The Townsend Center at the University of West Georgia is seeing some changes in the buying habits of its patrons that are making administrators a little nervous.

Season-ticket sales are way down this year as patrons, uncomfortable in the sluggish economy, choose to wait on purchases until the last minute rather than spend the money up front for shows that are playing several months down the line.

“It’s like buying patterns have changed,” said Robert Jennings, director of the Townsend Center. “They just don’t want to lay the money out. So, instead – like our last show with the Carroll Symphony Orchestra – it did about as well as last year, which we were very happy with, but it wasn’t really until about eight days before the show.”

It means a nerve-wracking couple of weeks leading up to a show as he waits to see if the theater will break even on the production or not.

Season-ticket sales are packages that allow the buyer to save a little money on each show and the Townsend Center to plan ahead and know when a show is likely to sell out or not. Jennings had worked for several years to promote season-ticket sales as a revenue stream that is more advantageous than individual sales.

“It’s a lot more cost effective to try and bundle things,” Jennings said. “It’s so expensive to market one show at a time.”

For an organization like the Townsend Center, which doesn’t have much of an advertising budget, marketing the shows individually can be too expensive and really cut into overall revenue.

The center has had three shows so far this season, the first two just broke even while the third, the symphony, made some money for the university.

“It’s a trend everybody is facing right now,” Jennings said. “People are only spending what they have to, when they have to. ... When you ask people, you get the same answer. ‘I’m just holding on to my money and I’m going to get it when it gets close.’”

Of course, when it gets close, other priorities may become more important and those tickets may not get sold, and that is exactly what worries Jennings.

While UWG faces mounting financial pressure from state budget cuts, the Townsend Center is one source of revenue the university has. To save expenses, the center did away with its first couple of shows, because there is not a lot of time to promote them and they are traditionally low sellers. Still, the down season ticket sales are making it difficult to predict how the season will go.

“I’m hoping and praying that the money will all balance out, but you don’t know,” Jennings said.

The center has to pay the performers whether the show sells out or not, so if a show is not selling it needs to have a marketing push to sell those tickets. With subscription sales, the center knew well in advance whether a show was going to need that, giving them some less expensive options to market those shows – things like phone calls or mass mailings to past patrons. However, with all the shows being so sparsely sold – for instance a jazz performer scheduled to play in March only has 50 subscription tickets sold, much lower than Jennings expected – it looks like massive advertising may be necessary.

What makes the uncertainty more difficult to deal with is the center had a great year last year.

“I’ve studied and studied why last year went so well, it went very well even though the recession was on, the mortgage crisis and all that was really creating a lot of harm, last year was the best season we’ve ever had,” Jennings said. “But as the recession’s worn on, especially I think over the summer, it really set in hard on middle-class families and it’s really changed buying habits.”