the organization by making contributions in addition to paying for their tickets. We had 40,000 generous individual donors by the time I left the Center in 2014. Funding from these individuals formed the foundation for all we accomplished.”
“Given the unprecedented takeover of a nonpartisan arts institution combined with the inexperience and rhetoric of the new management, I expected a decline in sales; however, it is truly shocking to see that these actions have been worse for business at the Kennedy Center than the aftermath of a global pandemic,” a former staff member told the outlet. “These numbers are likely more dire than they appear, as they don’t account for canceled productions or shows moved into smaller theaters due to weak ticket sales."
“This downturn isn’t just about pricing or programming — it feels directly tied to the new regime’s leadership shift and the broader political climate,” a current staff member said. “I’ve heard from ticket buyers who say they’re choosing not to attend because of what the Kennedy Center now represents. The brand itself has become polarizing, which is unprecedented in my experience.”
The Kennedy Center has existed for 54 years, and it only took Trump nine months to bring it down faster than one of his failed casinos. Trump's bankruptcies include Trump Taj Mahal (1991), Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino (1992), Plaza Hotel (1992), Trump Castle Hotel and Casino (1992), Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts (2004), and Trump Entertainment Resorts (2009). Coming soon: The US economy. And Fred isn't around to bail him out this time.
