Brief:

• "The Phantom of the Opera" this week became the first Broadway musical to launch a skill for Amazon Alexa, the e-commerce giant's voice assistant, per an announcement shared with Mobile Marketer. The skill lets fans order tickets and pay for them using Amazon Pay and Telecharge.
• The voice-powered ordering opens a new sales channel for the show, David Andrews, SVP of Shubert Ticketing, said in the announcement.
• "Phantom" worked with artificial intelligence (AI) developer Broadw.ai on the Alexa skill.  "Phantom" is the longest-running musical in Broadway history with more than 13,000 performances, Playbill reported.

Insight:

As consumers become more comfortable with voice commerce, "The Phantom of the Opera" aims to give Broadway audiences another way to connect with the show through their smart speakers and other Alexa-powered devices. Only about one out of five consumers have shopped using a voice assistant, according to a study by digital commerce firm Sumo Heavy, suggesting that this type of skill is still in the early stage of adoption.

"Phantom" worked with Broadw.ai, whose AI technology also supports chatbot communications with Broadway fans. The musical "Wicked" last summer worked with the company on a chatbot that boosted ROI by 700% and sold tickets for 20% higher than the weekly average. Broadw.ai has handled more than 90,000 requests, including ticket sales, through the show's website and Facebook Messenger since rolling out in early 2019.

Amazon had an installed base of 76 million smart speakers in the U.S. earlier this year, per Consumer Intelligence Research Partners data cited by MarketingLand, giving marketers potentially broad reach on the platform. Alexa supports 100,000 skills, as apps for the platform are known, indicating that many companies are supporting the company's voice-powered technology.