Museum tickets gone in three hours as spending tops film openings

The British Museum sold out its second batch of Bayeux tapestry tickets in three hours last Wednesday.

This was much faster than the initial release, which took 24 hours to exhaust its inventory. Thousands of people joined an online queue when sales opened at 10:00 a.m.

Monzo bank provided spending data from 16 million customers to track the transaction patterns. During the first hour of sales, Monzo customers paid the museum a total of £14,100.

That hourly total was 48 times higher than the bank recorded on a typical Wednesday morning. By the two-hour mark, spending had climbed to £30,500.

The museum’s ticket prices are higher than standard cinema admissions. Adult entry costs £33 at peak times and £27 off-peak. The average checkout for the exhibition tickets was £97, compared with £19 for Spider-Man: Brand New Day on its opening morning.

The spending on the museum tickets also outpaced the opening mornings for other major films this year. Monzo users spent £7,000 on The Odyssey and £6,300 on the Spider-Man film during their respective launch periods.

A large portion of the ticket buyers were younger adults. Fifty-five percent of those who purchased tickets in the first hour were under 35 years old.

Interest for the exhibition came from across the country. Almost half of the buyers lived outside London. The most distant transactions recorded by the bank originated in Glasgow.

The British Museum called the response to the exhibition “extraordinary.” The display has been open since last month.

To manage the crowds, the museum has adjusted its operations for ticket holders. The institution introduced a ban on visitors taking photographs to reduce delays.