Crowdfunding: Does it work in the theatre arts?

Image credit: The Economist 

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According to The Economist, only if you're not greedy but realistic in your request. Analyzing Kickstarter, they prepared the above chart to show what they discovered in 3 categories: success rate, total money raised, and the average pledge. In 2012, the projects that raised the most money were games (video and otherwise). In fact, games as a whole raised more than $80 million in crowdsourced dollars. It would follow then, that games would have a great success rate, but they don't. Games have a success rate of just over 30%. Consider also that the average pledge for a game is about $60 — the average price for a brand-spanking-new game.

The inverse holds true for dance, the category with the smallest amount of total money raised. Presumably by catering to a niche market (average pledge of $70+), dance related Kickstarters enjoyed a success rate near 80%. 

For theatre projects, the average pledge is around the middle of all pledges: about $75.00 and its success rate is about 65% which is near the top.

Something to consider when crowdsourcing for those hard to get dollars to mount your show.