Stooping Theatre is leaving Instagram to join the “Theatr” app and monetize its program.
Stooping Theatre is an Instagram account that helps New Yorkers get cheap theater tickets, but can the account make money too? To answer this question, the account’s creator, 26-year-old Eva Wang, is making an adjustment.
Wang created Stooping Theatre to give away last-minute theater tickets that the original buyers no longer need for free or a reduced price. She now plans to move Stooping Theatre to her theater review app, “Theatr,” within the week to adjust for more users and monetize the process.
“As we grow, I anticipate more demands, so transitioning to the app will allow me to accommodate more users,” Wang said. “We're offering this service not only because we want to bring users in, but also because it's manually impossible to accommodate such a big volume by such a small team of ours.”
Since February, the Stooping Theatre account has grown to over 8,000 followers. It has found new homes for over 300 tickets, most of which sold for under $50.
“It was good knowing that a ticket I had double booked was actually used by someone, instead of going to waste,” said follower Bruno Moreira. “And [Stooping Theatre] is a really nice way to help people see shows they can’t afford.”
As the account has become more popular, it has also gotten harder for Wang to handle. She plans to build an automated feature on “Theatr” where users can send in tickets and sign up for text notifications for a specific show and price range.
The app makes money through fees when users buy tickets through the app. Wang predicts that the new filtering feature will draw new users to the app and increase the app’s revenue.
“If we want theater companies to sell their tickets [on the app], we need to have a large number of customers that are willing to pay. But if we want to attract these customers, we have to have tickets to sell,” Wang said. “[If users] circulate the tickets among themselves and add to the users in our app, we can use that growth as leverage when we ask theater companies to sell their tickets.”
Some followers worry that the app will not be able to stop users from re-selling their tickets for a profit.
“If the app becomes more of a place for scalpers to re-sell tickets…I will be less interested,” said follower Mary Brownlee. “There are still plenty of places to re-sell tickets – I’m not interested in more of that.”
Wang says that users wishing to re-sell tickets on the app must submit a screenshot of their ticket confirmation email and a “Theatr” employee will approve the requested price before posting it.
While Stooping Theatre is changing formats, Wang does not want to lose the community she gained on Instagram.
“My vision for the app is to serve as a one-stop shop for theater in New York that allows both shows to advertise and sell their tickets, and theatergoers to quickly decide what shows to go to and get a ticket,” Wang said. “Not everybody's going to jump onto the app…But I do think at least half of [our followers] will, as long as we make [the transition] as smooth as possible.”