Museum tickets outpace movie openings

Monzo customers spent £14,100 on British Museum tickets in the first hour after a second batch went on sale last Wednesday. This figure is 48 times higher than the bank’s typical Wednesday morning spending. The data covers 16 million of the bank’s customers.

Fifty-five percent of those buyers were under 35 years old. The museum’s adult admission price is £33 at peak times and £27 off-peak. This price point is higher than the average cinema ticket, which influenced the total checkout amount.

The average checkout for the exhibition tickets was £97. By comparison, Monzo customers spent an average of £19 on tickets for the film Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Spending on the film The Odyssey was £7,000 in its first hour. The tapestry ticket sales were roughly twice the amount recorded for The Odyssey.

Interest in the exhibition extended beyond London. Nearly half of the buyers were based outside the capital. The most distant transactions came from Glasgow. This is the first time the 1,000-year-old embroidery has been displayed in England since the 11th century.

Thousands of people joined an online queue when sales began at 10 a.m. The available tickets sold out in three hours. The initial release took 24 hours to sell out. The museum has cited the speed of the sellout as a key factor in adjusting visitor operations.

The British Museum described the response since the exhibition opened last month as extraordinary. It introduced a ban on visitor photography to manage queues for ticket holders. The display presents the account of the Norman Conquest and has received positive reviews for its technical presentation and historical accuracy.