The Stage

FFE’s nine pantos earn £9.3 million in ticket sales

Published Tuesday 13 March 2007 at 15:55 by Alistair Smith

First Family Entertainment’s 2006/7 season generated £9.3 million of ticket sales, marking a 22% increase on the pantomime producer’s first year performance.

It staged nine shows - one more than in its inaugural season - and recorded an increase of £2.6 million at the box office, meaning that the shows on average took more than £1 million each.

Cinderella, starring Bradley Walsh and Kacey Ainsworth at Milton Keynes Theatre, was the most successful in the group with sales of £1.6 million, while New Wimbledon Theatre’s Peter Pan, starring Henry Winkler as Captain Hook, was close behind, grossing £1.4 million. More than 600,000 tickets were sold at the nine theatres for the 2006/7 pantomimes and FFE has revealed that in 2007/8 at least one more venue, the Sunderland Empire, will be added to the portfolio, bringing the total to a minimum of ten venues.

“We are delighted with our year-on-year performance,” commented Howard Panter, managing director of Ambassador Theatre Group, which co-owns FFE with Live Nation. “Our aim is to stage high quality, traditional productions featuring the best performers, writers and directors in the industry and we are all thrilled with our continued success at the heart of British theatre.”

Rival pantomime producer Qdos last month revealed it had also enjoyed a boom year, grossing £15.5 million for the season and marking a 15% rise on its 2005/6 performance. Its 20 shows played to around 1.2 million people across the UK.