Audience Rewards Loyalty Program: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know

Audience Rewards is a loyalty program that you may or may not have heard of before, their tagline is “The Official Rewards Program of Broadway & the Arts”. It’s easiest to think of Audience Rewards as a loyalty program for the performing arts, which a focus on Broadway and the NYC scene in particular.

Points can be earned and redeemed for attending shows, exclusive experiences and a variety of other options. Without further ado, let’s delve into the Audience Rewards loyalty program.

Earning Points

Credit Card

Audience Rewards offers an American Express credit card that is issued by First National Bank of Omaha that earns Audience Rewards points.

• Earn 3,000 bonus points when you spend $1,000 within the first three billing cycles
• Earns at the following rates:
  • Earn 2x points per $1 spent on live entertainment up to $12,000 each billing period (24,000 points), then 1x points
  • Earn 1x points on all other purchases
• No annual fee
• Free FICO score (Experian Bankcard Enhanced score, 2008)

They say you can also earn 4x points on participating shows, but this is deceptive as 2x of these points comes from purchasing the tickets and entering your audience rewards number. This is something you can do even if you don’t have the credit card. We will have a more detailed review later today on this card.

Purchasing Tickets

As mentioned above you’ll earn 2x points on all tickets purchased that participate in Audience Rewards. They also offer special offers where you can receive additional points for certain shows that range from 500 bonus points to 3,500 bonus points and even special perks.

PointsPlay/Trivia

Earn points for answering trivia questions, you’ll earn anywhere from 1-5 points and there are currently 100 questions that can be answered. If you get a question wrong, you don’t get another chance to answer it unfortunately and the questions are quite difficult (at least for somebody not familiar with a lot of broadway shows). Most have a multiple choice answer with 1-4 options, but some are just true/false.

Later today we will have a post with some of the questions and their answers as well to make this easier to rack these points up. I’m unsure if they regularly add new questions or not, but we will try to keep that post updated.

Mobile Check Ins

This is marketed as a limited time offering, but the basic premise is that you go to ARcheckin.com and log into your account. The app will then look for shows near you and you can check into those shows (even if you haven’t purchased a ticket) and earn anywhere from 10-25 points.

I couldn’t find any shows near me, so I asked Chasing The Points (who lives in NYC) to have a look for me and he graciously provided me with the following screenshots.

Some important things to note:

• You have to be within a set distance to be able to check in, I’m not exactly sure what this distance is.
• You have to check in within set times, which vary based on when the show is on.

A big thanks goes again to Chasing The Points, if you don’t read his blog you’re really doing yourself a disservice. Follow him on Twitter while you’re at it as well.

Misc

• Mobile check ins. Earn points for checking in to shows near you, just head to ARcheckin.com on your mobile phone and log in.
• Fill out profile. There are 17 profile questions you can answer (drop down menus) that each earn 2-3 points.
• Shopping portal. Audience rewards have their own shopping portal which can be viewed here. The rates aren’t very good though (e.g Walmart is 2 points per $2 spent but you can get 5% cash back).
• Purchase points. Points can be purchased here, the price is 2.5¢ per point regardless of how many you purchase.
• Transfer miles/points using Points.com. Points.com allows you to convert existing loyalty points/miles to Audience Rewards points. The exchange rate is usually terrible, but here are the programs that convert into Audience Rewards points (below is how many points/miles you need to exchange for 1,000 Audience Rewards points)
  • Aeroplan: 2,353 miles
  • Asia Miles: 4,000 miles
  • ChinaReward: 11,765 points
  • Frontier EarlyReturns: 4,000 miles
  • Hawaiian: 6,667 miles
  • jetBlue: 2,667 points
  • Kickback: 2,000 points
  • LaQuinta Return: 6,897 points
  • Melia Rewards: 4,000 points
  • Speedy Rewards: 28,572
  • Virgin Elevate: 2,000 points

Redeeming Points

Tickets

You can exchange your points for tickets, you can have have the option for partly paying cash (points cost 1.2¢ when purchasing in this manner). The cheapest shows at only 500 points (for something called 50 Shades of Gray the musical parody which just sounds god awful). While some of the bigger shows are much more expensive: Book of Mormon (17,000 points), Wicked (16,000 points), Wolf Hal Pt1 + P2 (16,000 points).

Amtrak Points

It’s possible to transfer Audience Rewards points to Amtrak points at a rate of 1:1. On the surface of it, Audience Rewards doesn’t give you much information – they just refer you to the Amtrak website. When you go to the transfer partner page you should see the following:

Which seems fantastic, except when you do a little bit more digging you’ll eventually find this page. If you scroll down to Transfer of ShowPoints to Partner Program Points/Miles (Amtrak is the only transfer partner of this type) come across some important fine print that I’ll sum up below:

• You can transfer a minimum of 1,000 points
• You can transfer a maximum of 50,000 ShowPoints per year per individual member (regardless of the number of accounts the member holds).
• You must have had an eligible ticket purchase in the prior 12 months
• Only points earned by a member from eligible Ticket purchases and Ticket purchase bonuses may be transferred into participating partner programs. Promotional bonus points earned for participation in PointsPlay Trivia, Check Ins, About You Surveys, Refer a Member, and Show and Tell referrals are NOT eligible for transfer into partner programs.

The last point is probably the most frustrating, unless you live in NYC and see a lot of shows chances are that you won’t have that many points from eligible shows. A big thanks goes to reader J.T.K for helping me locate this fine print.

Experiences

Their are a bunch of different experiences you can redeem your points for. Most of the cheaper redemption also have a cash component and seem to sell out, while big experiences (e.g tickets for a group + behind the scenes access/afterparty) cost a lot of points.

Merchandise

It wouldn’t be a rewards portal without a merchandise section. At least all of the items seem to be related to Broadway/live entertainment. The downside is that the value you get out of your points looks to be incredibly low.

Points.com

Again, you can transfer your Audience Rewards points for other currencies – although the rates usually suck. Below is how many points you’d receive if you exchange 1,000 Audience Rewards points:

• Aeroplan: 566 miles
• Asia Miles: 850 miles
• ChinaReward: 4,473 points
• Frontier EarlyReturns: 465 miles
• Hawaiian: 790 miles
• jetBlue: 395 points
• Kickback: 566 points
• LaQuinta Return: 1,000 points
• Melia Rewards: 944 points
• Speedy Rewards: 5,312 points
• Virgin Elevate: 359 points

Misc

You can also redeem your points for any of the following:

• Collectibles. This is mostly stuff like signed posters.
• Show enhancers. Things to make your show more memorable, e.g dinner/drinks before or after the show.
• Broadway workshops. This looks to be targeted at kids with an interest in the performing arts.

Earning Other Points/Miles Instead Of Audience Rewards

Instead of earning Audience Rewards points, you can instead opt to earn miles/points in other currencies instead. Here are the participating programs and the rules for each program (taken directly from fine print here):

Amtrak Guest Rewards:

• 100 Amtrak Guest Rewards points for each Broadway ticket purchased to a participating show/venue plus any special bonus point offers.
• 50 Amtrak Guest Rewards points for each ticket purchased to a participating Off-Broadway, touring, and other regional show plus any special bonus point offers.
• Additional promotional point bonuses may apply but are only applicable if booked through the designated website or for certain seat types and price levels.

Delta SkyMiles mileage rewards:

• 100 miles for each Broadway ticket purchased to a participating show/venue plus any special bonus point offers.
• 50 miles for each ticket purchased to a participating Off-Broadway, touring, and other regional show plus any special bonus point offers.
• Additional promotional mileage bonuses may apply but are only applicable if booked through the designated website or for certain seat types and price levels.

Starwood Preferred Guest:

• 100 Starpoints for each Broadway ticket purchased to a participating show/venue plus any special bonus point offers.
• 50 Starpoints for each ticket purchased to a participating Off-Broadway, touring, and other regional show plus any special bonus point offers.
• Additional promotional bonuses may apply but are only applicable if booked through the designated website or for certain seat types and price levels.

United MileagePlus:

• 100 miles for each Broadway ticket purchased to a participating show/venue plus any special bonus point offers.
• 50 miles for each ticket purchased to a participating Off-Broadway, touring, and other regional show plus any special bonus point offers.
• Additional promotional mileage bonuses may apply but are only applicable if booked through the designated website or for certain seat types and price levels.
• A maximum of 50,000 miles may be earned/transferred to your MileagePlus account per calendar year.

US Airways

• 100 miles for each Broadway ticket purchased to a participating show/venue plus any special bonus point offers.
• 50 miles for each ticket purchased to a participating Off-Broadway, touring, and other regional show plus any special bonus point offers.
• Additional promotional mileage bonuses may apply but are only applicable if booked through the designated website or for certain seat types and price levels.

Shop Your Way

• 1,250 points for each Broadway ticket purchased to a participating show/venue plus any special bonus point offers.
• 625 points for each ticket purchased to a participating Off-Broadway, touring, and other regional show plus any special bonus point offers.
• Additional promotional point bonuses may apply but are only applicable if booked through the designated website or for certain seat types and price levels.

Final Thoughts

I first got interested in Audience Rewards when somebody wrongly told me that these points could be transferred to SPG at a ratio of 1:1, I was pleased that they can in fact be transferred to Amtrak at this same ratio but the restrictions make this basically useless for my own purposes.

If you live in NYC and enjoy the performing arts, then this is definitely a program worth signing up for and doing a bit more digging yourself. I’ll keep my account and answer trivia questions and any other free point opportunities as they come up as well as receiving points when/if I go to shows that participate but for the most part I won’t be giving this program too much attention.

What are your thoughts on this program? Let us know in the comments below.