The first comedy shows where you only pay for what you consume.

In mid-2013, the art industry in Spain suffered one of the hardest blows ever.

The goverment decided to raise the tax for theatrical shows from 8% to 21%, resulting in the loss of audience numbers.

People returned to consume "proven" entertainmen en masse such as the American blockbusters...

Faced with this reality, the independent comedy theatre company Teatreneu decided to look at the situation with humour and invented something: PAY PER LAUGH

We fit out each seat with a facial recognition system that detects the smile, and proposes the following deal to spectators: "Entrance will be totally free. If the show produces no laughs, 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 cries 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 by 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 were 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.