Forecasting

I was having a review of the wonderful sales pacing dash and thinking about targets and forecast.

I'm wondering if/how people have gone about forecasting a final position based on prior performances and what they used in formulas.

eg: 

  1. Averaged Total Ticket Count normalised for capacity &/or number of performances. 
  2. Normalising across day of week and matinee/evening
  3. adjusting for relative subs/single (or other segments you use) at a similar point in the sales period

I was keen to play with sames pacing based on an adjusted forecast target.

Can you tell I'm keen for v16 and predictive modeling?

Parents
  • Hi Heath, the predictive modelling sounds exiting! 

    Something I don't know if you're considering that struck me, as it sounds like you were intending to use averages - with fluctuating season or production run sizes, I think it would also be wise to build in a 'market share' factor in the forecasting.  That is, if you grow the number of performances eg by a quarter, you might find the end result of ticket volumes might only have grown by eg a fifth.   Just because you put more product out there, doesn't necessarily equate to more people coming in proportion to that.  It will depend on the marketplace you're competing in, and the relative popularity of your product/ extra product.  Growing market share can take time. 

    So it might be worth considering a 'market share' factor built into the forecast.  We don't do our forecasting in Tessitura yet, but would always bear this in mind if the season / production run size was expanding.  Not sure if the predictive modelling in v16 would allow for this, but would be great to hear from others already using it!

  • So I have a project that I'm working on with my Data and Analytics team to Moneyball our database.  If you want to talk about stuff like the potential of using machine learning on 10 years worth of theatre reviews I'll be at TLCC holding that can of worms (hehe)

  • Heath, this sounds super interesting, would love to chat about this at TLCC. Are you hosting something more formal? otherwise I'm sure i'll run into you!

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