Teatreneu is an independent theatre company which has seen an alarming decline in its audiences due to the economic situation and the increase in taxes on arts performances.

After finding that older systems such as conventional advance ticketing had lost their effectiveness and ruling out charging on a voluntary basis as too subjective, the conclusion was reached that the only way to build up audiences and raise the average ticket price was to come up with a new formula.

This is how Pay Per Laugh was born: the first comedy theatre where you only pay for the laughs you get. To do this we installed facial recognition software in each seat to detect every smile and count them. Instead of paying in advance, we thought of paying at the end and only for the laughs you got, at 0,30 euros per laugh.

A way of encouraging people to come to the theatre while avoiding the anxiety involved in making the right decision at a time when people cannot afford the luxury - never a truer word - of getting it wrong.

We fit out each seat with a facil recognition system that detects the smile, and proposes the following deal to spectators: "Entrance will be totally free. If the show produces no laugh, you don´t pay anything. However, if you laugh, you have to pay for each smile".

Each smile produced is worth 30 euro cents, something that in this day and age is quite a reasonable price.

And so that no-one would cry for having laughed more than they could afford, the maximum amount to pay was 80 laughs or 24 euros.

The average price of the tickets increases by 6 euros compared to traditional shows.

The systme was covered the main national media outlets. This produced more publicity, and this is turn produced 35% more spectators.

Each pay per laugh produced 7,200 euros of ticket money compared to 4,400 euros that was normally taken.

Currentaly the Pay Per Laugh system is being copied in other comedy theaters in Spain. A mobile phone app was created to use as a system of payment in other independent theatres.